Google Keyword Planner, Texas, pulled 13 September 2026. Keyword Planner returns no measurable volume for “dallas criminal defense lawyer” or “fort worth criminal defense lawyer”.
What we doBuild the pages around the charge, the court and the county.
02
Your budget is priced against personal injury.
Defense clicks do not cost that.
Top-of-page bid range, Texas
houston criminal defense lawyer$9.65 to $40.25
austin dwi lawyer$22.74 to $315.70
houston car accident lawyer$175 to $414.72
houston truck accident lawyer$226.24 to $1,000
Google Keyword Planner, Texas, pulled 13 September 2026.
What we doSplit the budget by charge rather than by city.
03
Your homepage is a filing document.
Nobody told you which parts of the site are not.
10 days
to file the advertisement with the Advertising Review Committee, counted from the date of dissemination. The information and links on the rest of the site are exempt. The homepage is not.
Texas Disciplinary Rules 7.04 and 7.05(b)
What we doDeliver the homepage as a filing-ready document inside Rule 7.04 ten days.
The full Texas criminal defense briefThe market, the three problems and what we build, with every source
Criminal defense is the cheapest large market in Texas legal search
Texas had 116,127 active licensed attorneys at the end of 2024, up 20 percent in ten years, and the top ten metros hold just over 90 percent of them (State Bar of Texas, Attorney Statistical Profile 2024–25). Criminal defense demand sits inside that concentration at prices no injury practice would recognise: “houston criminal defense lawyer” averages 2,900 searches a month with a top-of-page bid range of $9.65 to $40.25, and “texas dwi lawyer” averages 1,600 at $1.99 to $8.98, against Houston truck-accident terms whose top-of-page bids reach $1,000 a click (Google Keyword Planner, Texas, pulled 13 September 2026).
The smaller markets carry the higher ceilings, which is where a defense firm usually finds room. “lubbock criminal defense attorney” averages 480 searches a month at $7.18 to $76.93, and “austin dwi lawyer” 720 at $22.74 to $315.70 (same pull). A ceiling that high on volume that thin is a supply signal: a small field of firms competing hard for a small number of clicks, and a market a well-built page can enter without outspending anybody.
el paso dwi lawyer (Google Keyword Planner, Texas, pulled 13 September 2026)
no measurable volume
dallas criminal defense lawyer (Google Keyword Planner, Texas, pulled 13 September 2026. Keyword Planner returns no row for the phrase)
The phrase you are optimising for does not exist, and the one people type is not on your site
Google Keyword Planner returns no measurable volume at all for “dallas criminal defense lawyer” or “fort worth criminal defense lawyer”, while “houston criminal defense lawyer” draws 2,900 searches a month and “texas dwi lawyer” draws 1,600 (Texas, pulled 13 September 2026). The city-plus-practice phrase is what an agency puts in a spreadsheet. People facing a charge search the charge, the court and the deadline in front of them.
What we do. Build the pages around the charge, the court and the county. A DWI page that names the ALR hearing deadline, a page per offence class, and a county page that names the courthouse the case is actually heard in.
Your budget is priced against personal injury, and defense clicks do not cost that
Houston criminal defense clicks top out at $40.25. Houston car-accident clicks top out at $414.72 and truck-accident clicks at $1,000 (Google Keyword Planner, Texas, pulled 13 September 2026). A defense firm handed an injury firm’s playbook spends its month in a week, and usually in the one metro where the clicks cost most.
What we do. Split the budget by charge rather than by city, hold the expensive metro for brand and intake, and put the volume into the counties where a click still costs single figures.
Your homepage is a filing document, and nobody told you which parts of the site are not
Rule 7.04 requires a lawyer to file an advertisement with the Advertising Review Committee of the State Bar of Texas no later than ten days after the date of dissemination, with the application and the fee, and Rule 7.04(b) lets the Committee demand substantiation of any claim in it. Rule 7.05(b) exempts the information and links on a law firm website from that filing, with one exception: the contents of the homepage. Comment 2 adds that the whole site must still comply with Rules 7.01 and 7.02 either way.
What we do. Deliver the homepage as a filing-ready document inside Rule 7.04 ten days, keep specialisation wording to the Rule 7.02(b)(1) form, and put the costs disclosure on any contingent-fee line.
Law Firm SEO for Texas criminal defense firms
Pages sized to real demand: the charge, the offence class, the court and the county, with the deadline that matters to the person reading printed where they will see it. Local Pack and courthouse-level signals for every county you take cases in, and the page written so ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews can quote it.
A page per charge and offence class, built from Keyword Planner demand rather than a practice-area list
County and courthouse pages that name the court the case is heard in
Local Pack and Google Business Profile work for every county you serve
Written so AI answers can cite it, with the source under every figure
Law Firm Web Design for Texas criminal defense firms
Hand-coded pages with schema on every one, a 95-plus PageSpeed target, and the homepage delivered as a document you can file inside Rule 7.04 ten days. Specialisation language limited to the Rule 7.02(b)(1) form, the responsible lawyer and primary practice location on the advertisement, and English and Spanish intake with every required disclaimer in both.
