Project overview
Our client is a well-established, full-service law firm in Manchester offering family law, conveyancing, employment law and wills. Despite a strong reputation and excellent reviews offline, they were almost invisible online — outranked by national firms and directories for the searches that mattered most.
They came to AY Experts with one clear goal: more qualified enquiries from people searching for a solicitor in Greater Manchester, without relying on expensive pay-per-click ads.
Great firm, invisible online
Our audit uncovered three problems holding the firm back:
Page three rankings
Core terms like "solicitors manchester" sat between positions 28 and 52 — effectively invisible.
Weak local signals
An incomplete Google Business Profile, inconsistent NAP citations and only 11 reviews.
Thin service pages
One generic "services" page tried to rank for everything, so it ranked for nothing.
What success looked like
- Rank in the Google map packfor core legal services across Greater Manchester.
- Double organic enquirieswithin 6–9 months, tracked by call and form.
- Reduce reliance on paid adsby building a lasting organic channel.
Our strategy, step by step
- 1
Technical SEO foundations Weeks 1–3
Fixed crawl errors, improved Core Web Vitals, added LegalService schema and restructured the site around individual services.
- 2
Google Business Profile & citations Weeks 2–5
Fully optimised the GBP, cleaned up 60+ citations and set up an automated review request flow that tripled monthly reviews.
- 3
Service & area pages Months 2–4
Created 12 in-depth service pages and 12 area pages for Stockport, Salford, Trafford and more — each written by legal-savvy writers.
- 4
Local authority building Months 3–7
Earned links from Manchester business publications, legal directories and community sponsorships — no spammy link schemes.
Before and after: key rankings
Google positions for the firm's most valuable searches, month 0 vs month 7.
| Keyword | Before | After | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| solicitors manchester | 28 | 3 | ▲ 25 |
| family law solicitor manchester | 34 | 1 | ▲ 33 |
| conveyancing solicitors manchester | 41 | 2 | ▲ 39 |
| employment lawyer manchester | 52 | 4 | ▲ 48 |
| divorce solicitors stockport | NR | 1 | ▲ new |
| will writing manchester | 37 | 2 | ▲ 35 |
The results
Within seven months, monthly organic enquiries grew from 44 to 184 — and they're still climbing.
“Within six months we went from page three to the top of Google for our main services. The team explains everything in plain English, and the phone hasn't stopped ringing.”