Moving your law office can be exciting, especially if the move is to a more desirable location or to accommodate your growing team. Of course, a move can be disruptive, too. It’s easy to understand the disruption involved in packing, moving, and unpacking files and equipment. At The Modern Firm, we are often asked, “Will moving locations affect SEO?” And the short answer is yes: a physical move will impact your search rankings. 

What’s more, that’s true whether you move across the street, across town, or across the state into an entirely new community. Let’s unpack (pun intended) why that is, what it means for your law firm, and how to mitigate the SEO impact of your law office move. 

Brendan Chard, owner of The Modern Firm, notes that while a law firm’s geographic move will affect SEO, so will changing your law firm name or phone number. So, whether you’re moving offices or making other changes, read on for important tips to protect your law firm’s search rankings. 

How Will Moving Locations Affect SEO?

If you rely on your law firm website to help generate new business, you need to coordinate with the people who manage your firm’s digital presence, just as you do with the people loading the physical boxes on a truck. 

Take a look at a search engine results page (SERP) for, say, probate law firms on Google. You’ll see that it shows three types of search results: 

• Paid or “featured” advertising at the top and sometimes in a column to the right;
• Local business/map search results in the middle;
• Organic search results toward the bottom, below the local listings.

In general, a geographic move will have an impact on the last two categories: local business search results, and organic search results. Here’s why. 

Data Consistency

When it comes to local search results, Google relies heavily on online information about your law firm’s physical presence. When that information is consistent across various locations, it suggests that a business is legitimate and trustworthy.

Some of the most important information is your law firm’s name, address, and phone number, commonly known as NAP. Your law firm’s NAP needs to be updated not only everywhere it appears on your own site, but on other sites where it is published—and there is a surprising number of these:

• Google Business Profile, formerly known as Google My Business. This is probably the most critical platform for local SEO. Don’t forget similar profiles on other search engines, like Bing Places for Business.
• Legal directories such as Avvo, Justia, Lawyers.com, Martindale-Hubbell, and FindLaw
• Legal referral sites such as Nolo 
• Local business directories such as Yelp, the Better Business Bureau (BBB), and Chamber of Commerce listings
• Online review sites, like Google Reviews, Yelp Reviews, and Avvo Reviews
• Social media platforms including Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram
• Legal industry associations such as state and local bar associations and any specialty legal associations such as NAELA, AAML, AILA, etc.
• Data aggregators like Acxiom, Infogroup, Factual and Neustar Localeze
• Maps and navigation services such as Apple Maps, Google Maps, and Waze
• Review and ratings platforms like Angi and Trustpilot

Unless you are thorough about updating your NAP on all third-party sites, there will be new information on some websites and old information on others. Not only does this make your business appear less trustworthy to Google, it could confuse potential clients, costing you business.

Location Change Within Town

Many law firms move offices within the same community, for more space, lower overhead costs, or more convenient parking for clients. Even these local moves can affect search rankings. Google treats law firms like local businesses, which means that it notes the office’s proximity to the person searching online (which is increasingly easy to pinpoint with advances in tracking technology). 

Google can also determine where an industry is centered; for example, the local center of the legal industry is often near the courthouse. Lawyers whose offices are located in that area may have an advantage in search rankings. A law firm that moves further away could see its placement in local search results negatively impacted, even if in reality, the move actually benefits clients.

Brendan Chard observes, “Sometimes a law firm moves away from a city center because a suburban location is more convenient for clients with better parking, or offers lower overhead that keeps costs reasonable; unfortunately, Google may not recognize those benefits.” The same may be true when an attorney lowers overhead by working from a home or virtual office.

How Will Moving Your Law Firm to a Different Community Affect SEO?

Moving your law firm’s office to a whole new community, even within the same metropolitan area, can pose even greater challenges when it comes to search engine rankings. As mentioned above, any discrepancy in updating NAP citations after a law firm move affects the data consistency Google prizes. 

