Criminal defense attorney marketing

Criminal defense attorney marketing for retained cases.

Criminal defense attorney marketing is the work of being the firm that survives scrutiny when someone researches carefully, with money on the line and a family involved. These are not impulse decisions. The charge is serious, the fee is real, and the person searching is often a spouse or parent reading everything before they call anyone. We build the pages, the profile, and the proof that hold up to that.

Get your market analysis Call 1.877.362.3077
Michael Rupe, Founder & SEO Director at Savo Group
Founder & SEO Director ·

What does criminal defense attorney marketing return?

Updated

You are competing against firms with bigger budgets for charges worth real money, the clicks cost more than most practice areas, and it is hard to tell whether last month's invoice bought anything. These are the figures from our longest-running defense engagement.

How much organic reach is realistic?
1,689 ranking keywords, 66 in the top ten. Semrush, 2026
Does it convert to actual clients?
40,000+ clients through that firm's organic pipeline. Since 2013
Will I show up in AI answers?
318 AI Overview citations, 162 map pack appearances. Semrush, 2026
What builds the authority?
238 referring domains, earned by charge pages written to the state code. 739 total backlinks
What does reputation look like?
752 Google reviews at 5.0, plus 263 five-star Avvo reviews. Review generation is inside the program, not a separate line
What does it cost?
From $1,000 a month, one firm per county. One invoice, no per-line add-ons
SemrushGoogle Business Profile InsightsDavid A.C. Long case studyVirginia courts

$120–270

typical cost per click on criminal defense agency terms

Semrush, US database

Months

how long a felony client spends deciding

Versus days for a DUI

318

AI Overview citations our anchor firm holds

Semrush, 2026

1 per county

firms we will represent in your market

Exclusivity is contractual

Criminal defense attorney marketing basics

Why criminal defense marketing works differently

Criminal defense is the inverse of traffic work on almost every dimension that matters to marketing. Lower search volume, far higher case value, a decision that takes weeks rather than hours, and a reader who will compare four or five firms in detail before picking up the phone.

That means thin pages fail here in a way they sometimes survive elsewhere. A 300-word page on a felony charge does not reassure anyone, does not rank against firms that wrote 2,000 words on the same statute, and gives an AI assistant nothing worth quoting. Depth is the entry fee.

01

Charge pages, written to the statute

Every charge you defend gets a page that names the statute, the classification, the penalty range, and the realistic outcomes.Generic content about "aggressive defense" ranks for nothing. A page that actually explains the charge earns links, rankings, and citations.

02

Written for whoever is searching

Half of criminal defense searches come from a family member acting on the defendant's behalf.Bail, custody location, visitation, cost, how quickly a lawyer can appear. Answer those and you capture the person who actually makes the call.

03

Proof carries more weight than promises

A serious buyer discounts adjectives and looks for evidence.Reviews, verifiable experience, bar standing, plainly stated process and fee structure. Within your jurisdiction's rules on case results and testimonials.

Criminal defense charge pages

One page per charge, cross-linked to the court

The structure that ranks is a charge page for the statute, a county page for the jurisdiction, and a court page for the venue, linked so each one reinforces the others. Below is the charge layer most defense practices need first.

Assault & battery

Misdemeanor and felony tiers, self-defense posture, and the domestic-adjacent variants.

Drug possession & distribution

Schedule, quantity thresholds, diversion eligibility, and the search-and-seizure angle.

Domestic violence

Protective orders, firearm consequences, and the no-drop policies that surprise clients.

Theft & property crime

Value thresholds that separate misdemeanor from felony, and restitution outcomes.

Weapons charges

Possession, carry, and enhancement statutes, all highly state-specific and rarely covered well.

Probation violation

A distinct proceeding with a lower burden of proof, and a client who already has counsel history.

Expungement & record sealing

Low urgency, high volume, and an excellent entry point for a client who returns later.

Federal charges

Different court, different sentencing regime, and a much higher case value.

Juvenile defense

The searcher is always the parent, and the copy has to speak to them directly.

