Last reviewed: February 2026
Why Most Practice Area Pages Fail to Rank in SEO
Hennessey Digital analyzed 16,000 law firm web pages (a study focused on competitive legal markets in the US, though the exact geographic scope and date range are not fully disclosed in the published methodology) and found that pages ranking in Google’s top 10 averaged approximately 2,000 words, with the minimum for position one at 1,324. Meanwhile, the typical law firm practice area page runs two paragraphs about the firm’s commitment to clients, a vague description of the practice area, a “contact us” button, and maybe a stock photo of a gavel.
The gap between what ranks and what most firms publish is not subtle. And the reason has less to do with word count — Google’s John Mueller has repeatedly stated that word count is not a ranking factor — than with what those extra words actually contain. Pages with more content tend to answer more questions, cover more subtopics, and match more search intents. The thin practice area page fails not because it is short, but because it is shallow.
What Google Expects From a Competitive Practice Area Page
Search engines evaluate practice area pages through the lens of helpfulness and expertise, both core components of Google’s E-E-A-T framework. For a personal injury page to compete in a top-50 metro, it needs to do what a prospective client expects it to do: explain the process, set expectations, demonstrate competence, and make it easy to take the next step.
The content elements that ranking practice area pages consistently include are the ones that thin pages consistently skip.
Process explanation is the most common gap. A potential client searching “personal injury lawyer Houston” wants to understand what happens after they call. How does the case work? What are the stages? How long does it typically take? A page that answers these questions demonstrates first-hand experience, which is exactly what the first E in E-E-A-T represents.
A page that says “we fight for you” without explaining how tells Google nothing about the firm’s actual expertise.
Here is what the gap looks like in practice. A typical failing practice area page opens with: “At Smith & Associates, we are committed to providing aggressive representation for personal injury victims. Our experienced team fights for maximum compensation. Contact us today for a free consultation.” Three sentences. Zero information. No process, no timeline, no fee structure, no jurisdiction-specific detail. Now compare that to the opening of a page ranking in the top three for the same keyword: “If you have been injured in a car accident in Harris County, you have two years from the date of the accident to file a personal injury lawsuit under Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code § 16.003. Most cases settle in 9 to 18 months, though cases involving disputed liability or catastrophic injuries often take longer. Here is how the process works from first call to resolution.” The second page earns its ranking because every sentence does a job: it establishes jurisdiction, sets a timeline, cites the statute, and tells the reader exactly what they will learn. The first page could belong to any firm in any state. That is why it sits on page three.
Cost and fee information is the second gap. Legal clients are anxious about cost. They search for it explicitly (“how much does a personal injury lawyer cost”) and they look for it implicitly when evaluating firms. A practice area page that explains the fee structure, whether contingency, hourly, flat fee, or hybrid, and sets realistic expectations about what the client will owe, addresses one of the highest-intent informational needs in the legal space. Firms that avoid discussing fees on their pages lose both the searcher’s trust and the SEO benefit of matching a high-volume query cluster.
Timeline expectations are the third. “How long does a divorce take?” is one of the most searched family law queries. “How long does a personal injury case take?” follows the same pattern. When your practice area page includes specific, honest timeline ranges, it matches queries that competitors who dodge the question cannot capture.
Jurisdiction-specific detail is what separates a page that could belong to any firm in any state from a page that is clearly about practicing law in a specific place. Mentioning relevant state statutes, local court procedures, filing deadlines specific to the jurisdiction, and even local court names adds geographic and legal specificity that generic pages lack. This specificity also functions as a natural signal for local relevance.
Heading Structure and CTA Placement Vary by Practice Area
Not all practice area pages should follow the same template, because not all practice areas have the same content requirements.
Family law, for example, often requires subpages. A single page covering custody, divorce, child support, alimony, and property division will either be too long to navigate or too shallow on each subtopic. The more effective structure is a parent page that provides an overview of the firm’s family law services, with dedicated child pages for each sub-service. This creates a hub-and-spoke structure that serves both the reader who wants an overview and the reader who needs depth on a specific topic.
Criminal defense pages, by contrast, often work better with a detailed parent page organized by charge type, because the reader’s question is typically “can this firm handle my specific charge?” Subheadings like “Drug Charges,” “DUI Defense,” “Assault Charges,” and “White Collar Crimes” on a single comprehensive page allow the reader to scan to their relevant section quickly.
Personal injury pages tend to split by case type: car accidents, truck accidents, slip and fall, medical malpractice, wrongful death. Each case type often has enough unique content to justify its own page, making this practice area one of the most content-intensive to build out properly.
