Criminal defense SEO that ranks for the charge a prospect actually types. Geo-driven, trust-led, attorney-bio-deep, ABA-compliant. See the build.
They are responding to an arrest, a charge filed, or a court date set within days. The search behavior is therefore short, geographic, and trust-driven — "[city] DUI lawyer," "[county] criminal defense attorney," "best criminal lawyer near me." The firms that rank for these queries do not rank because they have the most content. They rank because their charge-specific architecture, attorney-bio depth, and review profile combine into a coherent trust signal.
The prospect searching for a criminal defense lawyer is rarely browsing.
Criminal defense covers a wide range of charges, and the search behavior fragments by charge. DUI/DWI, drug possession, assault, domestic violence, theft, white-collar, federal, juvenile, sex crimes, weapons, traffic. Each has its own search volume, its own conversion behavior, its own evidentiary sensitivities, and its own ABA constraints around how a lawyer is allowed to advertise around it.
The architecture that wins splits the practice area into charge pages — one per major charge type, with content depth proportionate to charge volume in your market. A DUI page that ranks in your county is worth more than three generic "criminal defense services" pages. The pillar at the top of this silo and the charge children below it share a coherent link graph that makes the topical fingerprint legible.
Criminal defense is the practice area where attorney bios rank. Prospects search by attorney name, by attorney type ("former prosecutor"), and by attorney experience ("federal criminal defense attorney"). The bios on most law-firm sites are 200 words and a headshot. The bios that rank are 1,200 words, structured with proper schema (Person, Attorney, alumniOf, knowsAbout), include case results where state bar rules permit, list publications, speaking engagements, courts admitted, and bar memberships, and are linked from every charge page that attorney handles.
The on-page rules for attorney bios are covered in the On-Page SEO for Law Firm Sites page. The schema is covered in Technical SEO for Law Firms. The ABA-compliance line on case results is covered in ABA-Compliant Marketing.
Criminal defense is a confidentiality-sensitive practice area, which makes review management harder than in other verticals. Clients are reluctant to leave reviews under their real names or to mention the charge. The review program has to be designed to respect that, while still producing the volume and recency that move map-pack ranking. Templated review responses that mention the case will violate confidentiality; reviews that say "[Attorney] helped me through a difficult time" without specificity carry less ranking weight.
The Law Firm Review Management page covers the criminal-defense-specific solicitation language and response patterns that satisfy both ABA confidentiality rules and Google's review-quality signals.
Criminal defense is a hyper-local practice. Prospects almost never hire a lawyer outside their county. The map pack is decisive. Map Pack Ranking for Attorneys covers the prominence levers that move criminal-defense rankings. Geo-Targeted Landing Pages covers how to capture the "[charge] lawyer in [city]" queries when your firm covers multiple jurisdictions.
Before a dollar is spent, you see exactly where your site leaks equity and which structural fixes compound.
Architecture. pillar plus charge-specific child pages, attorney bios with schema, geo pages by court/county.
Local. GBP build, review program with ABA-aware solicitation copy, citation parity.
Content. charge-specific FAQ content, sentencing guides, court-process explainers — the kind of content prospects actually search at the moment of need.
Reporting. cost-per-signed-case by charge type and by source.
The build sequence is the same as every Core30 engagement: audit, architecture, commercial silo, local layer, content engine. The criminal-defense-specific decisions sit inside that frame.
See the same 30-point audit we ran on ourselves. Before a dollar is spent, you see exactly where your site leaks equity and which structural fixes compound. No vanity metrics, no obligation.
