Local SEO for solicitors and accountants: pass the referral check
Most of your work still arrives by recommendation — but the recommended person Googles your firm before they call. What they find in those thirty seconds, your rating and your last few reviews, decides whether the referral becomes an instruction. We do the work that decides what it says.
What local SEO means for a law firm or accountancy practice
It means being findable for the problem, not just the firm name — "conveyancing solicitor near me", "accountant for landlords", "mortgage broker" and a town — and looking credible to someone checking a recommendation. In practice: the right categories for each practice area, the people and qualifications a checker wants to see, fees stated where you can state them, and reviews arriving at the natural ends of matters rather than in awkward bursts.
Where firms lose the instruction
Six things we find on nearly every legal or financial profile we audit. All six are visible to someone deciding whether to act on a recommendation.
The referral dies at the search box
"Sarah at number 12 used them, they were brilliant" — and then the recommended person finds three reviews, the newest two years old, and a firm across town with forty. Nobody tells you the instruction was yours to lose, because nobody tells you it existed.
Your practice areas are one line
"Legal services" is not how anyone searches. Conveyancing, probate, family, employment, wills and LPAs are each a separate search with a separate person in a separate moment behind it — and a profile that lists none of them enters none of those auctions.
Your reviews say nothing, and your replies say too much
Clients leave five stars and no words because they will not name the matter — that is normal for this trade and a profile can still work with it. What is not normal is a reply that confirms who the reviewer is and what you did for them. That is a confidentiality problem wearing a customer-service hat.
The fee question goes unanswered
"How much is conveyancing", "accountant fees for self assessment" — these searches run constantly, and a profile that ducks them does not make people call. It makes them instruct the firm that published a fixed fee, and it filters out the client who would have paid yours happily.
A departed partner still ranks at your address
They left two years ago, their listing did not. It sits at your door, collecting reviews meant for your firm, pointing clients at a person who no longer practises there — and every month it stays, it looks a little more like yours.
Your only reviews are from the losing side
Disputed work ends with one happy client and one furious one, and only one of them writes a review. A profile where every contested matter produces a one-star and every smooth one produces silence is not an unfair picture you have to accept — it is a timing problem, and it is fixable.
What we do for a legal or financial firm
The same engine as everything else we run, set up for a trade where discretion is the product and the referral has to survive a search.
Categories and services that match how clients search
Law firm, conveyancer, accountant, insurance broker, mortgage broker — the primary category chosen against the work worth most to you, and every practice area listed as its own service so each search has something to land on. Fixed fees stated where you publish them.
What profile optimisation covers →The details a checker looks for
Real photographs of the office and the people, the qualifications and memberships you actually hold, described exactly as the registers describe them. Someone checking a recommendation is looking for reasons to trust it — we make sure they find them, and nothing they could check and find wanting.
Requests timed to the conclusion
Completion day, the filed return, the policy in force, the mortgage offer — the natural ends of matters, when the relief is highest and the ask is easiest. Never mid-matter, never on anything contested, and the back catalogue worked in careful batches rather than one suspicious fortnight.
How the review requests work →Replies that never confirm a client
Every review answered within 24 hours — including the furious one from the other side of a dispute. The reply thanks, stays general, gives a named person to contact and confirms nothing about who the reviewer is or what the firm did. It is written for the next fifty people reading, not the one who wrote it.
How review management runs →The firm, the partners and the leavers, untangled
One listing for the firm, partner listings only where they genuinely qualify as practitioners, and departed partners' listings removed or redirected. The professional directories — the Law Society's, the accountancy bodies', the FCA register's public face — checked so nothing out there contradicts the profile.
How the citation clean-up runs →The terms with an instruction behind them, tracked
Not "solicitor" alone — the searches with a matter behind them: conveyancing solicitor near me, accountant for landlords, mortgage broker in your town, tracked from where your clients actually live.
How map pack ranking works →The systems we connect to
Requests fire off the practice management system at the point a matter closes, so nobody at the front desk has to remember. These are the ones we see most in UK legal and financial firms.
The cloud practice system a large share of UK law firms run on. Matter closed is a clean, natural trigger for the request.
Practice management for accountancy firms, built around recurring work — filed returns and completed year-ends fall out of it directly.
The system most UK financial advice firms run their client bank on; reviews and annual reviews are easy points to ask.
The broker platform for general insurance. Policy placed and renewal completed both work as triggers.
LEAP, Smartr365, the Xero and QuickBooks practice tools and a spreadsheet all work too. Where a system cannot be connected we work from a weekly list of concluded matters, and the client never sees the difference.
