Employment law SEO: a guide for firms acting for employees, employers or both

Two audiences typing the same words

Every other practice area has a client and an opponent who are different kinds of people. In employment law they are both potential clients of the same firm, often the same department, and they search with the same vocabulary. Someone who types “redundancy consultation” might be a shop-floor worker who has just been told, or the HR manager who has to tell forty people next week. The page that ranks will be read by both, and a page written for one reads badly to the other.

Google’s results for the bare terms show how it resolves this: for “unfair dismissal”, “constructive dismissal”, “grievance” and most others, page one is ACAS, GOV.UK, Citizens Advice and claimant content, because the majority of searchers are employees. Employer-side intent appears when the words change: “defending an unfair dismissal claim”, “employee has raised a grievance what should I do”, “how to make someone redundant fairly”, “employment solicitors for employers”. A firm that wants employer work from search has to write for those phrasings, and a firm that writes one “unfair dismissal” page for everyone has written an employee page whether it meant to or not.

The structural answer is two hubs, two sets of pages, and titles that declare the audience in the first three words. Our employment law firm marketing page describes the two markets as a business; this guide is about keeping them apart in the search results, which is harder than it sounds and the first thing we fix on most employment sites.

The clock, and how it changed on 1 October 2026

The Employment Rights Act 2025 is being commenced in stages, and the stage that matters most for search arrived on 1 October 2026: the time limit for bringing most tribunal claims was extended from three months to six, for acts or omissions on or after that date.¹ A worker dismissed on 29 September still has three months less a day; one dismissed on 2 October has six months. For the next half-year the firm’s time limit page, its ACAS early conciliation page and every situation page that mentions a deadline has two answers, and the page that explains which applies, clearly and with the dates, is the one that will be trusted and cited. Most will not be updated at all.

The January 2027 change is the larger one for a claimant practice. Today a worker dismissed after eighteen months has no unfair dismissal claim and is told so by every page on the internet; from the new year, a worker dismissed after seven months has one, and the compensatory award is no longer capped. The people who will search “dismissed after 8 months can I claim” in February 2027 are a population that has never existed, and the pages that answer them should be written in the autumn of 2026 and dated, so that they are indexed and trusted before the searches begin.

ACAS, GOV.UK and Citizens Advice: what they answer, and what they leave

ACAS has a statutory role and a website that explains every stage of a workplace dispute in plain English; GOV.UK covers the law; Citizens Advice covers what to do. Google ranks them first for “what is constructive dismissal”, “how does early conciliation work” and “can my employer change my contract” because they are the best answers, and a firm’s page that restates them is a worse copy. The AI Overview that now sits above most of those searches is assembled largely from them.²

What none of them will say is “your claim is probably worth about this and here is why”, “you should resign now rather than wait”, “take the offer”, “your employer’s procedure was defective in this specific way”, or “this is not worth the eighteen months it will take”. Those are judgements, and giving them is what a solicitor does. The firm’s content is built on those questions: the situation pages in Part 4, the valuation page in Part 6, the tribunal reality page in Part 7, and the negotiation content around settlement agreements. Each of them links to ACAS or GOV.UK for the rights and the process, which costs the firm nothing and tells the reader, and the search engine, that the page is honest about what it adds.

Situation pages for employees

Each situation page has the same bones, in the order the person needs them, and nothing else. It is written with the solicitor who takes those calls, in the words the callers use, and it is the page type that produces instructions because it meets the person where they are rather than where the textbook starts.

Settlement agreements: the fastest search in law

Section 203 of the Employment Rights Act 1996 requires an employee to have received advice from a relevant independent adviser before a settlement agreement is binding, and the employer almost always contributes to the cost.³ The result is the most commercially straightforward search in the whole of law: a person who has been handed a document, told to get it signed off within a week, and given a budget to do so. They search for a solicitor, and the first one who can see them, explain the agreement and advise on whether to negotiate wins.

The page that wins it says four things in the first screen: that the firm advises on settlement agreements, that it can do so today or tomorrow, by video or in person, that the employer’s contribution usually covers the fee and what happens if it does not, and who the solicitor is. Below that it answers the questions the person has while waiting: is the amount fair, is the tax treatment right, what about the reference and the restrictive covenants, can the terms be improved, and what a COT3 through ACAS would mean instead. The page is local, because the Business Profile and the map pack carry a large share of the searches, and because people still prefer a firm in their city even when the meeting is on a screen.

Intake is the other half. A settlement agreement enquiry answered the next morning is an enquiry lost to the firm that answered in ten minutes, and the review that follows mentions the speed. The page should say the hours the phone is answered and mean it, and the form should ask for the deadline in the agreement so the firm can prioritise. Firms that do this well treat settlement agreements as a product with its own numbers: enquiries, same-day appointments, agreements advised, fees recovered from employers, and the proportion where the firm negotiated an improvement.

