Landing pages
What makes a landing page work for law firm Google Ads?
One page per case type, the ad's words on the page, a tracked number and a three-field form, and the checks we run before any page takes a paid click.
By Santiago Alvarez, Founder, Ad Hoc Digital
Last updated
The short answer
If you read one part of this page, read this.
A law firm landing page works when it does one job: it tells the person who just searched for a specific case type that they're in the right place, and makes calling or booking easy. That means one page per case type, the same words as the ad, the lawyer and real reviews, a tracked phone number, a short form, and nothing that sends them wandering.
Google rewards the same things. Landing page experience is one of the three parts of Quality Score, and the quality of your ad and page feeds Ad Rank, which affects where you show and what you pay per click.
The page also has to be measurable. Every call and form should reach your CRM with the click it came from, so you can see which searches sign cases. We work with law firms across the US and Canada, and also in Australia and the UK.
Why not the homepage
Your website has a hundred jobs. A landing page has one.
A homepage speaks to everyone: past clients, referral partners, job applicants, every practice area. Someone who just searched "truck accident lawyer" needs one answer, fast, and every extra link is a way out.
Google's own advice for a weak landing page experience starts with "Give people what they're looking for". Its example is a shop: someone who searches for flannel shirts and clicks a flannel shirt ad should land on flannel shirts. For a firm, the search is the case type, and the page should be about that case type and nothing else.
One page per case type
Each case type gets its own page, and the page repeats the ad's words.
Google calls it keeping "messaging consistent from ad to landing page." In practice, the person should see the case type and their city in the headline, and the same offer the ad made.
- The headline names the case type and the place
We write the headline around the main keyword of the ad group, like "Newark Car Accident Lawyer" or "Toronto Real Estate Lawyer". Google says the exact search words don't have to appear on the page, and that's true. We do it anyway: nothing else tells a stressed person so quickly that they found the right firm.
- The page promises only what the ad promised
If the ad says "Free Consultation", the page says it in the same words. We read the finished page before writing the ad, so the ad never offers something the page doesn't show.
- A new case type is a new page on the same site
When a firm that already runs a search campaign adds a case type, we add a new page as a folder of its live landing site: same form, same tracking, same phone numbers, same booking calendar. Separate sites for each case type split the data and multiply the setup.
- Separate practices, separate pages
A firm that does family law and criminal defense gets a page for each. One family and criminal firm we work with scaled both practices in parallel, with separate campaigns for each, until it opened a second office. More on how those clients search on our family law and criminal defense pages.
What goes on the page
The lawyer, the situation, real reviews, a clear next step.
Our pages follow one structure, from the headline down. Each section answers a question the visitor is already asking, in the order they ask it.
| Section | What it answers | What we leave out |
|---|---|---|
| Headline and form | Am I in the right place, and how do I reach them? | Time promises like "we reply in 2 hours" |
| Meet your lawyer | Who will I be dealing with? | Credentials the firm can't back up |
| Is this you? | Do they handle situations like mine? | Legal advice and outcome promises |
| How it works | What happens after I call? | Billing promises and fee figures, unless the firm confirms them in writing |
| What clients say | Have people like me been happy? | Edited or invented reviews |
| Common questions | What do I need to know before calling? | Anything the firm hasn't confirmed |
| Free consultation | What's the next step? | Naming which lawyer they'll speak to |
The copy stays deliberately general on time, billing and people. "You'll hear back from us" stays true when the firm has a busy week; "we reply within 2 hours" becomes a broken promise the first time it doesn't. The same goes for "you'll always work with Sarah" in a firm that may hire an associate next year.
Calls and forms
Make calling one tap, and keep the form to three fields.
Many legal leads arrive as phone calls, often from a phone. The page should make calling obvious, and the form short enough to finish in a parking lot.
- A tracking number that swaps per visitor
The number shown on the page is a tracking number that changes per visitor, so each call can be tied back to the ad click that produced it. It goes on every page that shows a phone number, and the firm's real forwarding line never appears in the page code.
