Short answer: a law firm website content audit is a two-hour job that tells you which pages to keep, which to rewrite, which to merge, and which to delete. Run it once a year. Most firms find that four or five pages are doing all the work, a dozen are competing with each other for the same searches, and a third of the site has never been seen by anyone.
You do not need paid tools for the first pass. Search Console, a spreadsheet and your own eyes will surface the expensive problems. Here is the exact sequence.
Step 1: Build the inventory
Open your XML sitemap, usually at /sitemap.xml or /sitemap_index.xml, and copy every URL into a spreadsheet. Add columns: page type, target search, impressions, clicks, average position, word count, last updated, and a verdict column you will fill in at the end.
Then go to Search Console, open the Performance report, set the date range to the last three months, switch to the Pages tab, and export. Paste the impressions, clicks and position figures against the matching URLs.
Two things usually jump out immediately. There will be URLs in the sitemap that Search Console has never recorded an impression for, and there will be URLs getting impressions that you had forgotten existed. Both are findings.
Step 2: Find the pages competing with each other
This is the highest-value part of the audit and it is the one most firms skip. In Search Console, open the Queries tab, pick your ten most important searches one at a time, and for each one look at which pages are being shown.
If two or more of your own pages are appearing for the same search, you have cannibalisation. Google cannot decide which page is the answer, so it alternates and both pages sit lower than either would alone. On law firm sites this happens in a very predictable way:
| Pattern | What it looks like | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Service page plus “guide” blog post | /bankruptcy-lawyer-website-design/ and /bankruptcy-lawyer-website-design-guide/ | Merge the post into the page, redirect the post |
| Reworded duplicates | “web design for employment lawyers” and “employment lawyer web design” as separate pages | Keep the one with more impressions, redirect the other |
| City pages with identical copy | Twelve location pages differing only in the city name | Merge into one page unless each has genuinely local content |
| Old blog post outranking the service page | A 2023 post beating the page you actually sell from | Move the post’s depth into the page, then redirect |
The fix is almost always a merge rather than a deletion. Take the better content from the losing page, add it to the winner as a new section, then 301 the loser to the winner. You keep the depth and the links, and you stop splitting the signal.
Pick the survivor on impressions and commercial value, not on which page you like. If a blog post outranks the service page you sell from, the post’s content moves into the page, not the other way round.
Step 3: Sort every page into one of four verdicts
Go down the spreadsheet and assign one of four verdicts. Resist the urge to invent a fifth.
Keep
Getting impressions, ranking reasonably, still accurate. Leave it alone. Most audits produce fewer of these than people expect, and that is fine.
Improve
Getting impressions but sitting at position 11 to 30. These are the pages worth your time, because the distance from position 14 to position 7 is much shorter than the distance from nothing to position 20. Sort by impressions and work down the list.
What to actually do: answer three or four questions the page currently skips, add a comparison table or a step-by-step section, tighten the title tag so it matches the query, and link to the page from two or three other pages using descriptive anchor text.
Merge
Everything you flagged in step 2, plus any page under 400 words that overlaps a stronger page. Thin pages do not just fail to rank, they dilute the pages they sit next to.
Delete and redirect
Zero impressions over twelve months, no inbound links, no strategic purpose. Old event announcements, superseded legal updates, attorney bios for people who left, a 2019 post about a rule that has since changed. Redirect each to the nearest relevant page rather than letting it 404.
Do not skip the redirect step on the theory that nobody visited the page. Search engines still have those URLs recorded, and some of them are holding links from directories or citations you have forgotten about.
Step 4: The five-minute quality check on the pages that matter
For every page marked Keep or Improve, run this quickly. It is not comprehensive. It catches the things that consistently hold law firm pages back.
Is there exactly one H1, and does it match what the page is about? Themes frequently render the site name as the H1, or hide the real H1 with CSS. View the page source rather than trusting the visual layout.