Proof from a traffic and criminal defense practice

Thirteen years on one firm's criminal and traffic docket

Our anchor engagement covers both sides of this work (traffic volume and criminal defense value) for a single Virginia firm, continuously since 2013. Every figure below comes from that engagement.

“For over a decade, they've kept my phone ringing and my caseload full. They're incredibly responsive and consistently keep my firm at the top of search results.”
David A.C. Long, Virginia Traffic & Criminal Defense Attorney
See the full case study Check if your county is open

1,689

keywords ranking

$746K+

organic value since 2013

15x

monthly return on spend

162

Map Pack appearances

Criminal defense marketing questions

Building visibility on the charge, in the county, at the moment someone decides they need a lawyer. Concretely that is a page per charge written against your state's statutes, a Google Business Profile that holds the Map Pack for those searches, content structured so AI assistants cite your firm when asked about the charge, and paid search covering the terms you have not earned organically yet. It runs as one program on one monthly invoice.

The clock and the buyer. A DUI arrest starts a short administrative deadline and the client decides in days. A felony charge runs for months, the case is worth considerably more, and the client researches carefully, often with a family member doing the searching and the paying. That changes what the pages have to do: DUI pages convert urgency, criminal defense pages have to survive scrutiny. Longer content, more proof, clearer explanation of process and cost.

Frequently the family, and it changes the copy. Someone in custody is not browsing. A spouse, parent, or sibling is searching on their behalf, often within hours of the arrest, and they are asking different questions: how bail works, whether the person can be visited, what a lawyer costs, how fast someone can get there. Pages that answer only the defendant's questions miss the person actually choosing the firm.

Very, and it is expensive to buy your way in. Paid clicks on criminal defense terms run into the hundreds of dollars in competitive metros, which is exactly why the organic and Map Pack layers matter so much: they compound instead of resetting to zero every month. The firms that win are usually the ones that committed to a charge-page structure years earlier and kept it current.

That is the most common shape we work with, and the site architecture should reflect it. Traffic and DUI pages capture high-volume, fast-decision searches. Criminal defense pages capture lower-volume, higher-value ones. Kept as separate sections that cross-link properly, they reinforce each other. Merged into one vague practice-areas page, they cancel each other out.

They shape the claims, not the strategy. No guarantees, no implied outcomes, case results and testimonials only within what your jurisdiction allows, and required advertising labels where they apply. We build to your state bar's rules, and where a rule is ambiguous we take the conservative reading rather than risk the grievance.

The program starts around $1,000 a month depending on the size and competitiveness of your market, covering local SEO, organic SEO, AI search work, schema, monthly content, review generation, and Google Business Profile management as one line. Websites start at $3,000. Google Ads management is separate because the ad spend goes to Google.

The pieces that make up the program

SEO for Criminal Defense Lawyers

Rank for the charge-and-city searches that bring retained cases, not price shoppers.

Read more

SEO for DUI Lawyers

Own the DUI searches in your county before the license-suspension clock runs out.

Read more

AI SEO for Criminal Defense Lawyers

Get cited when someone asks ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google AI who to call.

Read more

Sources & data

  • David A.C. Long, Attorney at Law P.C. : the Richmond, VA traffic and criminal defense firm behind every result figure on this page.
  • Semrush : cost-per-click and search-volume data for criminal defense agency-acquisition terms in the US database.
  • Virginia’s Judicial System : court structure and jurisdiction for the state our anchor engagement runs in. Your county and court pages get written against the equivalent for yours.
  • State bar advertising rules : govern claims, testimonials, case results, and required disclosures. Rules vary by jurisdiction and we build to yours.
  • Savo Group : the parent agency. Family-owned, founded 1999, based in Washougal, Washington.

See what the charge searches in your county are worth

We will map the charges you defend against real search volume, show you who currently ranks and what they did to get there, and tell you what it would take to displace them.

Get your firm's market analysis Call 1.877.362.3077

Family-owned since 1999 · 27 years marketing law firms · Washougal, WA

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