“What is my claim worth”, answered honestly

Unfair dismissal compensation is a basic award calculated like a redundancy payment and a compensatory award for losses, which until the end of 2026 is capped at the lower of a statutory figure and a year’s pay; discrimination compensation is uncapped and includes an award for injury to feelings in bands the tribunals’ presidents update each April.⁴ From 1 January 2027 the compensatory cap is removed for unfair dismissal.¹ Every one of those figures is published, every one of them changes, and the firm’s valuation page should carry the current figure, the date it was checked, and a sentence on what moves it: mitigation, the chance the dismissal would have happened anyway, the ACAS code uplift or reduction, and the reality that most claims settle for less than the page-one calculators suggest.

The honest page also says what the free sources will not, which is that many claims are worth less than the time they take. A worker on modest pay who finds another job in six weeks has a small compensatory award whatever the unfairness; a senior employee out of work for a year with a discrimination claim has a large one. Saying so, with examples, filters the enquiries and wins the trust of the reader with the large claim, who has read three pages promising the earth and is looking for someone who will tell them the truth.

The tribunal as it actually is

A claimant who searches “how long does a tribunal claim take” and lands on a page that says “typically six to nine months” has been misled, and will find out from ACAS or from the tribunal’s own listing letter. A page that gives the quarterly figures, explains that the wait varies by region and by the length of hearing needed, that early conciliation and judicial mediation offer earlier routes, and that most claims settle before a hearing, is the page that gets cited and the page that produces a client who understands what they are starting. It also writes itself every quarter: the new statistics arrive, the page is updated, and a short regional analysis goes to the local press, with the solicitor’s comment on what the wait means for workers and employers in the area.

For employers the same figures carry a different message, which the employer-side page should give: a claim defended to a hearing is a two- or three-year commitment of management time, and the statistics are the strongest argument for settling the weak cases early and running the strong ones properly.

Employer-side search: HR’s questions and the retainer

HR managers search before they ring a solicitor, because the first question is usually whether they need one. “How to run a redundancy consultation”, “can we dismiss someone on long-term sick”, “what counts as all reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment” are searched with a decision pending, and the firm whose page answered clearly is the firm that gets the call when the decision needs a lawyer. The content is procedural and practical, it links to the ACAS codes and the statutory guidance, and it is honest about where the risk is; that is what an HR manager will forward to a director.

The Act is the opportunity. The duty to take all reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment and liability for third-party harassment both take effect on 30 October 2026; the Fair Work Agency has been in existence since April; the qualifying period and the compensatory cap change in January; guaranteed hours, bereavement leave and equality action plans follow in 2027.¹ Each is a searched question with a date, and an employer-side page for each, written by the solicitor who is advising clients on it and updated as the regulations and codes arrive, builds the firm’s authority with exactly the people who buy retainers. The same pages become the briefing, the webinar and the LinkedIn post; search is where they are found by the employers the firm has not met yet.

Employer-side search is regional in a way employee search is not. “Employment law solicitors for employers Manchester” is searched by a finance director who wants a firm they can visit, and the competition is the regional commercial firms and the HR consultancies that bundle legal advice into a subscription. The firm’s page competes on the depth of the employer content behind it and on the named solicitors who will answer the phone.

Structuring a two-sided employment site

The two hubs never link across to each other’s situation pages, and the navigation makes the person choose a side on arrival. That sounds like a small point and it is the difference between a site that ranks for both audiences and one that ranks for neither, because Google reads the site’s internal structure as a statement of what each page is for.

Prices, funding and the “employer pays” claim

Employment tribunal claims for unfair or wrongful dismissal are among the services for which the Transparency Rules require a firm to publish its prices, with the disbursements, the stages included, the timescales and the people.⁶ Built as a page, with the ranges and the stages explained by the solicitor, it answers “how much does an employment solicitor cost” and “how much does it cost to take my employer to tribunal”, and it screens: a worker with a claim worth two thousand pounds sees what a contested claim would cost and makes a sensible decision before calling.

Two funding questions are searched often enough to deserve their own pages. Legal expenses insurance attached to home or motor policies covers a large number of employment claims, and the insured has freedom to choose their own solicitor once proceedings are contemplated, which most policyholders do not know and most insurers do not volunteer.⁷ And damages-based agreements, the employment version of no win no fee, are capped at 35 per cent of the sum recovered and must meet the formal requirements of the 2013 Regulations; a page that offers no win no fee without explaining what it means in a tribunal is both inaccurate and, in our experience, a source of complaints.⁸ The settlement agreement fee contribution is the third: what the employer typically pays, what the firm charges, and what happens when the two differ.

Trust signals, including the judgments that are already public

Since February 2017 employment tribunal judgments in England, Wales and Scotland have been published on GOV.UK, searchable by party, and they name the representatives.⁹ That gives an employment practice something no other consumer practice area has: a public record of the cases it has run and the outcomes, that a client can check. A solicitor’s profile that lists their reported cases, with a sentence on each and a link to the judgment, is verifiable expertise of exactly the kind Google’s guidelines describe and a prospective client, on either side, is looking for.¹⁰ The same cases, anonymised where the client would prefer, are the examples on the situation pages.

