Performance SEO

SEO for lawyers. Own your practice area in your city.

The firms winning online search aren't the biggest or the oldest. They're the ones with a page for each practice area, in each city they serve, answering the exact question the client typed.

Book a free 10-minute call Get a free audit

No pitch deck
Findings yours to keep
Month to month after 90 days

What you get, in writing

Findings before you pay a centYour site, ads and Google listing, screenshot by screenshot
Cost per booked job, every monthNot clicks, not impressions
Live in 90 days or you stop payingThen month to month, no lock-in
Your accounts, your cardWe never mark up ad spend

See two client results, numbers left in

In short

Sellevate runs SEO for Australian lawyers and law firms: practice area pages, local search and reviews, written to rank and to win the call.

Who it suits: Law firms that want more enquiries from Google.
Where: Geelong based, working with businesses across Australia.
How it is priced: Flat monthly fee. No percentage of ad spend, no markup, and every account stays in your name.
How it is judged: Cost per enquiry and cost per booked job, reported monthly in writing.

Why most law firm websites don’t rank

One page for eight practice areas

The single most common structural mistake in legal SEO, and the one that caps every other effort.

No city-level pages

Legal intent is local. Without genuine city pages you're invisible outside your own suburb.

Thin or absent reviews

Google reviews are a ranking factor and a conversion factor at once. Most firms have a handful; the leaders have hundreds.

Slow, image-heavy sites

Legal sites are frequently built on ageing themes. Speed is a ranking factor and a conversion one.

Practice area × location

Nobody searches “law firm”. They search “family lawyer Geelong”, “will dispute lawyer Melbourne”, “unfair dismissal lawyer near me”.

Each is a distinct search with distinct intent, and each needs its own page. Firms with a single “Our Services” page listing eight practice areas rank for none of them and can't work out why.

The maths is simple: five practice areas across four cities is twenty pages, each competing in a far smaller field than “lawyer” ever could.

Family lawyer Geelong
Wills and estates lawyer Geelong
Commercial lawyer Melbourne
Employment lawyer Ballarat
Conveyancing solicitor Surf Coast

Written to your advertising obligations

Every page we write for a law firm is built to be defensible under Rule 36 of the Australian Solicitors' Conduct Rules, no false, misleading or deceptive claims, no guaranteed outcomes, no unsubstantiated superlatives.

If your firm practises in an area with additional state-based advertising restrictions, we flag it before writing rather than after publishing.

Important

General awareness, not legal advice. Your firm remains responsible for its own compliance. We recommend review by a practising solicitor before publication.

What we do

Practice-area architecture

Mapped before anything is written, so no two pages compete for the same search.

Local SEO

Google Business Profile for every office, consistent details across legal directories, and city pages with genuine local substance.

Technical foundation

Speed, mobile experience, schema, crawl efficiency.

Content that answers real questions

“How much does a divorce cost in Australia”, “what happens if you die without a will”. High intent, almost always answered badly.

Reviews & reputation

A system for asking, at the right moment, without breaching your obligations.

Authority building

Legal directories, industry publications, local business media, association profiles.

How long it takes

Months 1 to 2

Technical audit, practice-area mapping, Google Business Profile, review system.

Months 3 to 4

Practice-area and city pages live. Local rankings begin moving.

Months 5 to 6

Page one for local practice-area terms. Enquiries predictable enough to plan around.

Months 7 to 12

Competitive metro terms and higher-value matter types.

No shortcuts

Anyone promising faster is selling you something. If your domain is new or has a penalty history, add two to three months to every stage.

Proof you can check.

We publish two client results, both read from inside the client’s own admin with their permission. Both are online stores. The method is the one we run for service businesses: track every enquiry to the booked job first, fix the page that converts, then put the budget behind what works.

Shopify store and showroom · Motorcycle gear · Victoria

Tuff Gear

A$222Ktotal sales in the 12 months to August 2026, up 274% on the year before

733orders fulfilled, up 112%
12.3%returning customers, up 68%
2.5xonline store monthly sales since 2024

A store we run end to end: product pages and tracking first, then Google and Meta run against cost per order, then creative written for riders. The showroom sells through Shopify too, so this is the whole business.

Read the Tuff Gear case study

Shopify store · Party supplies · Melbourne

Koi Koi Inbox

+205%total sales, February to August 2026 (A$77K) against the seven months before

679orders, up 176%
A$24Kstraight from Facebook and Instagram
A$15Ka month since May, from about A$6.5K

A family business whose Meta ads we took over in February 2026. The account was rebuilt around the party packs parents actually search for, and growth came in steps as the winning ads got the budget.

Read the Koi Koi Inbox case study

Screenshots read from each store’s Shopify admin on 10 September 2026 and published with the owners’ permission. They are their numbers, not a promise about anyone else’s. How we publish results

From free audits we ran for service businesses, September 2026

What we usually find in the first hour

01A Book Now button that leads to a dead pageSitewide, on a practice paying for Google Ads every day.

02Ads counting clicks as customersConversion tags firing on button presses and phone taps, so Google learns to buy the wrong clicks.

03Phone numbers a mobile cannot dialA header number formatted so that tapping it does nothing, on a business that lives on calls.

04Proof the website hidesFive stars from hundreds of Google reviews, and none of it on the pages people land on.

Names left out, patterns real. Get the same check on your business, free

Questions

Is SEO better than Google Ads for a law firm?

Different jobs. Ads buy you enquiries today at a high cost per click, legal is among the most expensive categories in Australia. SEO costs more up front and less over time.

Most firms should run ads while SEO builds, then shift the balance.

How many pages do we need?

One per practice area, one per practice area per city you genuinely serve, plus supporting content. A firm with four practice areas in two cities is looking at roughly twelve to twenty pages.

Will this work for a small firm?

Often better. A two-partner firm that owns “family lawyer Geelong” beats a national firm that ranks vaguely for everything.

We are in Geelong but want Melbourne work. Possible?

Yes, though Melbourne is a harder market and takes longer. It needs genuine Melbourne-specific pages, not a suburb swap. We'd be upfront about the timeline.

Marketing for Law Firms

The full channel mix for legal practices.

Lead Generation

How we build predictable enquiry flow.

Law firm SEO, without the snake oil

Legal SEO in Australia is the most contested local search category there is, and the one most full of vendors selling rankings they can’t deliver. Here is the version that stands up.

Practice-area pages are the asset

People don’t search for law firms, they search for problems: “unfair dismissal lawyer”, “family lawyer geelong”, “commercial lease dispute”. Each practice area earns a dedicated page: who it’s for, how matters typically run, realistic cost structures, and the first five questions every client asks in a consult.

Local intent decides most matters

The map pack takes a huge share of legal clicks, which makes your Google Business Profile a ranking asset equal to your website: correct categories, individual practitioner profiles, and reviews requested ethically after matters close, never incentivised, never faked.

Content with a name on it

An article on “what happens at a family law mediation” written plainly and bylined by the practitioner who runs them will outrank a ghost-written keyword page, and earn citations in AI answers. We draft from interviews with your lawyers; they review for accuracy and compliance.

Free · The Growth Blockers Report

Want us to find what's capping you, before you ever pay us a dollar?

Three answers from you. Twenty-four hours from us. Your site marked up screenshot by screenshot, the brands beating you benchmarked, and a fix-first plan. No pitch inside.

3 answers24 hoursA$0 · no pitch

Get your report

Find the practice areas you could own.

Free audit: a ten-minute call, then the findings in writing. You keep the findings whether or not we work together.