In a conversation with Arthur Rothrock on The Litigator's Path, Kalanda walks through the specific, often overlooked steps that solo and small-firm attorneys can take right now to generate more leads online without spending thousands a month. He covers the SEO mistakes he finds in nearly every law firm website audit, explains why local search is the single biggest untapped channel for small practices, breaks down realistic marketing budgets, and offers a framework for evaluating whether a digital marketing vendor is actually earning their fee. The common thread: most law firms are leaving easy wins on the table because nobody has checked the basics, and fixing those basics costs far less than most attorneys assume.
Why Local Search Is the Biggest Missed Opportunity for Solo and Small-Firm Attorneys
Peter Kalanda returns to one point throughout the conversation because, in his experience, it is the single most neglected area in law firm marketing: local search. The mechanics are straightforward. When a potential client types "personal injury attorney in Raleigh, North Carolina" into Google, the results that surface first pull heavily from Google Business Profile listings. Kalanda says a startling number of law firms either have not claimed their Google Business Profile, have incorrect hours listed, or have left the profile mostly blank.
The consequences are concrete. Kalanda describes auditing Google Ads accounts for local firms and discovering they were paying for clicks from users hundreds of miles away. A firm in Miami, for example, was spending ad dollars on visitors from Los Angeles who would never walk through the door. "You're getting a lot of viewers to your website, but why isn't anything converting?" he asks. The answer, almost every time, is a targeting problem.
For attorneys operating virtual practices post-COVID, claiming a Google Business Profile without a physical address remains a gray area that Kalanda acknowledged he needed to research further. But for any firm with an office, the checklist is short: claim the listing, verify the hours, add images, write a description that includes the firm's practice areas and geographic focus, and actively collect Google reviews. These listings also feed into Google Maps and Waze, meaning inaccurate information can physically misdirect prospective clients.
The Three SEO Mistakes Kalanda Finds in Almost Every Law Firm Website Audit
When Kalanda audits a new client's website, he runs the same checks in the same order. First, he verifies that Google's crawlers can actually read the site. A misconfigured robots.txt file, sometimes set incorrectly by whoever built the site, can block search engines entirely. He has encountered law firm websites that were effectively invisible to Google for this reason alone.
Second, he checks site speed. Google offers a free tool, PageSpeed Insights, where any attorney can paste in their URL and see load times for mobile and desktop. Kalanda notes that if a site takes more than roughly two seconds to load, visitors leave. The fixes are often technical and may require a developer, but the diagnostic step is free and takes seconds.
Third, he looks at analytics. Kalanda finds that many firms have never set up Google Analytics or Google Search Console, both free services. Without them, there is no way to know where visitors are coming from, which keywords are driving traffic, or whether any marketing spend is producing results. He frames this bluntly: without analytics, an attorney is "flying blind."
Beyond those three, Kalanda frequently discovers that basic metadata is missing. Title tags and meta descriptions, the text that appears in Google search results and entices a user to click, are blank or generic on a surprising number of law firm sites. He has also seen contact forms that simply do not work, meaning a firm could be generating interest and losing every lead at the last step.
How Kalanda Moves Law Firm Keywords from Page 15 to Page One
Kalanda draws a clear distinction between SEO and SEM. SEO, he explains, is "like planting a garden" – it builds over months. SEM, or paid search through Google Ads, is "like a billboard" – it delivers visibility immediately but only as long as you keep paying. Elijah McNally operates at the other end of this spectrum, focusing on story-driven content that eliminates legal jargon so that organic traffic converts before a visitor ever fills out a form. The two are not interchangeable, but they reinforce each other: a site with strong SEO fundamentals will pay less per click on Google Ads because its content aligns with what users are searching for. He cites cases where one firm pays $5 per click on a keyword while a competitor with better on-page SEO pays $1 for the same term.
His keyword research process starts with a conversation. He asks the client which terms they want to rank for, then checks those against the competition using tools like Google's Keyword Planner and SEMrush's free tier. The goal is to find keywords with high search volume and low competition. Long-tail phrases, three or four words rather than one or two, are where Kalanda sees the most opportunity for small firms. A solo practitioner in Alabama is unlikely to rank for "personal injury lawyer," but "personal injury attorney in Birmingham Alabama" is a realistic target.