- Name, phone, email
That's the whole form unless the firm asks for a message box. Every extra field is one more reason to stop halfway.
- Book, or hear back
After the form, the visitor either picks a time on the firm's calendar or lands on a thank-you page. Booking works well for firms whose consults run on a schedule; a callback suits firms that screen first.
- The follow-up starts the second they submit
An instant text reply from the CRM and a fast callback matter more than any design choice. Our speed to lead guide covers the first response, and our systems work sets it up.
What Google measures
Google rates how relevant and useful your page is to the person who clicked.
Landing page experience is Google's estimate of how relevant and useful your page will be to people who click your ad. It shows as above average, average or below average for each keyword.
It's one of three parts of Quality Score, with expected click rate and ad relevance. Google says Quality Score itself is a diagnostic, not an input in the auction. What does feed Ad Rank is the auction-time quality of your ad and page, including how useful the page is, whether it matches what the ad led people to expect, and how easy it is to find your way around. Google says higher quality ads can often lead to lower costs per click.
- Relevant: the page is about the case type the person searched for.
- Consistent: it follows through on the ad's offer and call to action.
- Mobile friendly: Google notes that being easy to get around matters even more on phones.
- Fast: Google says loading speed "can be the difference between someone bouncing or buying." Our pages are plain HTML with one stylesheet, no page builder.
- Working: Google disapproves ads whose page doesn't load, returns an error to its crawler, or isn't reachable in the area you target.
When a keyword shows "below average" for landing page experience, we fix the page for that case type before raising any bid. Our match types guide covers the keyword side of the same score.
Trust, within the rules
Proof comes from the lawyer and real clients, inside your bar's advertising rules.
A landing page is advertising, so your jurisdiction's rules on reviews, past results and titles apply to it. The safest proof also persuades well: a real lawyer and real clients' words.
- Reviews quoted as written
We use 3 to 6 real client reviews with the reviewer's name, quoted exactly. If a review doesn't fit the rules, we pick another; we never edit one to make it fit. Rules on testimonials differ a lot by state and country, covered in our guide to using client reviews and testimonials.
- No "expert", "specialist" or superlatives
Our pages never call a lawyer an expert or specialist, or rank the firm against others. Those claims don't persuade a skeptical reader, and they're where advertising rules get strict. Our guide to bar rules for ad copy lists the risky phrases and what each jurisdiction says.
- Results only where the rules allow, and only the firm's own
Whether a page can show past results, and with what wording, depends on the jurisdiction. The advertising rules hub compares jurisdictions. UK firms also have the SRA Transparency Rules to follow, covered in our SRA transparency guide.
- "Lawyer" in Canada
Canadian pages say lawyer throughout. US pages follow the firm's preference.
Tracking and noindex
The page sends the lead to your CRM, and the CRM tells Google which leads were real.
We don't fire conversions from the page. The lead goes to the CRM with its click ID, and the CRM reports it back to Google. That way Google counts leads the firm actually received, once.
The page captures where the click came from
The form saves the campaign tags and Google's click ID from the page address, along with the keyword that triggered the ad.
The lead lands in the CRM
Name, phone, email and the tracking details arrive together, so the firm sees which campaign and keyword brought each lead.
The CRM sends the conversion to Google
Calls and forms go back to Google as offline conversions with the click ID. The page carries only the base Google tag; a conversion event on the page as well would count each lead twice.
The page stays out of organic search
Every page carries a noindex tag. Ad pages are written for a paid click, not to rank, and keeping them out of search results stops them competing with the firm's main site.
Google's offline conversion setup page warns that marking conversion actions as primary or secondary correctly is critical, because Smart Bidding learns from the primary ones. Calls and our Google Ads call tracking guide go deeper.
Before any paid click
We test the whole lead path before the campaign is switched on.
