SEO Competitor Analysis: What Employment Lawyers in London Need to Do to Beat Their Competition

Looking to beat your competition? Then find out what the online competitive landscape looks like. 

We looked at what employment law firms in London need to do to beat their competition.

Discover what we found out in our comprehensive competitor analysis employment law report. And, learn which legal firms are using SEO successfully. 

In this competitor analysis employment law report, we will be focusing solely on those ranking for the following keyword:

“employment lawyers london”.

The report will cover:

•  An overview of the competitor landscape
•  The top 3 organic competitors
•  In-depth analysis of the top 3 competitors including backlinks, traffic, keywords, content, advertising and much more

To begin, let’s look at the keyword we’re examining for this competitor analysis report, “employment lawyers london”.

Overall, there are 1000 average monthly searches for the keyword “employment lawyers london”.

As illustrated above, the keyword difficulty is 59%. This indicates that it would be “possible” for a new website to rank in position one on Google.

Altogether, the average price advertisers pay for a user’s click on an ad triggered by our analysed keyword is £3.98. And, the level of competition between advertisers bidding is moderate.

As shown, the majority of positions in the top 10 ranking positions for our target keyword are legal services firms.

The Top 3 Competitors

Within the top 10 legal firms is where we find the top 3 legal services competitors:

•  cavendishlaw.co.uk
•  slatergordon.co.uk
•  legal500.com

First in our list is Cavendish Law, with “a reputation for representing employees in the finance sector”.

However, they “focus on employers and employees in both contentious and non-contentious matters.”

Cavendish Law specialises solely in Employment Law services.

Visit the website

Slater and Gordon Lawyers is “one of the UK’s leading consumer law firms”.

And their mission is to “provide high quality, technology-driven legal services to all consumers”.

Slater and Gordon Lawyers do not specialise solely in Employment Law services.

Though employment law is not their specialism, Slater and Gordon Lawyers covers a broad range of legal areas. This includes: “personal injury, medical negligence, family law, employment law, residential conveyancing, criminal defence, wills, tax, trusts and probate, and disputes.”

Visit the website 

“The Legal 500 assesses the strengths of law firms in over 150 jurisdictions”. The results of which can be viewed free of charge using their “Rankings” tab on their homepage.

The Legal 500 does not provide Employment Law services.

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Note: The Legal 500 is not a legal services firm. Therefore, they will be excluded from this competitor analysis employment law report. Instead, we will be including the company in the fourth-ranking position.

Third in our list is Lewis Nedas. A highly ranked and “award-winning, modern London based law firm”. In addition to this accolade, they are also rated in “Chambers UK, The Legal 500, and Super Lawyers UK”.

Lewis Nedas do not specialise solely in Employment Law services.

However, Lewis Nedas provide the following services: 

•  Corporate & Commercial
•  Criminal Litigation
•  Employment
•  Family Law
•  Financial Crime
•  Litigation
•  Property
•  Regulatory & Professional Discipline
•  Road Traffic Defence
•  Wills, Trusts & Probate

Visit the website

We’ve found who the top 3 competitors for the keyword “employment lawyers london” are. Now it’s time to analyse them in detail. We’ll be looking at domain authority, website traffic and backlinks. But first, let’s begin with their domain authority scores. 

Overall, the average domain authority for the top 10 competitors is 33.

Clearly, Slater and Gordon Lawyers is most authoratative. As they have the highest domain authority (55).

Whereas, Cavendish Law have the lowest domain authority (15). Despite this fact, they are in position one for our target keyword.

In September 2020, Cavendish Law had the vast majority of the search traffic for the keyword “employment lawyers london”.

As such, they received 46.85% of the 1000 monthly searches conducted.

The top 10 competitors accounted for 98.90% of the 1000 monthly searches for the keyword.

On average, 10% of their website traffic was generated by this one search term.

As can be seen, our analysis of the top 10 urls receiving traffic from searches for “employment lawyers london” reveals:

• 60% of search traffic landing pages are service pages

Note: Even though it ranks in third position, the Legal 500 search traffic landing page has no content. That is, except menus and ads:

Subsequently, in September 2020, it received 8.24% of the 1000 monthly searches for the keyword “employment lawyer london”.

Average website traffic is an estimated 25,336 monthly visits.

And Slater and Gordon Lawyers received 51.77% of the total number of combined website visits.

In comparison to Partners Law who received just 0.06%.