Once he identifies keywords that a site is already ranking for on page 11 or 15, Kalanda's team makes targeted adjustments: placing the keyword in the page's title tag, meta description, and body content. He reports seeing results from these tweaks in weeks rather than months, because the site already has some authority for those terms. For attorneys drafting their own website content or blog posts, the principle is the same: write about specific practice areas tied to specific locations, and make sure the language matches what a potential client would actually type into a search bar.
What Attorneys Should Expect to Pay for Digital Marketing – and When to Walk Away
Kalanda structures his engagements on a monthly retainer, typically with a three-to-six-month commitment for SEO work, because meaningful organic ranking improvements take that long to materialize. His pricing ranges from a few hundred dollars a month for basic site optimization to $2,000 to $4,000 a month for more intensive campaigns that include content creation and broader keyword targeting.
He draws a line on what those price tiers should include. At the lower end, a firm should expect site optimization, metadata cleanup, and perhaps one or two pieces of content per month. At the higher end, $3,000 to $5,000 and above, an agency should be delivering social media management, multiple content pieces per week, and active campaign management. If a vendor is quoting thousands of dollars for a six-page website with no content generation or social media included, Kalanda says that should raise a red flag.
His advice for vetting vendors is simple: get three quotes. He also recommends that attorneys retain access to their own analytics so they can independently verify what the agency reports. The key early metric for a new site is visitor growth; for an established site that already has traffic, the metric to watch is conversion rate. One client saw a 45% increase in conversions after Kalanda's team redesigned the contact form and placed clear call-to-action buttons above the fold, a change that required no additional ad spend.
Why AI Has Not Replaced SEO Fundamentals – and Where It Creates New Opportunities
Kalanda sees AI-driven search, through tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity, as an additional channel rather than a replacement for traditional SEO. He is already tracking AI-sourced traffic in Google Analytics for some of his clients. The websites that surface in AI-generated answers tend to be those with strong structured data, well-organized FAQ sections, and clearly labeled content. In other words, the same fundamentals that drive Google rankings also feed AI search results.
Where AI creates risk, in Kalanda's view, is in content creation. He can "almost tell right away" when a blog post was generated by ChatGPT, and he believes readers can too. His approach is to use AI tools to accelerate drafting but run everything through a human content writer who ensures the output matches the client's voice and actually answers a question someone is searching for. For attorneys producing their own content, he recommends tools like AlsoAsked and AnswerThePublic to identify the specific questions potential clients are typing into search engines, then writing answers to those questions in plain, accessible language. This is where platforms like Legion operate on a parallel track: just as Kalanda's content strategy focuses on producing authentic, practice-specific material for marketing, Legion helps litigators produce practice-specific litigation documents, applying AI to the drafting side so attorneys can redirect time toward client-facing work and business development.
What Litigators Can Take Away
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Claim and fully complete your Google Business Profile this week: accurate hours, a description that names your practice areas and geographic focus, images of your office, and a system for collecting reviews, because this single listing feeds Google Maps, Waze, and local search results where most prospective clients start looking.
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Run your website through Google's free PageSpeed Insights tool and check whether your robots.txt file is blocking search engine crawlers; Kalanda has found law firm sites that were completely invisible to Google because of a single misconfigured line of code.
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Set up Google Analytics and Google Search Console if you have not already, then check whether your contact form actually delivers submissions to your inbox, because Kalanda finds broken or missing contact forms on a regular basis, meaning firms are generating interest and capturing zero leads.
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Before signing with any digital marketing vendor, get three quotes, retain independent access to your own analytics, and ask what specific deliverables are included at each price tier; Kalanda says a basic SEO engagement should run $500 to $2,000 per month, and anything above $3,000 should include content creation, social media management, and active campaign work.
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Prioritize long-tail keyword phrases tied to your specific practice area and location (e.g., "employment discrimination attorney in Charlotte, North Carolina") over broad single-word terms; Kalanda's team has moved client keywords from page 15 to the top five on page one in weeks by adding targeted phrases to existing title tags, meta descriptions, and page content.
Listen to the Full Episode
Peter Kalanda's full conversation with Arthur Rothrock covers additional detail on content strategy for law firms, the difference between SEO and SEM spending, and how to evaluate whether your current marketing agency is delivering real results. Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. To learn more about Three Horizons Interactive, visit 3horizons.com or connect with Peter on LinkedIn.