But moving to another community, say, from Dearborn to Troy in metropolitan Detroit, creates a whole new set of headaches, because now the focus of your law firm website’s content needs to be updated to reflect your new city. To the extent your site had organic search rankings tied to your old community, those will diminish. It may take time to build rankings for the new community. The competitive landscape could be quite different there, affected by factors like population and the number of lawyers in your practice area.

Some of the issues that affect your law firm website’s search rankings after a move aren’t within your control. But just as careful planning makes a physical move less stressful, it can ease your digital transition to a new office as well. 

Best Practices for Protecting Search Rankings When Moving Law Offices

Here are some of the top tips we’ve learned over the years for law firms that are changing location but want to preserve SEO and search rankings:

Budget for Your Digital Move

You should plan to invest some administrative time (from 5-30 hours), money (from $500-$2,000+), or both in what you can consider “digital moving expenses.” That will include modifying your website and changing your NAP information on your website, Google, and third-party sites across the web. If that seems like a lot, consider the cost of even one client lost because they didn’t find your website or had the wrong address for your firm.

Speaking of budgeting, your moving budget should also include funds to update the information on your business cards, and other print collateral and branding. These items will all need to be updated if you move your law firm, or change its name or phone number.  

Let Your Website Team Know

As soon as you know you are going to move your law office, inform your webmaster and online marketing team. They can offer insights based on your firm’s unique circumstances, and may even be able to help you make the needed changes on your site and elsewhere.

Update Your Law Firm Website, Inside and Out

One of the first things you will want to do when preparing to move your law office is to update your own website with your new NAP and other business information. Your NAP is present in more places on your website than you might think, including headers and footers, contact page, “about the firm” page, and others. 

The website changes you can see are important, but the ones that aren’t visible to (human) readers are equally critical. You also want to pay attention to your website’s schema markup. What’s that? It’s a form of microdata you can add to your website’s code to help search engines better understand your site’s content. 

Think of schema as sticky notes in a book that Google is reading—a book about your business. These “notes,” with information such as your law firm name, correct address, hours, and services, help Google and other search engines better understand your business. That, in turn, helps them accurately represent your law firm in search results. 

Update Your Google Business Profile

As we discussed above, there are many sites that carry your law firm’s NAP. One of the most important to update upon your move is your Google Business Profile. One important note: if you are moving into an office or suite that was previously occupied by another business, you want to be sure that that business no longer has a Google Business Profile at your new address before you claim that address with your profile. Having two profiles at the same address confuses both Google and prospective clients. 

If there is a previous listing at your new address, see if you can claim it; if you can, mark the previous business permanently closed. If you can’t claim the profile, search the business on Google. There should be a “Suggest an Edit” button next to the business profile. You should be able to select “Mark as closed” or “Moved” to notify Google that the previous business is no longer active at your current location. 

If that doesn’t work, you may need to contact the Google Business Help Center for assistance. Once the previous business’ listing is removed from your location, update your Google Business Profile with your new address.

Update Other Third-Party Sites

Once you have your Google Business Profile squared away, it’s time to tend to all of the other third-party sites that have your firm's NAP, from bar associations to state business licensing authorities to social media and legal directories. 

One caveat: many third-party business directories aggregate information from multiple sources…including other directories. That means that there is a danger of fixing a listing on one site, only to have that site revert back to your old NAP citations when it gets conflicting data from another “trusted” source. 

If this sounds like a game of digital whac-a-mole, only less fun, you’re right. The good news is, you don’t have to play if you don’t want to; The Modern Firm can take the (virtual) mallet out of your hand so you can focus on getting your law firm up and running in your new location.

Get Online Help For Your Law Firm’s Offline Move

You’ve got enough on your plate between running your law firm and physically moving offices. The Modern Firm can help you with your digital move. We offer a flat-fee “moving service” as well as our monthly Local Marketing Fundamentals program. We’ve helped plenty of law firms with their moves, and we can make moving your firm, changing your name, or updating your contact information and NAP citations a breeze. Contact us to learn how we can help you.