Personal Injury Lawyer in Philadelphia SERP Analysis

Gyi Tsakalakis
September 29, 2014

The image below is a screenshot of a Google search engine result page for the query, "personal injury lawyer in philadelphia." It was performed in an incognito Chrome browser with location set to Philadelphia, PA on September 29, 2014. We have highlighted the organic results from the SERP below:

Google SERP for personal injury lawyer in philadelphia

We also labeled the listings based upon their position and whether they occurred more than once. So, for example, www.myphillylawyer.com's listing in the local pack, is labeled 1A as it is the first listing and has a corresponding listing in the traditional organic results.

For this example, we also didn't count directories for labeling (although they are highlighted in red).

As you can see, there are a total of 17 organic listings in this SERP. However, when you filter duplicate listings and directories, there are really only 9 unique law firms listed for this query on the page.

Let's focus on just the four domains that appear both in the local results and the traditional organic results:

  • www.myphillylawyer.com
  • www.injurylawyer.com
  • www.philadelphialawyerpersonalinjury.com
  • www.smbb.com

For reference, here are those four domains on a map:

personal injury lawyer in philadelphia   Google Map

Each domain has a corresponding Google+ page with a Philadelphia address. All four these firms have Google+ pages that have been verified.

Interestingly, 3 out of 4 of these domains are at least arguably benefiting from partial matches to the query. In other words, keywords in the domain partially match keywords in the query.

Only 2 out of the example 4 have at least one Google+ page review.

Turning to link metrics, here is an ahrefs Domain Comparison report:

Domain Comparison   Ahrefs

It's important to note this comes solely from ahrefs. As such, and at the risk of stating the obvious, it is limited to data in ahref's system. In other words, it's very likely that it's not a 100% accurate picture of the link metrics for these domains. Nonetheless, here are some observations on the link data that is being reported.

First, notice the reported referring domain link data. The domain www.injurylawyer.com has 1,455 reported referring domains. The next closest of these example competitors is 381. This is likely contributing to this domain's primary positioning in the traditional organic results. Notice, however, that it's not in the primary position in local pack results. This supports the common thinking that pack results are subject to different factors, and perhaps, an entirely different algorithm.

 

Second, notice that philadelphialawyerpersonalinjury.com reports only 9 referring domains, 7 of which are dofollow. Looking at those 7 we have:

  • secretsearchenginelabs.com
  • galleryhip.com
  • jaja.club
  • jgllaw.com
  • lump.co
  • philadelphiafreelegaladvice.com
  • worldseriestv.nt

And clicking-through to Secret Search Engine Labs we find:

personal injury lawyer   Secret Search Engine Labs

High quality? Authoritative? Relevant? You be the judge.

Nonetheless, this domain ranks. In both the local pack results and the traditional organic results, for a rather competitive query.

On the other hand, ahrefs was able to crawl 2,679 pages on philadelphialawyerpersonalinjurylawyer.com. The next closest domain in this set was www.smbb.com with 902 pages. Perhaps this high number of pages in contributing to this domain's visibility? If true, this would run contrary to the Panda update which, in part, is supposed to ferret-out sites that are cranking out pages for the sake of cranking out pages. However, upon review of some the top pages, the site has several pages with word counts exceeding 1,000 words and a few exceeding 2,000. Perhaps this is enough to avoid the Panda.

In any event, this example demonstrates that today's SEO landscape isn't quite as simple as "get links" and publish pages.

Furthermore, even when the "any link is a good link" and "content for the sake of content" thinking appears to be working, you have to ask yourself whether you're looking for short-term of long-term results.

I can't count the number of times we've seen the "it works until it doesn't" paradigm play out. Frankly, if you make an informed decision to game Google, that's up to you. Obviously, as the above example demonstrates, there is plenty of "stuff" that still works that really isn't "supposed to" work. Just don't be surprised when it stops working.

Do you monitor Philly legal SERPs? Please feel free to share insights below.

Sometimes when we do great work, we toot our own horn. This Personal Injury Case Study is one of those times.
Download Our Case Study

Gyi Tsakalakis
Co-Founder of AttorneySync
Subscribe
Notify of
guest
0 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

Let's Discuss Your Growth

Helping law firms grow profitably with digital marketing and can prove it.

Barry Conybeare

We are so impressed with AttorneySync and their digital marketing services. We started with an audit of our digital presence and hired them thereafter. Fixes to the website and other platforms quickly followed and we have seen a substantial increase in online traffic, new client calls, and new client contracts. Strongly recommend AttorneySync!

Let's Talk

How can we help?