Are there H2s at all? A surprising number of law firm pages have a wall of paragraphs with no subheadings, or jump straight to H3. Both make the page harder to scan and harder for a search engine to segment into answers.
Does the first paragraph answer the question in the title? If the page opens with “In today’s competitive legal market”, rewrite the opening. Lead with the answer, then explain.
How many verifiable facts are on the page? Numbers, timelines, thresholds, court names, statute references. Under five on a practice area page is a warning sign.
Does it link out to a competitor? This one catches people out, particularly on pages written by outside writers or generated with AI assistance. Citing a competing firm or agency as a source sends authority to a business that is trying to take your clients. Search your own site for outbound links and check every domain.
Is there any leftover drafting scaffolding? Phrases like “here is the revised version”, bracketed placeholders, or a stray instruction line. These appear on live law firm sites more often than anyone admits, and they are usually on a page nobody has opened since it was published.
Is there a clear next step? Not a footer form. A specific instruction on the page about what to do and what happens when they do it.
Step 5: Check the pages nobody is visiting on purpose
Three pages are almost never audited and all three cause real problems.
The privacy policy. If it 404s or is missing, ad platforms and ad networks will reject you, and some jurisdictions require it outright. It is a five-minute fix that blocks revenue when it is broken.
The disclaimer. Most state bars require specific language about the attorney-client relationship not being formed by using the site, and many require it to be visible rather than buried. Confirm yours matches your current jurisdiction and practice areas.
The contact page and every form on it. Submit each one and confirm the email arrives somewhere a human reads within the hour. Forms break silently after plugin updates, hosting migrations and SMTP changes, and nothing in the interface tells you.
Step 6: Write the work order
An audit that ends in a spreadsheet changes nothing. Convert it into a ranked list of jobs, and do them in this order, because this is the order of return on effort.
First, the merges and redirects, because they are quick and they stop active harm. Second, the top five Improve pages, because they are closest to page one. Third, the quality fixes on the Keep pages, especially competitor links and missing H2s. Fourth, the deletions. Last, new content, and only for gaps the audit actually proved.
That last point matters. Most firms respond to weak traffic by publishing more, when the audit usually shows the problem is that existing pages are competing with each other. Fix the site you have before adding to it. Our law firm website content guide covers what the pages should contain once you know which ones to keep.
Frequently asked questions
How often should a law firm audit its website content?
A full audit once a year, and a short check after any redesign, migration, or change of marketing vendor. Firms publishing regularly should review for cannibalisation every six months, because that is the problem that builds up fastest.
What tools do I need for a content audit?
Search Console and a spreadsheet will find most of it. A crawler such as Screaming Frog, free up to 500 URLs, speeds up the inventory and finds broken links and duplicate titles. Paid keyword tools help with the Improve stage but are not needed for the first pass.
Should I delete old blog posts that get no traffic?
Only if they have no impressions, no inbound links, and nothing worth merging. In most cases the better move is to fold the useful part into a stronger page and redirect. Deleting outright throws away any authority the URL had accumulated.
How do I know if two pages are competing for the same search?
In Search Console, filter the Performance report by a specific query and look at the Pages tab. If more than one of your URLs appears, they are splitting the signal. You can also search Google for site:yourdomain.com plus the phrase and see how many of your own pages come back.
Will merging pages lose the rankings I already have?
Not if you do it properly. Move the content across before redirecting, use a 301 rather than a 302, and point the redirect at the specific surviving page rather than the homepage. Expect two to six weeks of movement while the change is processed.
The short version
Inventory every URL, pull three months of Search Console data against it, find the pages competing with each other, sort everything into keep, improve, merge or delete, then check your best pages for missing headings, competitor links and dead forms. Do the merges first. Publish new content last, and only where the audit proved a gap.
If you would rather have the findings handed to you, we will run the inventory and the cannibalisation check as part of a free law firm SEO audit and send you the ranked work order.