Campaigns we build start paused. Nobody turns one on until the page is live and a test lead has made it all the way into the CRM.
Load the page on its real address, on a phone
Check the headline, the lawyer's name, the phone number, the city and every review name against the firm's records.
Submit a test lead with a fake click ID
Add tracking text to the address, fill in the form and confirm the lead reaches the CRM with the tracking saved. If it doesn't arrive, nothing goes live.
Check the phone numbers
The number on the page and the one on the ad are the ad tracking numbers, never the firm's Local Services Ads number, so each channel's calls stay separate.
Read the ad and the page side by side
Same case type, same place, same offer, same words.
A Toronto real estate solo with no online presence went from nothing to a first signed client within 24 hours of launch on Google search ads, and $10,875 in the first week, from just over $300 in ad spend. We built everything for that firm from the ground up, page included. See our websites and Google Ads work.
Common mistakes
Where firms go wrong.
The landing page problems we find most often when a firm asks us to look at its ads.
Sending every ad to the homepage
The visitor has to find their case type among a dozen. Many leave before they do, and you've paid for the click.
One page for every case type
A page that covers car accidents, slip and falls and dog bites speaks to none of them as clearly as a page about one.
Promises the firm can't keep
Reply times, fee lines and named lawyers make the page stronger for a month and turn into complaints later.
A form with eight fields
Every field you add is another reason to stop. Ask for what the callback needs and get the rest on the phone.
Firing conversions from the page and the CRM
Two counts for one lead teach Google that the campaign works twice as well as it does, and bidding follows the wrong number.
Real results
What this looked like for real firms.
A new firm built from the ground up on Google search ads, and a family and criminal firm that ran separate campaigns for each practice.
Identifying details are anonymized to protect our clients. Individual result, not a promise or prediction of any specific outcome for your firm.
FAQ
Questions lawyers ask us.
Straight answers to the questions that come up most.
Can I send Google Ads traffic to my existing website?
You can, but a general site usually converts fewer visitors than a page built for the one case type they searched for. If you do use the site, send each ad group to the practice page that matches it, never the homepage.
Should my landing page be noindexed?
We noindex ours. They're written for people arriving from an ad, and keeping them out of organic results stops them competing with your main site. The ads still run normally; Google's ad systems check the page separately.
How many landing pages does a law firm need?
One per case type you advertise. A DUI firm may need one; an injury firm running car, truck and rideshare ad groups needs three, all on the same site so they share the form, phone tracking and booking calendar.
Should the page have a form, a phone number or a booking calendar?
A phone number and a short form on every page. Whether the form leads to a calendar or a callback depends on how the firm runs consults. Either way, someone has to respond within minutes; our intake metrics guide shows how to measure that.
What does "landing page experience: below average" mean?
Google thinks the page is less relevant or useful to people clicking that keyword than other advertisers' pages. Check that the page is about that exact case type, follows the ad's offer, works well on a phone and loads quickly. Fix the page before raising the bid.
Can I put reviews and case results on my landing page?
Real reviews, quoted as written, usually yes, within your jurisdiction's testimonial rules. Case results depend on your jurisdiction's rules, so check them before adding any. Read your state or law society's rules first, or schedule a consultation and we'll go through what your page can show.
Where we do this
The services this guide touches.
What this looks like when we run it for a firm, with a demo for your practice on each page.
Sources
Where these facts come from.
Official pages we read when writing this page. Platforms and rules change, so check the current version before you act on any of it. This is marketing guidance, not legal advice.
- Google Ads Help, Landing page experience: Definition
- Google Ads Help, About Quality Score for Search campaigns
- Google Ads Help, 5 ways to use Quality Score to improve your performance
- Google Ads Help, About Ad Rank
- Google Advertising Policies Help, Destination requirements
- Google Ads Help, Set up your offline conversions
Written by
Founder of Ad Hoc Digital. Leads strategy and works directly with every client firm on AI search, Local Services Ads, Google Ads and Meta ads.
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