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Maps, reviews & reputation. Bundles with any plan
Content marketing comes with every website build. Reputation management comes with Google Business Profile. No bloated bundles, just the channels that grow your business.
Criminal cases begin with a phone in a holding cell or a family member typing “criminal defense lawyer near me” at 2 a.m. We build the organic authority that puts your firm at the top of that urgent search — charge and city page architecture, YMYL / E-E-A-T signals backed by real attorney credentials, and bar-compliant content that earns retainers without paying for every click.
Criminal defense is the most time-sensitive practice area in legal search. A defendant does not research for weeks the way an estate-planning client does — they, or a spouse or parent, search the moment they bond out or before an arraignment, and they call one of the first firms they trust. That urgency changes everything about the keyword strategy. “Criminal defense lawyer near me” and “DUI lawyer” carry enormous, high-intent volume, but the retainer behind a first-time misdemeanor is a fraction of a felony, federal, or serious-DUI file. The mistake firms make is chasing one broad term instead of weighting priority by search intent × likely retainer × competition — and building a distinct page for each charge and each courthouse city. That map is the first deliverable we rebuild.
E-E-A-T signals are non-negotiable here. Google’s Quality Rater Guidelines classify legal content as YMYL — Your Money or Your Life — and few topics sit closer to a person’s liberty than a criminal charge, so Google holds this content to its highest quality bar. Anonymous or thin content simply does not rank. Our build deploys Attorney schema with bar-admission and credential fields, LegalService schema for each charge type (DUI/DWI, drug crimes, domestic violence, felony, white collar, federal, expungement), individual attorney bio pages with law schools, years in criminal trial work, and case experience, and contextual internal linking from charge hubs down to city and courthouse pages. The same credentials that reassure a frightened defendant are the signals Google reads as genuine authority.
The pattern we see most often: a firm ranks for its own name and maybe “criminal defense attorney” but is invisible for “DUI lawyer near me” or “expungement lawyer” — the terms where the retainers actually are — because the charge-specific pages are thin, the schema is missing, and the Google Business Profile is unconverted. The fix is architecture and authority: dedicated pages per charge, Attorney schema across every bio, a compliant review strategy, and citations Google trusts. It compounds over months, not days — and unlike paid, it keeps working after the invoice clears. If your firm is invisible on the charges you most want to defend, that is what we map first.
These are the phrases defendants and their families actually type in the moment they need a lawyer — commercial and local intent, weighted by the retainer and stakes behind each one.
The urgent anchor for any defense firm — local, commercial, and the front door to your Map Pack.
DUI/DWI is the highest-volume charge searched — often overnight, on a phone, ready to call.
Charge-plus-city searches that resolve in local results — city and courthouse pages win these.
Lower volume, far higher retainer and stakes. Felony files justify their own dedicated page.
High stakes for a defendant, handled with careful, non-inflammatory, compliant messaging.
Informational intent that captures defendants early — then routes them to intake, never a promise.
Complex, high-retainer files that demand deep E-E-A-T and verified credentials.
A high-close niche many competitors ignore — lower competition, real retained work.
Bottom-of-funnel comparison intent — won with reviews, credentials, and trust signals.
| Target keyword | Est. monthly volume | Difficulty | Search intent |
|---|---|---|---|
| criminal defense lawyer near me | 18,100 | High | Commercial |
| dui lawyer near me | 14,800 | High | Commercial |
| criminal defense attorney | 12,100 | High | Commercial |
| dui attorney | 9,900 | High | Commercial |
| expungement lawyer | 6,600 | Medium | Commercial |
| domestic violence attorney | 5,400 | Medium | Commercial |
| drug crime lawyer near me | 3,600 | Medium | Local |
| federal criminal defense attorney | 2,900 | Medium | Commercial |
| best criminal defense attorney [city] | 2,400 | Medium | Comparison |
Illustrative keyword landscape. Volumes are third-party estimates that vary by market and over time; we build your firm’s real target list from live keyword research.
Figures are industry benchmarks and illustrative context, not guaranteed outcomes. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.
Ranking a criminal defense firm is not one tactic — it is architecture, credentials, and fast intake working together. Here is what we build and why each piece matters for retained cases.
We target the phrases that start a case — “criminal defense lawyer near me,” “DUI lawyer,” and charge-plus-city variations — weighted by intent and retainer, not vanity volume, so you rank where the defendants are.