CTA placement needs to account for the fact that practice area pages serve two audiences simultaneously. The decision-maker who already knows they need a lawyer and wants to call now. And the information-seeker who is researching before committing. If your only CTA is at the bottom of the page, you lose the decision-maker who never scrolls that far. If your first CTA appears in the first paragraph, you look aggressive to the information-seeker who has not yet found a reason to trust you.
The pattern that works: one CTA in the top section (after a brief value proposition), then substantive content that builds credibility, then another CTA mid-page (after enough information to justify contact), then a final CTA after the full content. Each CTA should be the same action (call, form, chat) but the language can vary to match where the reader is in their decision process.
On-Page Signals That Separate Page Two From Page One
Title tags, meta descriptions, and URL structure are not going to carry a thin page into the top results. But on a page with solid content, these elements determine whether Google considers the page a strong match for the target query and whether searchers click on it from the results.
The title tag should include the primary keyword and the location. “Personal Injury Lawyer Houston | [Firm Name]” is straightforward and effective. The temptation to be clever with titles costs clicks. Searchers scanning legal results are looking for relevance confirmation, not creativity.
Meta descriptions do not directly influence ranking, but they directly influence click-through rate. A description that includes the practice area, a specific benefit (“Free consultation, no fee unless we win”), and the location serves as micro-copy that earns the click. As of 2026, Google frequently rewrites meta descriptions to better match the query, but a well-written description is more likely to be displayed as-is than a vague one.
URL structure should be clean, readable, and include the practice area keyword. /personal-injury-lawyer/ is better than /practice-areas/pi/ or /services/?id=34. Clean URLs are easier for both users and search engines to parse, and they provide a relevance signal in the URL itself.
Image optimization is underused on practice area pages. Attorneys often skip alt text entirely or use generic alt text like “lawyer photo.” Every image on a practice area page should have descriptive alt text that includes what the image shows and, where natural, the practice area: “personal injury attorney reviewing case documents” rather than “photo1.jpg.” This contributes to accessibility, image search visibility, and overall page relevance.
How Many Supporting Pages Does a Practice Area Need?
Stop thinking of these as bonus content. A practice area page rarely reaches page one on its own, without supporting content that establishes the firm’s topical authority around that practice area.
A practice area page rarely reaches page one on its own, without supporting content that establishes the firm’s topical authority around that practice area. Building that topical authority requires a broader SEO strategy that includes local optimization, technical setup, and content structure working together. For the complete framework, see this guide on SEO for Nashville law firms.
Think of it as a depth signal. When Google sees a site with one page about personal injury and fifty pages about estate planning, it reasonably concludes that the site’s expertise is in estate planning, not personal injury. The supporting blog posts, FAQ pages, and sub-service pages around a practice area tell Google that this firm does not just mention personal injury; it demonstrates deep, ongoing knowledge of the subject.
How many supporting pages does a practice area typically need to compete in a top-50 metro? There is no universal number, because it depends on what competitors have built. But as a practical benchmark, firms that rank consistently for competitive practice area terms in major markets tend to have ten or more content pieces (blog posts, FAQ pages, case type pages) supporting each primary practice area page. Some have dozens. A firm with one practice area page and zero supporting content in a market where the top-ranking competitor has twenty related pages is bringing a paragraph to a library fight.
The internal linking pattern between these pages matters. Supporting pages should link to the parent practice area page using descriptive, varied anchor text. The parent page should link to its most important supporting pages. This two-way linking structure tells Google which page is the hub and which are the spokes, and it concentrates ranking signals on the page you most want to rank. The internal linking post breaks down exactly how link equity builds or fragments across a law firm site.
The measurement for whether your supporting content strategy is working is not the traffic to individual blog posts. It is whether the practice area page itself is climbing in rankings for its target keyword over time. The supporting content exists to elevate the parent page. That is the metric to watch.
Tracking Whether Your Practice Area Pages Are Gaining Ground
The specific way to track this: in Google Search Console, filter the Performance report by the exact URL of your practice area page. Look at impressions and average position for your target keyword over 90-day windows. A page moving from position 18 to position 12 over three months is on the right trajectory, even if it is not yet generating clicks. A page stuck at position 25+ after six months of supporting content needs a different diagnosis — the page itself may need rewriting, not just more supporting content around it.
The measurement tells you whether you are on track: in Google Search Console, filter Performance by practice area page URL and watch average position over 90-day windows. A page climbing from position 18 to 12 in a quarter is working. A page stuck at 25+ after six months of supporting content needs a different diagnosis — the page itself may need rebuilding, not just more content around it. Track the parent page’s position, not the blog posts. The supporting content exists to elevate the page you most want to rank. That is the number that matters.