More From Our Blog

May 3, 2025
Non-Brand ๐Ÿ“‰ ๐—•๐—ฟ๐—ฎ๐—ป๐—ฑ ๐Ÿ“ˆ

Here's a recent Google SERP for "๐˜„๐—ต๐—ผ ๐—ฎ๐—ฟ๐—ฒ ๐˜๐—ต๐—ฒ ๐—ฏ๐—ฒ๐˜€๐˜ ๐—ฐ๐—ฎ๐—ฟ ๐—ฎ๐—ฐ๐—ฐ๐—ถ๐—ฑ๐—ฒ๐—ป๐˜ ๐—น๐—ฎ๐˜„๐˜†๐—ฒ๐—ฟ๐˜€ ๐—ถ๐—ป ๐—ฝ๐—ต๐—ถ๐—น๐—ฎ๐—ฑ๐—ฒ๐—น๐—ฝ๐—ต๐—ถ๐—ฎ." Ads? โŒLSAs? โŒLocal Pack? โŒLinks? โŒ ๐Ÿ”ท AI Overview? โœ… 6 firms listed. Only one tiny ๐Ÿ”—. Click the ๐—ฆ๐—ต๐—ผ๐˜„ ๐—บ๐—ผ๐—ฟ๐—ฒ button? ๐—ฌ๐—ผ๐˜‚ ๐—ด๐—ฒ๐˜: Here's a more detailed look at some of these firms: THE PEARCE LAW FIRM, P.C.Edith Pearce, […]

Read More
April 25, 2025
Do Confidentiality Rules of Professional Conduct Prohibit Use of Google's Local Services Ads?

On April 22, 2025, Google sent an email updating Local Services Ads Additional Terms for Providers: Subject: Action required: important updates to Local Service Ads Additional Terms Many people are arguing that lawyers cannot participate in Local Services Ads, as this would constitute a per se violation of the Rules of Professional Conduct related to […]

Read More
March 13, 2025
Lawyerist + Lunch Hour Legal Marketing Collaboration

Conrad and I recently joined Zack at Lawyerist to record a conversation about AI and marketing. You might think that we spend the whole time on how lawyers can use AI to publish content. You'd be wrong. While AI can certainly support publishing, there are many more interesting ways to use it in legal marketing. […]

Read More
March 11, 2025
ChatGPT Legal Services Consumer Journeys and Marketing Attribution

As more legal services consumers turn to ChatGPT for local law firm recommendations, a fascinating intersection between AI, search, and maps unfolds. While Google remains the undisputed leader in local business data, ChatGPT is increasingly becoming an entry point for searchers seeking legal representation. But hereโ€™s the kicker: instead of keeping users within its ecosystem, […]

Read More
March 10, 2025
Law Firm Brand Amplifies All Marketing

When law firms contact us, they usually want to talk: โ€ข PPC Ads โ€ข SEO Rankings โ€ข Lead Generation Very few want to talk: โ€ข Brand โ€ข Trust & Recognition โ€ข Emotional Connection Admittedly, much of this concerns that AttorneySync is known for lead generation across those common digital channels. But even when we start […]

Read More
March 6, 2025
Artificial Intelligence Overviews (AIO) in Legal SEO

According to an October 2024 study by SE Ranking: "The legal niche triggers the highest percentage of AIOs (77.67%). The average number of links matched between the AI Overview resources and the top 20 search results was 6.49 for legal topics. AI Overviews for legal topics most frequently link to NYCourts.gov (114 links), YouTube.com (48 […]

Read More
February 27, 2025
You Canโ€™t Hire for Law Firm SEO If You Donโ€™t Understand It

I'm grateful for my friend, Charley Mann of Law firm Alchemy. If you're a lawyer, subscribe to his Free Email List. In a recent email, Charley calls out bad guru advice on hiring: "Trying to execute a major SEO improvement? You need to find people who will help you, instead of trying to DIY it […]

Read More
February 26, 2025
Law Firm SEO Success Isn't What You Think It Is

If youโ€™ve spent any time on LinkedIn, youโ€™ve likely seen posts from law firm SEO experts showing off charts with an โ€œup and to the rightโ€ trajectory. These screenshots, often pulled from tools like Semrush or Ahrefs, are meant to signal SEO success. And itโ€™s not just the agencies celebratingโ€”๐—น๐—ฎ๐˜„ ๐—ณ๐—ถ๐—ฟ๐—บ๐˜€ ๐˜๐—ต๐—ฎ๐˜ ๐—ต๐—ฎ๐˜ƒ๐—ฒ ๐—ต๐—ถ๐—ฟ๐—ฒ๐—ฑ ๐˜๐—ต๐—ฒ๐—บ […]

Read More
February 15, 2025
What "Meh, Links" Means

Meh, links! All things being equal, links still tend to move the dial more than any other factor in legal SERPs. Maybe links are having a diminishing impact internet-wide. But in my experience, quality links, especially relevant links (both topically and geographically), tend to improve law firm visibility in search more than most everything else. […]

Read More

Let's Discuss

Questions or comments? Let's discuss on social!
Testimonials on this site are from examples of real client results. The results you see are not typical. They do not guarantee similar results. Individual results may vary based on a variety of factors. Your results may vary.
envelope
linkedin facebook pinterest youtube rss twitter instagram facebook-blank rss-blank linkedin-blank pinterest youtube twitter instagram