Again, Slater and Gordon Lawyers has the highest number of top 3 search positions (1,026).

As a result, they have 46.74% of all the top 3 search positions held by the top 10 competitors.

Overall, the average number of search positions in Google top 3 is 552.

Typically, websites in the top 10 search results for the keyword “employment lawyers london” have high visibility. And, have 2% of all indexed pages in Google’s top 3.

The average number of backlinks is 24,846.

Slater and Gordon Lawyers has 74.79% of the top 10 competitors combined backlinks.

However, we’ll look in more detail at backlinks later on.

The top 10 competitors have a combined 223,616 backlinks coming from 5,675 referring domains.

And, Slater and Gordon Lawyers has 51.93% of all those referring domains.

The average number of referring domains is 631.

Overall, the average number of referring domains with an authority score over 50 is 124.

For instance, let’s look at Cavendish Law. They have just 0.90% of the combined total number of referring domains with an authority score over 50.

Between April to September 2020, the top-ranking position for the keyword “employment lawyers london” changed 4 times.

The second-place position changed 5 times.

Likewise, the third-place position also changed 5 times.

Throughout April to September 2020, the top-ranking position for the keyword “employment lawyers london” was temporarily held by:

•  russell-cooke.uk (current position = 6)
•  saunders.co.uk (current position = no longer in top 100)
•  lewisnedas.co.uk (current position = 4)
•  cavendish.co.uk (current position = 1)

The top 3 organic competitors for the keyword “employment lawyers london” are:

•  cavendishlaw.co.uk
•  slatergordon.co.uk
•  legal500.com

However, due to the fact that legal500.com is not a legal services provider, we are focusing on the next competitor down: lewisnedas.co.uk.

Therefore, the in-depth analysis that follows will be on:

•  cavendishlaw.co.uk
•  slatergordon.co.uk
•  lewisnedas.co.uk

Let’s explore the content of each firm.

Cavendish Law’s top page is called “Ex Gratia Payment Solicitors for Employees & Executives London”. This explainer page generates 49.746% of its total website traffic.

And, in second and third place, respectively, are:

•  cavendishlaw.co.uk (homepage)
•  cavendishlaw.co.uk/employees/how-much-money-could-i-get-in-a-settlement-agreement.html (explainer page)

In total, these three pages generate almost 92.16% of the website’s traffic.

Cavendish Law has 13 blog posts that rank in Google’s top 100 search positions.

And, only 2 of these 25 blog posts generate any traffic.

In total, These 2 blog posts generate 0.39% of all the website’s traffic.

In addition to this, Cavendish Law has only published 1 blog post in the last three months.

Slater and Gordon Lawyers’ top page is its homepage. It generates 17.76% of their total website traffic.

Second and third place, respectively, are:

•  slatergordon.co.uk/family-law (service page)
•  slatergordon.co.uk/employment-law-solicitors (service page)

In total, these three pages generate almost 30% of the website’s traffic.

Slater and Gordon Lawyers has 25 blog posts that rank in Google’s top 100 search positions.

Despite this, only 4 of those 25 blog posts generate any traffic.

Yet, when combined, these 4 blog posts generate 8% of all the website’s traffic.

Slater and Gordon Lawyers has published 1 blog post in the last three months.

Lewis Nedas’ top page is its homepage. This generates 11.33% of their total website traffic.

However, in second and third place, respectively, are two blog posts:

•  https://lewisnedas.co.uk/newsroom/blog/corporate-commercial/the-advantages-and-disadvantages-of-share-capital.html (blog post)
•  https://lewisnedas.co.uk/newsroom/blog/property/people-are-trespassing-on-my-property-what-can-i-do.html (blog post)

In total, these three pages generate almost 32.18% of the website’s traffic.

Lewis Nedas has 61 blog posts  that rank in Google’s top 100 search positions.

However, only 16 of those 61 blog posts generate any traffic.

Yet, these 16 blog pages generate 38.13% of all the website’s total traffic.

Despite this fact, they have only published 3 blog posts in the last three months. As such, by shifting their focus to content marketing, Lewis Nedas could get even more blog posts ranking higher. 

Next, let’s look at the quantity and quality of each firms backlinks.

When it comes to backlinks, Slater Gordon Lawyers leads the pack with a total of 167,253.

And Cavendish Law has the least amount of backlinks with 118.

However, Cavendish Law has the highest percentage of ‘Follow’ Backlinks.

And 69% of all of their Backlinks are Follow Backlinks.

