Growing Search Visibility and Enquiries for a Leading Law Firm

Paris Smith LLP is one of the South Coast’s most established law firms, with over 205 years of history, offices in Southampton, Winchester and Bournemouth, and consistent recognition in Chambers UK, Legal 500 and The Times Best Law Firms. They hold a 4.8/5 rating across 1,200+ reviews on ReviewSolicitors.

Paris Smith originally approached Atelier after recent website changes had negatively impacted their search engine rankings and organic traffic. What began as a technical rescue became a long-running SEO partnership — evolving from a 12-month organic growth campaign into an ongoing programme spanning content strategy, local SEO, Google Business Profile management, and NAP auditing across all three offices.

The challenge was clear: Paris Smith had the reputation and credentials, but their digital presence wasn’t reflecting it. Key service pages were underperforming, department-level content was thin, and the firm’s local visibility didn’t match their standing in the legal sector.

Technical Recovery & Site Audit

We started with a full site audit to identify and fix the issues caused by recent website changes. Once the technical foundations were stable — URL structure corrected, crawl errors resolved, and content formatting improved — we moved into proactive growth.

Content Strategy

A major finding was that organic traffic was funnelling almost entirely to the homepage, even from search engines. Individual department pages for key practice areas — divorce, family, employment, IP, trust and commercial law — were underperforming.

We worked directly with Partners and their teams across multiple departments to develop authoritative, in-depth content for their respective specialisms. Each piece was designed to rank for the specific terms potential clients were searching — moving traffic away from the homepage and into the service pages where it converts.

This content programme continues today, with an ongoing focus on producing practical, expert-led articles that establish Paris Smith as the authoritative voice across their practice areas.

Offsite Outreach & Link Building

As a well-respected firm, Paris Smith already had a solid backlink profile. We built on this by developing relationships with high-authority legal websites, legal blogs and trusted business publications. Using the new content as a foundation, we secured quality backlinks that strengthened domain authority and reinforced Paris Smith’s position in search results.

Local SEO & Google Business Profile Management

More recently, our work has expanded to address the firm’s local search presence across all three offices. A comprehensive local SEO audit identified significant gaps — including missing LocalBusiness and LegalService schema markup, NAP inconsistencies from the firm’s former “Paris Smith & Randall” name still appearing on directories like Yelp and Cylex, and a lack of location-specific content targeting practice area + location keyword combinations.

We now manage an ongoing programme of:

• NAP auditing and citation cleanup — correcting old business name references and duplicate listings across third-party directories
• Google Business Profile posts — a structured monthly posting schedule across all three office profiles, covering legal tips, service spotlights, team news and community engagement
• Local content development — enriching office pages with unique local content and planning practice area + location landing pages to capture searches like “employment solicitors Southampton” and “family law Winchester”
• Schema markup implementation — adding structured data to help Google understand the firm’s multi-office presence and surface rich results

The initial 12-month SEO campaign delivered transformative results:

• Organic traffic increased by 40% year on year, with growth recorded in every single month of the campaign compared to the same month the previous year
• Website enquiries more than doubled (+101%), demonstrating clear commercial ROI beyond traffic numbers
• Key practice area pages moved onto page one of Google for priority terms across family, employment, commercial and IP law
• Department pages began attracting direct organic traffic, shifting the pattern away from homepage-only search entry
• Domain authority strengthened through strategic link acquisition from trusted legal and business publications

The partnership has since expanded well beyond the original SEO brief — encompassing website hosting and support, the Winchester office launch, online payment integration, local SEO across three offices, and ongoing Google Business Profile management.