Most law firm owners are looking in the wrong place for growth. They invest heavily in paid ads, redesign websites every few years, and pour money into initiatives that often deliver diminishing returns.
Yet one of the most profitable marketing moves your firm can make costs less than the average car payment:
opening a second Google Business Profile (GBP) through a small, legitimate satellite office.
How additional online locations impact your practice
Google Business Profiles don’t rank citywide. They rank within a limited geographical radius around your listed address. It's not like normal SEO - it doesn't matter how authoritative your firm is, you will only appear in searches within a certain distance.
This means:
If you serve an entire city from one office, you’re only fully visible to a fraction of potential clients.
Entire areas or boroughs may never see your firm on the map pack.
Each additional physical location unlocks an entirely new catchment area in local search.
Firms often assume their strong presence in one postcode carries over elsewhere. It doesn’t.
Google’s local algorithm is built around proximity. Use it to your advantage.
The local SEO strategy in simple terms
This is the step by step process for boosting your online presence rapidly:
Secure an inexpensive, legitimate office in the area where you want more visibility (often £400–£800 per month).
Put up compliant signage with your firm’s name and address.
Register a new Google Business Profile for that location.
It is crucial the GBP is linked to a dedicated website location page, not the homepage.
Build citations (directory listings) using its Name, Address, Phone (NAP) information.
Collect reviews from clients who live or work near that area.
Keep the profile active with posts, updates, and photos.
Over several months, this new profile builds local relevance and begins appearing in searches for “solicitor near me”, “family lawyer”, “PI solicitor”, “conveyancing solicitor”, and other high-value terms.
The result is a new stream of local enquiries from an area where your firm previously had no visibility.
The ROI on this local SEO strategy
Here's the reason why this strategy delivers such disproportionate returns. A small satellite office costing £500 per month only needs to generate:
one conveyancing file,
or a single wills & probate instruction,
or one family consultation that converts,
or one PI enquiry that becomes a case
to cover its own costs.
Anything beyond that is pure incremental profit.
Once a GBP ranks well, it often brings in multiple enquiries per week.
For most firms, this equals tens or hundreds of thousands of pounds in additional annual revenue.
Why this local SEO strategy works
There are 3 main reasons why we find this strategy so effective:
Local intent dominates law firm searches
Legal service buyers rarely search citywide, they search “solicitor near me”. Google rewards proximity.
Google treats each location as its own entity
A new address equals a new centre of relevance in the map pack.
Low competition in micro-areas
Even in large cities, neighbourhood-level search terms often have far fewer competing profiles.
This is why you’ll sometimes see small practices outrank major regional firms in specific areas - they’re just physically closer to the person searching at that specific time, and Google prioritises that.
Considerations
The point of this strategy is not to deceive your potential customers, but rather taking advantage of local search algorithms to appear prominently in geographical areas that you already serve:
The office must be genuine and staffed or accessible as needed.
Clients must be able to meet there by appointment.
Signage should be clear and compliant.
Call handling can be managed centrally.
There is no requirement for full-time staff on-site. Many law firms operate satellite offices by appointment only, using them strategically to expand their search footprint.
Local SEO: a growth lever hiding in plain sight
If Google only ranks you around your current office, you’re invisible everywhere else.
When we speak to law firm owners about growing their practices, they often assume that scaling requires more fee-earners, more ad spend, or more complex marketing systems. But sometimes, the solution can be far simpler.
With modest monthly overheads and extremely high ROI potential, a multi-location GBP strategy is one of the most powerful, and underused, growth levers available to firms today.
Final thoughts
We help law firms build effective SEO strategies that help turn their visibility into clients. Contact us today and let’s discuss how we can take your marketing to the next level.
Mo leads our marketing strategy, with a focus on SEO, communications and lead generation bringing 9 years of B2B marketing experience. When he is not advising law firms on their marketing, he is (often painfully) supporting his beloved Fulham FC.
Mo Elmoussati
Partner
Subscribe to our newsletter
Sign up to get the most recent blog articles in your email every week.
