Last reviewed: February 2026
SEO Competitor Analysis for Law Firms: Step by Step
A managing partner at a mid-size family law practice in Dallas asked their marketing team a reasonable question: “Who are we competing against online?” The team listed five firms they regularly encountered in court and at bar events. None of those firms appeared in the top ten organic results for the practice’s highest-value keyword. The actual competitors occupying those positions included two firms the team had never heard of, a national legal directory, and a legal content site run by a media company. The practice had been benchmarking its SEO strategy against the wrong competition for over a year.
This mistake costs more than almost any other in law firm SEO. Your market competitors and your SEO competitors are often different entities entirely, and confusing the two means building strategy against firms whose rankings you were never actually contesting.
Your Real SEO Competitors Are Not Who You Think
Identifying actual SEO competitors requires data, not assumptions. The process starts with your target keywords. Take the five to ten highest-value keywords for your firm, run them through Ahrefs or Semrush, and document which domains appear in the top ten for each. If you do not have access to either tool, search each keyword manually in an incognito browser window and record the top ten results — it takes longer but produces the same competitive intelligence for free. The names that show up repeatedly are your SEO competitors. Some will be familiar firms. Others will be directories like Avvo, Justia, FindLaw, or Nolo. Some may be content-driven sites or even government pages.
For local firms, this distinction matters more than it might seem. National legal directories function as SEO competitors because they consume the same SERP real estate you need. You cannot outrank them the way you would outrank another law firm. They have domain authority built over decades, millions of pages, and backlink profiles no single-office firm can match. Recognizing which keywords are contested by directories versus by other law firms shapes whether you compete head-on or find alternative angles.
This step produces a competitor list with two tiers: direct firm competitors (other law firms ranking for your terms) and structural competitors (directories, aggregators, and content sites). Strategy differs for each.
Keyword Gaps Are Where the Opportunities Hide
Stop looking at what competitors have. Start looking at what they missed. Both Ahrefs’ Content Gap tool and Semrush’s Keyword Gap tool automate this comparison. You input your domain alongside two to four competitor domains, and the tool returns keywords where competitors rank and you either do not appear or rank significantly lower.
The raw output is overwhelming. A single comparison can surface thousands of keywords. Filtering is what makes the data actionable.
Start by filtering for keywords with transactional or commercial intent. Informational keywords have value, but transactional terms like “personal injury lawyer [city]” or “divorce attorney cost [state]” are closer to conversion. Next, filter by difficulty. Keywords where all competitors rank with high-authority pages and extensive backlinks are not realistically “stealable” without significant investment. Keywords where competitors rank with mediocre content on pages with thin backlink profiles are immediate opportunities.
The most useful lens for law firms is the intersection of keyword value and content quality. If a competitor ranks for a valuable keyword with a 500-word practice area page and minimal internal links, that position is vulnerable. If they rank with a comprehensive, well-linked, recently updated page backed by strong domain authority, displacing them requires a longer-term strategy.
A keyword is worth pursuing when your firm can create meaningfully better content for that query than what currently ranks. “Better” in this context means more specific, more current, more authoritative, or structured to better match the searcher’s actual intent.
Do this now: enter your domain and your top two ranking competitors into Ahrefs’ Content Gap or Semrush’s Keyword Gap tool. Filter results for keywords containing “lawyer,” “attorney,” or “cost” with difficulty under 40. The first five results that appear are keywords where your competitors have visibility and you do not — each one represents a page you could build or optimize within the next 30 days.
Backlink Profiles Tell You Where Authority Comes From
Reverse-engineering a competitor’s backlink profile serves one purpose: understanding what types of authority signals work in your specific legal market and finding replicable sources. You are not copying their links.
Export a competitor’s backlink profile from Ahrefs or Semrush and categorize the links by type: legal directories, local business directories, editorial mentions in news sites, bar association links, sponsorship pages, .edu links from scholarship programs, and guest contributions on legal publications. This categorization reveals the competitor’s link-building strategy, even if they have never articulated one.
The links worth noting are those that meet two criteria: they come from domains with real traffic (not link farms disguised as legal resource pages), and they are the type your firm could realistically obtain. A competitor’s editorial link from the New York Times is not replicable through outreach. A competitor’s link from a local chamber of commerce membership page is.
Watch for patterns. If a competitor has links from multiple local news outlets, they likely have a digital PR strategy or an attorney who actively responds to journalist requests. If they have .edu links, they probably run a scholarship program. If they have links from legal industry publications, they publish original research or commentary. Each pattern suggests a strategy your firm could adopt.
The backlinks that matter most for ranking are the ones other tools cannot easily replicate. A link from a high-authority legal directory that any firm can obtain is table stakes. A link from a local news story quoting your attorney as an expert is a competitive advantage.
Content Gaps Worth Filling First
Not every content gap is worth filling. Some gaps exist because the topic does not convert. Others exist because the topic requires resources your firm cannot allocate.
Prioritize content gaps using a simple framework: estimated traffic potential multiplied by an estimated conversion modifier. A keyword with 500 monthly searches and strong transactional intent (someone looking to hire a lawyer) is worth more than a keyword with 2,000 monthly searches and pure informational intent (someone researching a legal concept for a school project).
The conversion modifier is a judgment call based on the keyword’s proximity to a hiring decision. “How much does a DUI lawyer cost in [city]” signals someone pricing out legal representation. “What is a misdemeanor” signals someone early in their understanding. Both have value, but one is closer to revenue.
Content gaps also reveal structural weaknesses. If competitors have dedicated pages for every sub-practice area (car accidents, truck accidents, motorcycle accidents, pedestrian accidents) and your firm has a single “personal injury” page, that is not just a content gap. It is a topical authority gap — the kind our topical authority post explains in detail, where depth of coverage directly determines how search engines assess your expertise.
The content gaps to fill first are those where traffic potential is meaningful, the conversion signal is strong, and your firm can create content that is genuinely more useful than what currently exists. Matching the current top result’s quality is not enough. You need to beat it, or the effort is wasted.
When to Re-Run the Analysis
Competitor analysis is not a one-time project. The legal SEO landscape shifts as firms invest, directories adjust their strategies, and Google updates its algorithms. But running a full analysis every month is unnecessary and wasteful.
The right cadence depends on your market’s competitiveness and how actively your firm publishes. For most law firms, a full competitor analysis every six months is sufficient, with lighter monitoring in between.
Triggers for an unscheduled audit include: a significant ranking drop on your highest-value keywords (three or more positions sustained over two weeks), a new firm appearing in your top-ten results that was not there before, a Google core algorithm update that reshuffles your market, or a noticeable traffic drop that cannot be explained by seasonal patterns or technical issues.
Between full audits, lighter monitoring should track three things monthly: your rankings for target keywords (position tracking in any major SEO tool), your competitors’ new content (set content alerts or check their blogs), and your competitors’ new backlinks (Ahrefs’ new referring domains report). These take under an hour monthly and catch shifts before they compound.
The goal of repeated analysis is not to react to every move a competitor makes. It is to ensure your strategy reflects the current competitive reality rather than a snapshot from six or twelve months ago. When a competitor publishes a comprehensive guide on a topic you have been planning to cover, your timeline accelerates. When a new firm enters your market with aggressive content production, your keyword priorities may need adjustment.
Start with your five highest-value keywords. Run them through Ahrefs, Semrush, or an incognito search. Document which domains appear in the top ten. That list is your actual competitive landscape — everything else is assumption. From there, export one competitor’s backlink profile, run one keyword gap analysis, and you have enough data to adjust your next quarter’s content priorities.