A forensic SEO audit that shows exactly where your firm's search presence stands.
Before any strategy is set, the current position has to be known precisely. The audit covers six search surfaces — technical, content, local, schema, AI citation, and competitor — and delivers one structured document with a sequenced action plan.
A monthly report shows keyword positions and traffic. It rarely shows why a specific competitor outranks you, or whether your firm is visible to AI systems at all.
Agency reporting tends to track what the agency controls — keyword positions, traffic volume, pages crawled. It rarely shows the structural problems blocking a practice-area page no matter how much content gets added, or whether the firm appears in AI-generated answers at all.
The audit answers those questions directly. Six defined search surfaces, one document: what’s working, what’s holding the search presence back, and what to address first — ranked by commercial impact.
It runs as a standalone engagement for a firm that wants an independent view of its position. For a new Felicity Jane Digital engagement, it’s the starting point.
Six surfaces. One assessment.
Legal search operates across six distinct surfaces, each with different signals and different competitive conditions. A gap on any one of them costs the firm enquiries. The audit covers all six, because a gap on one surface often explains why work on another is producing less than expected.
Technical foundations
The infrastructure decisions that determine whether your content is crawled, indexed, and ranked — independently of how well that content is written.
- Crawlability and indexation status across all key pages
- Core Web Vitals — LCP, CLS, INP — on desktop and mobile
- Redirect chains and 404 errors affecting equity flow
- Canonical tag implementation and duplicate content
- Robots.txt and sitemap configuration
- Internal linking architecture and crawl depth
- Mobile-first rendering and page speed
Content and keyword architecture
Whether your practice area pages are structured around how prospective clients actually search — and whether they are competing against each other for the same queries.
- H1 structure and title tag keyword alignment
- Practice area keyword mapping — one intent per page
- Cannibalisation — pages competing for the same query
- YMYL content quality against Google's E-E-A-T standards
- Content gaps relative to the firms ranking above yours
- FAQ and structured content formatted for AI retrieval
- Meta descriptions and SERP click-through signals
Local presence
Your Google Business Profile, citation consistency, and review profile — the signals that determine map pack visibility and local query performance.
- GBP configuration — category, services, attributes, hours
- NAP consistency across all identified directory listings
- Doyle's Guide and Law Society listing status
- Review volume, recency, velocity, and response rate
- Map pack competitor gap analysis by practice area and location
- Citation coverage across Tier 1 Australian directories
- GBP photo recency and Q&A content
Schema and structured data
Whether your firm is explicitly identifiable to Google and AI systems — or visible only through inference from unstructured content.
- Organisation and Person schema — entity establishment
- ProfessionalService and LegalService schema coverage
- FAQPage schema on practice area pages
- BreadcrumbList implementation and crawl efficiency
- sameAs links — LinkedIn, AMI, Google Partner, directories
- Named practitioner schema with hasCredential and knowsAbout
- Schema validator pass — no errors or warnings
AI citation readiness
Whether your firm appears in AI-generated responses, and where the structural gaps sit if it doesn't.
- Entity confidence — how AI systems currently identify the firm
- Competing entity dilution — other businesses or individuals sharing the firm's name that create identification conflicts for AI systems
- AI Overview appearance for primary practice area queries
- ChatGPT and Perplexity citation status for SEQ legal queries
- Content structure for retrieval-augmented generation (RAG)
- Answer-formatted content on practice area pages
- External citation signals — directories, publications, profiles
Competitor gap analysis
A structured view of the gap between your firm's current position and the firms appearing above yours — by practice area and geography.
- Top three competitors by practice area in your primary location
- Keyword overlap and gap identification
- Backlink profile comparison — domain authority and referring domains
- Content depth and page structure comparison
- Local presence comparison — citations, reviews, GBP signals
- AI citation comparison — which firms appear and on what queries
- Ranked gap summary — where the distance is closeable fastest
What the audit produces.
The audit is delivered as a structured written document, with every finding specific to your firm, your practice areas, and your SEQ market. Every recommendation is sequenced by commercial impact.
The document is designed to be acted on. A firm can implement the action plan independently, commission ongoing work with Felicity Jane Digital, or use it as a brief for another supplier. It is yours.
