SEO for lawyers, notaries and accountants

Clients search for the problem and the place: "avocat divorț Cluj" (divorce lawyer), "avocat penal Cluj" (criminal lawyer), "notar Mărăști" or "notar Turda" (a notary by neighbourhood or town), "expert contabil Cluj", "consultant fiscal persoane fizice" (tax adviser for individuals), "contabilitate online". Many add superlatives, such as "the best criminal lawyer in Cluj".

For local searches, Google first shows a map of Google Business Profiles, then websites. Map order depends on relevance (the fit between profile and search), distance and prominence (reviews, other mentions, the website). For notaries, distance weighs heavily: people pick the office nearby.

Legal and tax topics are treated as sensitive, because wrong information can do real harm. What counts is who wrote the page, their qualification, when it was last updated and whether it answers concretely: what the procedure involves, which documents are needed, how long it takes.

You may not call yourself "the best", so you don't win with a slogan. You win with the page that matches "divorce" plus "Cluj" exactly, with real reviews and with more useful content.

• Foundation: we audit the site and fix it ourselves, not just hand you a list. We plan the structure: one page per practice area (divorce, criminal law, enforcement, inheritance, employment law; for accountants, bookkeeping for SRLs and PFAs, payroll, tax advice for individuals), each showing the author, their professional title, bar or CECCAR membership and the last update date. The offer states how many new pages the Foundation covers. Your Google Business Profile is put in order at the same time.
• Local: the profile stays current (hours, office photos, informative posts), and review replies stay neutral: we don't confirm the person was a client and say nothing about the case.
• Growth: guides people actually search for (documents needed for an inheritance, how to file the annual tax return). Legal and tax texts must carry a professional's name, so the byline is yours or a colleague's, after you have read it.

Lawyers, notaries and accountants who see clients directly can also have a practitioner profile on Google, separate from the firm's. We use it only where it makes sense, with a real office address.

Your professional rules are stricter than Google's, and they come first.

• Lawyers: the Statute, amended in 2021 with the UNBR guides on advertising and online platforms, requires online communication to be truthful and fair, with no laudatory or comparative claims and nothing misleading. So no "the best", no promised outcomes, no client names. Cases appear only fully anonymised.
• Payment: a lawyer may not pay a third party a commission for bringing in clients. We only work for a fixed fee, never "pay per client". The CCBE guide adopted by UNBR accepts a fixed fee; a cut of the legal fee is risky.
• Notaries: the UNNPR Code of Ethics allows a professional website, but treats hiring someone, even unpaid, to bring you clients or advertise you as unfair competition. For notaries we only do the technical and informative side: a correct site, correct details on Google, the deeds you handle and the documents required. No client-acquisition campaigns, no low-fee messaging.
• Accountants: the CECCAR code of ethics requires advertising to be objective, decent and truthful, without exaggerated claims or comparisons. Tax advisers also follow the Chamber of Tax Advisers' rules, which we check with you before publishing.
• Reviews: never in exchange for a reward, and never asked only from happy clients. You ask everyone, the same way.

We are not lawyers and don't give ethics advice. For borderline wording, your bar, chamber or branch has the last word.

• Within 2–4 weeks: technical fixes done and Google Business Profile corrected; practice-area pages go live once you have read and signed them.
• In the first months: the new pages start appearing for more specific, less contested searches.
• Within 3–6 months: the main city searches usually start to move. We can't guarantee it; it depends on how many local colleagues do the same and on the real reviews you collect.

Tax guides follow a calendar: an article about the annual tax return goes live a few months before the deadline, not in deadline week, so Google has time to index it.

In legal and accounting work, results are calls and appointments from Google, not visits. A few well-matched calls a month for one practice area are worth more than thousands of visitors on a generic article.