Membership of the Employment Lawyers Association, rankings in the legal directories, and the sectors each solicitor knows belong on the profiles too, and so does the side they act for, because an HR director wants to know the firm defends claims and a dismissed worker wants to know it brings them. Reviews follow the same split: employee reviews are personal and usually about the settlement agreement or the outcome; employer reviews are about responsiveness over years. Both are governed by the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 and both should be collected through a process the firm could describe to the CMA.¹¹

Links and authority for an employment practice

An employment solicitor who speaks at a CIPD branch meeting, writes the employment law update for a chamber of commerce, or runs the annual briefing for a trade association is already doing the work that earns links; the only change is to ask for the link to the firm’s explainer rather than to its home page, and to publish the explainer first. Those organisations need a clear, dated account of each change to the Act for their members, and the firm that provides it becomes the one they cite every time.

On the employee side the partners are the charities whose helplines send people to solicitors: the maternity and pregnancy campaigns, the whistleblowing charity, the disability and mental health organisations that advise on work. A resource written for their audience, hosted by them, with the firm named as author, is the kind of link that no directory can provide. The tribunal statistics complete the picture: a regional analysis each quarter of waiting times and claim numbers, with the solicitor’s comment, is a story the regional business press runs, and it comes round four times a year.

Measuring both sides

The employee chain starts with a question no other practice area has to ask first: is the claim in time. For the next six months that question has two answers, and the proportion of enquiries that are out of time, by source and by page, tells the firm whether its deadline content is doing its job. After that: consultations booked and attended, instructions by situation, and settlement agreements advised, with the fee recovered from the employer. Settlement agreements are reported separately because their economics and their speed are different from everything else, and because a page that produces thirty of them a month is doing a different job from one that produces two discrimination claims.

The employer chain is slower and the numbers are smaller: enquiries from HR and directors, by source and by page; meetings; matters opened; and retainers won, with their annual value. A single retainer from an employer-side page can be worth more than a quarter’s settlement agreements, and a report that averages the two will tell the partners that the employer content is failing when it is the most valuable work the site produces. Our page on knowing whether marketing is working covers the tracking that keeps them apart.

Mistakes we see on employment sites

• One “unfair dismissal” page for both audiences. Written for the employee, read by the employer, ranking for neither. Split it.
• Time limit pages that are already wrong. Three months less a day stated as the only rule, three weeks after the six-month limit arrived.
• Causes of action as the navigation. “Constructive dismissal”, “TUPE”, “whistleblowing” as menu items, when the searches are situations.
• A settlement agreement page with no speed on it. No hours, no “today”, no fee explanation, no named solicitor; the search is won by the firm that says all four.
• Compensation figures from two years ago. The cap, the bands and the statutory figures change every April; an undated figure is a wrong figure.
• “No win no fee” without the DBA rules. Inaccurate, and a complaint waiting to happen.
• Tribunal timescales from 2019. “Six to nine months” on a page about a system listing into 2029.
• Employer content that is really employee content. An “employers” page that explains workers’ rights rather than how to run a process lawfully.
• Reported cases nowhere. Public judgments with the firm’s name on them, unused on the site.
• AI-drafted law. Qualifying periods, caps and limits stated as they were when the model was trained. Every figure checked by a solicitor against the current law and dated, as Google’s guidance and the SRA’s accuracy rule both require.¹⁰

The first ninety days

Questions employment teams ask

• We act mostly for employers. Is employee-side search worth having at all?

  Settlement agreements, yes, almost always: the employer pays, the work is quick, and conflicts are manageable. Beyond that it depends on the firm’s appetite and its conflict position; many employer-side firms take employee work selectively and the site should reflect the policy honestly.

• How do we rank for “unfair dismissal” on the employer side?

  You do not, for the bare term; it belongs to the employee audience and the free advisers. You rank for “defending an unfair dismissal claim” and “employee claiming unfair dismissal what happens”, which is what employers actually type.

• Should we rewrite everything for the Employment Rights Act?

  Every page that mentions a time limit, a qualifying period, a cap or a procedure the Act changes, yes, dated, before each commencement date. The rest can wait. The Act’s calendar is the content calendar for the next two years.

• Is it worth writing about the tribunal backlog?

  Yes. It is the honest answer to the most searched process question, the Ministry of Justice gives you new figures every quarter, and it is the best argument for the settlement work the firm wants.

• Can we publish the figures for what claims are worth?

  Yes, with the current statutory figures, the date, and the deductions and realities explained. What you cannot do is give a figure as a prediction for a reader’s case or leave last year’s numbers up.

• How quickly does employment SEO produce instructions?

  Settlement agreement pages can produce enquiries within weeks if the Business Profile and intake are right. Situation pages take three to six months to rank and then become the main source of claimant instructions. Employer retainers take longer and last for years.

• Does the firm need a page for every cause of action?

  No. Causes of action are sections within situation pages, because nobody searches for them until a solicitor has named them. One good page on constructive dismissal as a situation beats a page on the law of constructive dismissal.

• Can we use AI to keep the content current?

  To draft, with a solicitor checking every figure and date against the current law before publication. The Act’s staged commencement is exactly the situation in which an AI tool states the old law as current.