Executive summary
A one-page summary of the firm's current search position across all six surfaces. The headline finding and the three highest-priority actions, stated directly for fast executive decision-making.
Surface-by-surface findings
Detailed findings across all six surfaces. Each finding includes the specific issue, its commercial impact, and what addressing it requires. No padding. No generic observations that apply to every law firm website.
Sequenced action plan
Every recommended action ranked by impact and sequenced in the order they should be addressed. High-leverage, low-effort fixes identified separately from structural work that requires more time. The plan is specific enough to brief a developer, an agency, or an internal team member directly.
Competitor gap summary
A structured view of the gap between the firm's current position and the top three competitors in each primary practice area. Specific, ranked, and focused on where the distance is closeable within a realistic timeframe.
Debrief session
A one-hour debrief with Jane Cluff to walk through the findings and the action plan. Questions answered. Priorities confirmed. The firm leaves with a clear picture of what the audit found and what to do with it.
What you actually get.
What it’s built on
Tool data, interpreted against your specific market
SEO tools surface data. This audit interprets that data against the specific conditions of your practice area, your geography, and your competitive position in SEQ legal search. The findings are written by someone who understands legal search.
What each finding contains
Specific enough to act on directly
Every finding states what the issue is, why it matters commercially, and what addressing it requires.
What happens after
A standalone deliverable
The audit stands on its own. If the findings support an ongoing engagement with Felicity Jane Digital, that will be clear from the document itself. If they point toward a different approach — strengthening an existing agency relationship, addressing specific technical issues directly, or pursuing a different service — the document will say so.
The audit as a standalone. Or as the start of something more.
The audit is designed to be useful on its own. Some firms need an independent assessment of their current position before making any further investment. Others use it to brief an existing supplier. Both are valid uses of the deliverable.
For firms that want to act on the findings through Felicity Jane Digital, the audit becomes the foundation for the engagement that follows — Legal SEO, Local SEO, Google Ads, website design — alone or combined.
An independent assessment for firms that want to know where they stand before deciding what to do next.
The full audit delivered as a structured document with the debrief session. The firm takes the action plan and acts on it however it chooses — independently, through an existing agency, or as the basis for a new engagement. No commitment required beyond the audit itself.
The diagnostic starting point for an ongoing FJD engagement — included in the first month.
For firms beginning a Legal SEO, Local SEO, or Fractional Head of SEO engagement, the audit is the first month’s work, and the foundation the engagement is built from. The strategy follows from what the audit establishes.
frequently asked
Questions Queensland law firms ask about the audit.
How long does the SEO audit take to complete?
What access does Felicity Jane Digital need to conduct the audit?
Read-only access to Google Search Console and Google Analytics 4, where the firm has them — this isn’t a precondition, but it does sharpen the findings. Where neither exists, the audit proceeds on third-party SEO data instead; setting up GSC and GA4 for ongoing tracking is available as a separate service, but it isn’t part of the audit itself. Google Business Profile access is needed for the local presence component. The website doesn’t require backend access — the technical review runs via crawl tools and public-facing analysis. Where the audit identifies issues that need backend access to fix, that’s noted in the action plan with the specific access required.
Does the audit include local SEO — Google Business Profile and citations?
Yes. Local presence is Surface 03 of the audit and covers GBP configuration, NAP consistency across directories, Doyle’s Guide and Law Society listing status, review profile analysis, and map pack competitor gap analysis. The local and organic surfaces are assessed together — because a gap on the local surface often explains why organic rankings are underperforming, and addressing one without the other produces incomplete results.
Can the audit assess a firm's visibility in AI search — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews?
Yes. AI citation readiness is Surface 05 of the audit. It covers the firm’s current entity confidence — how AI systems identify and represent the firm — AI Overview appearance for primary practice area queries, ChatGPT and Perplexity citation status for SEQ legal queries, and the structural gaps in content and schema that determine whether the firm is cited. AI-generated answers now appear above organic results on many legal queries, and the signals behind them overlap only partly with the signals behind organic rankings. The audit assesses both surfaces together.
Does the audit cover compliance with Queensland Law Society advertising guidelines?
Does the audit cover Google Ads?
A capability document covering the audit scope, indicative fee ranges, and how engagements are structured is available on request. Email jane@felicityjane.com.au.