I need to open a new office
A second office, a move into a new city, or a merger that has given the firm a presence somewhere it has never marketed. Online, the firm is a stranger there: no map listing, no reviews with that town in them, no rankings for the place. This page is how a law firm builds a local presence from nothing without the shortcuts that get sites penalised, and in what order.
Local search for solicitors is decided by three things: the Google Business Profile, the reviews attached to it, and a page on the site that is actually about that office. Everything else is secondary.
Trusted by firms including
Two ways to appear in a new town, and only one of them lasts
Firms arriving in a new place are offered a shortcut almost immediately: a page on the website for every town within twenty miles. We have cleaned up after it enough times to be blunt about where it leads.
Town pages for everywhere
“Family solicitors in Chester”, “Family solicitors in Wrexham”, “Family solicitors in Ellesmere Port”, forty times, each the same page with the town name swapped. It worked once, roughly a decade ago. Google’s spam policies now name it directly as doorway pages, and the scaled content policy covers the templated writing. The policies are public and the enforcement since 2024 has been site-wide: the town pages do not just fail to rank, they pull the rest of the site down with them.
A firm that has just opened an office has one real new place to talk about. Forty fictional ones make the real one less believable, to Google and to the client who notices that “our Wrexham office” has no address.
One office, treated as a real place
A Google Business Profile for the office, verified at the real address, with real hours and the people who work there. A single office page on the site that could only have been written about that office: who is there, how to find it, what it handles, what the parking is like. Reviews from clients of that office, naming the town because they live there. Mentions from the local institutions a firm naturally joins: the Chamber, the law society, the local press when there is news.
Then the matter pages the office needs, where the town is mentioned because it is true, not because a template put it there. Slower to build; it is the only version that is still there in three years.
The first ninety days
Local presence has a fixed order because each step depends on the last. The Business Profile cannot be verified without a real address and signage; reviews cannot be requested without clients; matter pages for the town need the office page to exist first.
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Before opening
Make the office real to Google
- Lease signed, signage up, phone line with a local number answered at the office
- Google Business Profile created at the exact address, in the firm’s name with the office as the location; verification requested as soon as the sign is up
- The office page written and ready: address, map, hours, parking, transport, the people, the matters, photographs of the actual building
- The same name, address and phone number everywhere: website, Law Society, SRA record, directories
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Days 1 to 30
Open the doors online
- Office page live and linked from the site’s main navigation and footer, not buried under “about”
- Business Profile verified, with hours, services, photographs of the reception and the team, and a first post announcing the opening
- Every fee earner based there has their profile updated with the office
- Local press, the regional business journals and the Chamber told, with a photograph and a quote from the partner in charge
- Paid search for the matters the office handles, geo-targeted to the town, running from week one to bring the first clients in
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Days 31 to 90
Earn the first proof
- Reviews requested from the office’s first clients, by the fee earner, with a direct link to the office’s profile rather than the head office’s
- Two or three matter pages for the office’s main work, with the town in them because clients there have a reason to care: local courts, local councils, local housing market
- A Business Profile post a fortnight: a case type, a guide, a member of staff, a local event
- Search Console checked for impressions on “matter + town” queries; by day ninety the office page should be ranking for the firm’s name plus the town, and appearing in the map results for the main matter
Google ranks offices, not ambitions. A verified profile, thirty reviews that mention the town, and one page that could only be about that building beat forty pages about towns the firm has never visited.
The Business Profile is the office’s front door
For a local matter, more clients will reach the new office through the map results than through the website. The three listings at the top of a local search are chosen on proximity, relevance and prominence, and a new office can only influence the last two. Relevance comes from the categories, the services listed and the description. Prominence comes from reviews, from the office page on the site, and from the ordinary mentions a real business accumulates.
The mistakes are predictable. A profile left as “Your Firm” with the head office categories and no local photographs. Hours that say the office is open when nobody answers. A phone number that rings at head office, where reception does not know the new office exists. Reviews requested with a link to the wrong profile, so the head office gets the credit and the new office stays at zero. A profile nobody has looked at since the day it was verified.
Someone in the office should own it: ten minutes a week to answer questions, add a photograph, post an update and respond to every review, including the poor ones, within the limits of client confidentiality.
- ✓Verified at the real address, with the firm’s name and the office location
- ✓Primary category “Law firm” or the specialism; secondary categories for the main matters
- ✓Local phone number, answered at the office in office hours
- ✓Hours accurate, including holidays
- ✓Photographs of the building, the entrance, the reception and the people, taken there
- ✓Services listed by matter, with a line each
- ✓Description mentioning the town, the matters and the people, written for a person
- ✓Link to the office page, not the home page
- ✓Review link saved and given to every fee earner based there
- ✓Someone named as owner of it, with ten minutes a week
What the office page needs to say
One page per office, at an address like /offices/chester/, written as though for a client who is going to visit. It is the page the Business Profile links to, the page the firm’s name plus the town should rank for, and the page that tells Google the office is real. It should not be a copy of the home page with the town inserted.