In June 2013, Slater and Gordon Lawyers had 8 backlinks.

However, their largest backlink growth happened in 2017. This is due to the fact that they acquired 79,162 backlinks in 8 months between April and December.

In September 2020, they had 167,253 backlinks.

In June 2013, Lewis Nedas had 4 backlinks.

And their backlink acquisition growth was steady for the 7 years that followed. As such, by September 2020, they had 1901 backlinks. Clearly, this firm has spent some time on a backlinkling strategy. 

Despite this, it’s still 87 times less than the number of backlinks Slater and Gordon Lawyers has.

In November 2014, Cavendish Law had 8 backlinks.

As a result of 6 years of work, their backlink growth has been steady. And by September 2020, they had 118 backlinks.

However, this is 1,417 times less the number of backlinks Lewis Nedas has. As such, by focusing on a backlink strategy, they could certainly begin to bridge this gap.

Cavendish Law’s follow backlink with the highest page authority score is 6. And it comes from a business directory: wokingham-berks.com.

Wokingham-berks.com has a domain authority score of 14.

And this backlink leads to Cavendish Law’s homepage.

Slater and Gordon Lawyers’ follow backlink with the highest page authority score is 71. But, it comes from an unusual looking directory. The link is “Top One Million Ranked Websites” on the website, 57883.net

However, despite looking unusual, 57883.net has a domain authority of 44.

And this backlink leads to Slater and Gordon Lawyers’ homepage.

Lewis Nedas’ follow backlink with the highest page authority score is 62. It comes from a legal blog: babybarista.com.

And Babybarista.com has a domain authority of 28.

BabyBarista is “a fictional account of a junior barrister practising at the English Bar.” And, it was also listed as part of The Guardian’s Law pages until 2012. 

Unfortunately, this link now leads to a 404 error page.

In February 2013, Slater and Gordon had 3,606 monthly visits.

By September 2020, their monthly visits had increased by 2849% to 106,360 monthly visits.

In January 2016, Lewis Nedas had 130 monthly visits.

By September 2020, their monthly visits had increased 4805% to 6377.

However, their website was receiving almost 100,000 fewer monthly visits compared to Slater and Gordon Lawyers.

In May 2017, Cavendish Law had 10 monthly visits.

By September 2020, their monthly visits had increased 15,310% to 1,541.

And, this is more than three times the growth rate that Lewis Nedas had over 4 years.

However, this is almost 5,000 fewer monthly visits than Lewis Nedas.

Out of the top 3 competitors for the keyword “employment lawyers london”, only one is investing in paid advertising.

And, since January 2015, Slater and Gordon’s estimated paid search traffic has steadily increased:

Overall, this investment in paid search traffic had a direct impact on the number of keywords they rank for. Especially, those in the top 3 Google ranking positions.

Out of the top 3 competitors for the keyword “employment lawyers london”, again only one is investing in display advertising.

And of course, it’s Slater and Gordon Lawyers.

But who are they targeting? Well, their display ads are aimed at men aged between 25 and 34 years old.

Slater and Gordon Lawyers places its display ads in 46 countries around the world. 

However, the top 2 countries where they display their ads are:

•  United Kingdom (49% of their display ads)
•  Portugal (34% of their display ads)

In addition to this, the vast majority of their display ads are text ads (89%).

In conclusion, our SEO competitor analysis employment law report highlights lots of opportunities for employment lawyers in London.

Naturally there is a disparity in scale between some of the firms we have looked at. However, by presenting the data in this report, other law firms, and indeed other businesses and brands, can learn from their successes and failures.

And, while firms such as Slater and Gordon and Cavendish Law currently rank high, this doesn’t mean they always will. For instance, there is potential for their competitor’s to take advantage of their weaknesses. And, in the case of Slater and Gordon, the chance to utilise paid advertising too.

For the most part, by replicating the success of these top 3 firms, other competitors can benefit. So, if you’re an employment law specialist, use our SEO competitor analysis to help you position yourself. And start ranking higher.

Overall, our reports can help companies learn exactly why their competition is ranking higher than them. As a result, they can begin to build a marketing plan that actually works.

If you would like a detailed SEO competitor analysis report of your own, get in touch.

Alternatively, we can help you to build a marketing plan that works for you.

If you found this SEO competitor analysis employment law report interesting, why not check out more? You might like to read our free weekly website analysis articles. Or our competitor analysis on Slater and Gordon vs Crisp & Co Solicitors.