How it runs
One call, one login handover, and photographs of the office and the people — taken on a normal working day, because that is what a checker expects to see.
A 15-minute audit
Your profile as a referred client sees it — the rating, the reviews they will read, the practice areas they cannot find — and which firms sit above you on the searches with fees behind them. Yours to keep either way.
Profile, practice areas, people
Categories corrected, every practice area listed, qualifications stated exactly as the registers hold them, real photographs up, and any leavers' listings at your address reported and untangled.
Requests keyed to conclusions
Clients are asked as matters close — completions, filings, placed policies, offered mortgages. The existing client bank is worked in careful batches: a firm gaining a hundred reviews in a fortnight looks like exactly what it would be.
One report
New reviews, rating, response time, and from Growth up where you rank on each practice-area term and how many calls came from Google. One page, no login.
What we won't publish for a legal or financial firm
This trade is regulated at the title level, which means most of the rules that matter can be checked against a public register. These are the ones that catch firms out.
The full policy, and the law behind each rule, is published.
Read the full compliance policy →What it costs
The same two plans as everything else we run. One conveyancing instruction or one retained accountancy client usually covers the fee for the year; the work is making sure the recommended person who searches tonight still calls you in the morning.
Proof that reviews come in — cheaply, and with no risk.
- Google Business Profile set up & optimised
- Automated review requests, with photo mechanic
- Every review replied to within 24 hours
- Customer Feedback System
- Monthly report
Where "trust us" becomes "here are the calls you got."
Priced on your market, your ad spend and how fast you want to move.
Foundation covers the profile, the credibility pass, the review engine and replies. Growth adds weekly posts, rank tracking on your practice-area terms, call tracking and citation clean-up. Priced per office, ex VAT — a second branch is its own profile, its own reviews and its own plan. No contract — cancel any month. Compare all three plans in full.
Questions we get asked
PermittedCan a law firm or accountancy practice ask clients for Google reviews?
Yes. Asking a real client for an honest review is permitted and normal. What is not permitted is offering anything in exchange, asking only the clients you already know are happy, or asking at the wrong moment. Timing does the work legitimately: a client whose matter has just concluded well, asked properly, is as likely to leave a genuine five stars as any customer in any trade we work in.
ConfidentialityOur clients will never name the matter. Are vague reviews worth anything?
More than you would think. A run of recent five-star reviews saying "professional, kept me informed, would recommend" is exactly what a referred client is hoping to find — they are checking competence and manner, not case law. What matters is recency, volume and how the replies read. We also coach the replies so they never confirm who the reviewer is: general, warm, and a named contact, whatever the review says.
RegulationCan we say we are SRA-regulated or FCA-authorised on the profile?
Yes — accurately, and we recommend it, because it is one of the things a checker is checking. The rule is that the profile states what the public register states: the same firm name, the same status, nothing inflated. "Chartered" where the membership body grants it, the authorisation where the FCA register shows it. What we will not do is dress a registration up as an endorsement, or claim a title or specialism nobody at the firm holds.
StructureA partner who left still has a Google listing at our address. What happens to it?
It gets untangled, and which way depends on what is true now. If they practise elsewhere, the listing belongs at their new address and we report the move. If they have retired or the listing was never really theirs, we request removal with the evidence Google asks for. What we never do is leave it collecting reviews meant for your firm, or claim it as a second listing for you — one firm, one listing, with genuine practitioner listings only where someone genuinely practises.
TimingOur work is lumpy — completions one month, nothing the next. Is there enough to build reviews on?
Yes, because the engine runs on conclusions, not volume. A firm completing eight matters a month, asking properly at each conclusion, builds a steadier and more believable review stream than a business asking five hundred customers once. Lumpy is fine — Google rewards steady accrual over time, and the referred client reading your profile is looking for recent, not many.
Honest answerWe are a two-partner practice with a full caseload and a waiting list. Is there any point?
Honestly, not in paying us. If your caseload is full, your referral pipeline works and you are not trying to grow a particular practice area, a review engine solves a problem you do not have — save the fee. The one thing worth doing yourself is claiming the profile so nobody else does, and answering the reviews you already have. If the position changes — a partner retires, a referral source dries up, you take on someone to build a department — that is when the groundwork starts paying.
Related services
Fifteen minutes on your firm
What a referred client finds tonight — your rating, the reviews they will read, the practice areas they cannot see — and the three things we would change first. Free, and yours whether or not you hire us.