Everything on it should be true of this office and nowhere else: the people who sit there, the matters it handles and the ones it refers to head office, how to find the door, where to park, which bus stops nearby, the nearest court and how long it takes to walk there, the office’s own reviews, photographs taken in the building. If the office specialises, say so; if it is a full-service branch, list the departments with the person who leads each.
Then link to it properly: the main navigation, the footer, the contact page, every profile of every fee earner based there, and the matter pages that mention the town. An office page nobody links to is one Google will treat accordingly.
- Address
- Full postal address, map, what3words if the entrance is hard to find
- Contact
- The office’s own number and email; hours it is staffed
- People
- Everyone based there, with photographs and links to their profiles
- Matters
- What the office handles, linked to the matter pages
- Getting there
- Parking, transport, access, nearest court
- Proof
- The office’s reviews, and a line on when it opened and why
- Photographs
- The building, reception, meeting rooms; no stock
When the town is mentioned, and when it is not
The question every firm asks is how far the office’s local presence can stretch. The honest answer is a ladder, and most firms should stop at the third rung.
- The office page
The town is the subject. Everything on the page is about that office in that place. One page, always.
- The office’s matter pages
“Family solicitors in Chester” as a page is legitimate when there is a family team in Chester, a Chester office page to link from, and content that is about doing family work there: the local court, the local mediation services, the people. Three to six of these, for the matters the office actually does.
- The places the office genuinely serves
A client in Wrexham or Ellesmere Port is a real client of the Chester office. The office page and the matter pages can say so, in a sentence, with the reason the firm is used there. No separate pages; the mention is enough, and it is true.
- Everywhere else
Pages for towns the office does not serve from a building the firm has there. This is the rung that gets sites penalised. If the firm wants to be in Wrexham badly enough, the answer is an office in Wrexham, or a consulting room with a verified profile, and the ladder starts again.
If the office came from a merger
A merger gives the firm an office that already has a presence: a Business Profile under the old name, reviews under the old name, a website with its own rankings, and clients who search for the old firm. The job is to transfer that presence rather than start again, and the transfer is easy to get wrong.
The old firm’s website should redirect, page by page, to the equivalent pages on the new one, and stay redirecting for years, not months. The Business Profile should be renamed rather than closed and recreated, so the reviews come with it; Google allows a name change for a merger with the right documentation. The old name should appear on the office page and in the Business Profile’s description for at least a year, so that clients who search for it find the right door. And the old firm’s referrers, who are now the new firm’s referrers, need the same note the new practice area page describes.
What gets lost in most mergers is the local reviews and the local rankings, both because someone decided to “start fresh” with a new profile and a new site. Neither should ever be started fresh. The merger and rebrand page in this section goes through the full sequence.
- ✓Old site redirected page by page, kept live as redirects indefinitely
- ✓Business Profile renamed, not recreated; reviews retained
- ✓Old name kept visible on the office page for a year or more
- ✓Old firm’s directory and Law Society listings updated, not deleted
- ✕A new profile “for the new brand” alongside the old one
- ✕The old domain allowed to lapse
- ✕The old firm’s reviews left on a profile nobody owns
Questions firms ask about opening somewhere new
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How long until the new office ranks locally?
The firm’s name plus the town within weeks, once the profile is verified and the office page is live. The map results for the main matter: three to nine months, depending on how many reviews the office earns and how established the competitors are. A busy city centre takes longer than a market town.
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Can we use a serviced office or a virtual address?
A serviced office with staff present in office hours and signage is a real office for Google’s purposes. A virtual address or a mailbox is not, and profiles at such addresses are routinely suspended. If the firm sees clients there by appointment, a profile is possible but the hours and the photographs must reflect reality.
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Should the new office have its own website?
No. It splits the firm’s authority and reviews and doubles the maintenance. One site, one office page per office, one Business Profile per office. The exception is a merger where the acquired brand is being deliberately kept, and even then the sites should link to each other openly.
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We cover the whole county. Why can’t we have a page for each town?
Because the pages would be about the firm’s wish to appear there rather than about anything a client in that town would need, and Google’s policies now treat them as doorway pages. A sentence on the office page naming the places it serves says the same thing without the risk. If the firm genuinely serves a second town heavily, the answer is a second presence there.
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Our head office has all the reviews. Can we share them?
Reviews belong to the profile they were left on. The new office needs its own, from its own clients, which is why asking from the first file matters. The website can show the firm’s overall rating; the map results for the new town cannot borrow it.
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What would you do in the first conversation?
Ask where, when, who is going to be there and what the office is for. Then check the Business Profile position, the office page plan, the competitors in that town and whether any town pages already exist on the site that would need removing. The plan for a new office is short; most of it is sequence.
Tell us where you are opening
The town, the date, who will be there and what the office will do. We will come back with the ninety-day sequence for that office, the competitors it is up against in the map results, and anything on the current site that would hold it back.
- A conversation about the office: where, when, who, what.
- A written ninety-day plan with the Business Profile, office page and review steps in order.
- If you want us to run it, a start date before the doors open.