Most criminal searches are local and urgent, resolving in the Map Pack. We claim and optimize your GBP, align NAP across Avvo, Justia, FindLaw and Super Lawyers, and win the local three-pack where the first retainers come from.
Every charge (DUI/DWI, drug crimes, domestic violence, felony, white collar, federal, expungement) and every city gets its own optimized page — no cannibalization, one clear intent per page, internally linked into hubs.
Attorney bios with bar admissions, law schools and trial experience, cited legal information about charges and procedure, Attorney and LegalService schema, and transparent firm data — the trust signals Google requires before it ranks a criminal-defense site.
Answer content for what defendants ask before they call — arraignment, plea, felony vs. misdemeanor, expungement eligibility — plus a compliant review strategy, because ratings and volume move Map Pack rankings and click-through.
Crawl health, site speed, structured data, sitemaps, Search Console, and clean internal linking. We fix the foundation first so every charge and city page actually gets indexed and ranked.
Most agencies write criminal-defense content that quietly violates advertising rules — on YMYL pages Google scrutinizes hardest. We don’t. Every page follows the rules your firm has to follow.
Unless your firm holds a recognized board certification, we use compliant language like “focuses on,” “concentrates in,” and “extensive experience in” throughout every ranking page.
We never guarantee a dropped charge, reduced plea, or acquittal. Wherever case results appear, we display “prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome” prominently — adapted to your state’s rules on placement and prominence.
Following ABA Model Rules 7.1–7.5 and state bar advertising rules, every claim on the page is accurate and supportable — which is also exactly what Google’s YMYL standard rewards.
Attorney bios cite bar admissions, law schools, and genuine criminal-trial experience, backed by Attorney schema. Real credentials are both an ethics best practice and the strongest ranking signal in legal.
Where your state allows testimonials, we present them with the required disclaimers and follow state-specific rules on font, proximity, and pre-approval — while still capturing the ranking benefit of real reviews.
“Attorney Advertising” labeling where required, “legal information, not legal advice,” and a clear “contacting us does not create an attorney-client relationship” notice — placed where they belong, not buried in 8-point footer type.
We crawl your site, map your market and courthouses, and score keywords by intent and retainer against competition.
Speed, crawl health, sitemaps, and Attorney / LegalService structured data go in first.
Charge and city pages, bar-compliant copy, and attorney bios that satisfy E-E-A-T.
Google Business Profile, citations, reviews, and white-hat links build durable trust.
Monthly rankings, traffic, and intake reporting — we double down on what earns retainers.
Management fees below scale with how many charge types and cities you want to own. Month to month — you own the website, content, links, and data.
Management fee is separate from your advertising budget. As your investment grows, your percentage drops. Month to month. You own your ad accounts, website, content, data, and call records.
Because a single retained felony or serious-DUI case can be worth many times a month of SEO, even a few additional retainers makes the investment work. We size scope and fee to your market on a strategy call.
A representative model for a single-market criminal defense firm — illustrative of the approach, not a specific client outcome. Organic compounds over months, and every market is different. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.
Criminal defense firms already trust Media Spearhead with their growth. A couple of them:
Miami, FL
Broward County, FL
Firms shown are active Media Spearhead clients, featured with permission. Results vary by market, charge type, and budget. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.
Most agencies report clicks and cost-per-lead. We report signed cases and cost-per-signed-case, and we feed real case value back into Google so the algorithm bids toward the clients who actually retain and pay.
Every dollar deployed against a specific keyword
CallRail ties each call & form to its exact search
Signed · qualified · unqualified · spam. Real names, not "conversions"
Fee value recorded per matter in WhatConverts
Offline conversion import teaches Google to bid toward retainers
Dynamic call tracking ties every phone call to the exact search, campaign, ad, and keyword that produced it, recorded and scored.
Calls and forms captured with the caller's real name and details, routed to your intake team in minutes, not an anonymous number on a dashboard.
Ad spend in, case value out, cost-per-signed-case: the only numbers that decide whether marketing works. No vanity metrics.
A 30-minute case-strategy call: your market, your target charges and keywords, your Map Pack, and exactly where the next retained cases come from organically. No obligation.
This credit comes from Google for new ad accounts, not from us. As a Google Premier Partner, we set it up for you, free.
