LAW FIRM SEO & PPC CASE STUDY: MORE LEADS FOR A BUSINESS LAW PRACTICE
Patrola Law, a business and intellectual property law firm based in Surrey, BC, needed to increase qualified leads from both organic search and paid channels — without those two channels working against each other or duplicating spend bidding on the same keywords the site already ranked for. Legal services also sit in a category Google treats with particular caution: search visibility depends heavily on demonstrating real legal expertise and credibility, not just keyword targeting, since inaccurate or thin legal content carries real consequences for readers making business decisions based on it. The firm competed against larger, more established Vancouver-area practices with bigger marketing budgets, meaning the strategy had to be precise and efficient rather than broad and expensive.
As Digital Marketing Manager for SEO and PPC, I managed both channels together rather than as separate workstreams reporting to different priorities, which is where a lot of law firm budgets quietly get wasted.
Technical and on-page SEO. I resolved technical SEO issues affecting crawlability and page performance, then restructured on-page content around the specific practice areas the firm actually wanted more business from — incorporation, trademarks, MSB registration, and business law services for startups and established corporations — rather than generic "business lawyer" content competing against every firm in the region for the same handful of terms.
EEAT-focused legal content. Because legal content is scrutinized closely for expertise and trustworthiness, I made sure attorney credentials, the firm's "Top Law Firm" industry recognition, and real client outcomes (represented with appropriate professional discretion) were clearly surfaced across key pages, rather than buried in an about page no prospective client reads before deciding whether to reach out. This is what separates law firm content that ranks from law firm content that gets filtered out for lacking demonstrated authority in a sensitive category.
Aligned SEO and PPC strategy. Rather than running paid and organic independently with separate keyword lists, I used PPC keyword and conversion data to inform which organic content to prioritize next, and used organic rankings to identify where paid spend could be scaled back once a page earned strong non-paid visibility. This kept cost-per-lead down over time and avoided the common trap of a firm bidding on keywords its own site was already ranking for organically at zero marginal cost.
Modern search landscape awareness. With AI-generated search overviews increasingly answering informational legal questions directly on the results page, I focused content on high-intent queries where a prospective client is ready to consult a lawyer rather than just researching a legal concept in the abstract — the searches where a firm's own site, not a generic AI summary, is what actually converts a visitor into a consultation.
Ongoing performance management. I tracked lead quality, not just traffic and rankings, since a law firm's marketing ROI is measured in qualified consultations booked, not raw visits. That data guided ongoing adjustments to both the SEO content calendar and PPC campaign targeting, keeping the whole strategy accountable to actual business outcomes.
The site now ranks for 353 organic keywords and drives roughly 379 organic visits per month, backed by a domain authority of 19 and 1,329 backlinks — solid, efficient numbers for a single-location firm in a competitive regional legal market. More importantly, the combined SEO and PPC approach improved lead quality and ROI rather than just volume, which is the metric that actually matters for a professional services firm where one strong client relationship is worth far more than a spike in low-intent traffic that never converts.