Homepage delivered filing-ready for the Advertising Review Committee
Contingent-fee pages carry the costs disclosure Rule 7.02(c) requires
Bilingual intake, disclaimers in each language used (Rule 7.01(d))
PPC & Google Ads for Texas criminal defense firms
Google, Bing and Meta, with the money moved to where a defense click is still affordable and the expensive metro held for brand and intake. Spanish ad groups for San Antonio, El Paso and the Rio Grande Valley. We report cost per signed client, not cost per click.
Budgets split by charge and county, not by a single metro
Spanish ad groups for San Antonio, El Paso and the Valley
No lead source that works from arrest records: Rule 7.03 and Texas Penal Code section 38.12
Cost per signed client reported monthly, in writing
How SEO, web design and Google Ads fit together
We build the pages around the charge, the court and the county, price the budget against defense clicks rather than injury clicks, and deliver the homepage ready to file inside Rule 7.04 ten days. Reporting is on signed clients, monthly, in writing.
02What we do
Law firm SEO, web design and Google Ads for defense and DWI practices.
Every page we build is written to Texas Disciplinary Rules 7.01 to 7.06, and the homepage is delivered ready to file inside Rule 7.04’s ten days. Specialisation wording stays in the Rule 7.02(b)(1) form.
Clients now ask ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google’s AI answers for a lawyer before they click a link. We build every page so the firm is a source those answers can cite.
Criminal defense marketing in Texas: what partners ask first.
Harris County: 25,667 active attorneys in 2024 (State Bar of Texas)
(469) 904-9906 reaches a person, Monday to Friday, Central time.
01What does criminal defense marketing cost in Texas?
The media cost is the part that can be quoted with a source, and for defense work it is low by legal standards: “houston criminal defense lawyer” carries a top-of-page bid range of $9.65 to $40.25 and “texas dwi lawyer” $1.99 to $8.98, against Houston truck-accident terms that reach $1,000 a click (Google Keyword Planner, Texas, pulled 13 September 2026). The smaller markets run higher: “lubbock criminal defense attorney” reaches $76.93 and “austin dwi lawyer” $315.70 on much thinner volume. Fees for the work itself depend on how many charges, counties and languages the site has to cover, so we quote after the audit rather than before it.
02Does a Texas criminal defense firm have to file its website with the State Bar?
Not the whole site. Rule 7.05(b) exempts the information and links on a law firm website from the Rule 7.04 filing requirement, with one exception: the contents of the homepage. Comment 2 adds that the entire site must still comply with Rules 7.01 and 7.02 whether or not it is filed. Rule 7.04 gives you ten days from the date of dissemination to file the advertisement with the Advertising Review Committee, along with a completed application and the filing fee, and Rule 7.04(c) lets you submit at least thirty days before first dissemination for a pre-approval finding that is binding in your favour.
03Can I say my firm specialises in DWI defense?
Only in the form the rule permits. Rule 7.02(b)(1) allows “Board Certified, [area] — Texas Board of Legal Specialization” and nothing looser, so “DWI specialist” and “expert in felony defense” are rewrites rather than judgment calls. Rule 7.02(a) also requires an advertisement to publish the name of a lawyer responsible for its content and that lawyer’s primary practice location, and Rule 7.02(c) requires contingent-fee advertising to state whether the client will be obligated to pay other expenses, such as the costs of litigation.
04Is buying criminal defense leads allowed in Texas?
Rule 7.03 restricts solicitation, and Texas also criminalises barratry under Texas Penal Code section 38.12, so a lead source that works from arrest records or contacts people who have just been charged is a different order of risk here than the same pitch is elsewhere. Rule 7.06 separately bars accepting employment procured through prohibited advertising or solicitation. We do not buy lists and we do not build intake around them; where a specific vendor arrangement is in question, that is a call for your own ethics counsel, not for a marketing agency.
05How long before a defense firm sees results?
Nobody can honestly answer that with a date, and Google’s own guidance on hiring an SEO states plainly that no one can guarantee a number one ranking. What we can commit to is what gets reported and when: a written visibility audit at the start, the build live in about seven days, and signed clients and cost per signed client reported every month from the first month. The clearest record we hold is a California employer-defense firm where cost per signed client fell from $626 to $412, a 34 percent reduction, while signed clients rose 82 percent against 2024. That result is Californian and is published as a California case study; no Texas performance claim exists yet.
Find out what your firm is missing in Texas criminal defense search.
A written audit of your visibility in Google, Maps and AI answers, your pages checked against Rules 7.01 to 7.06, and the demand in the counties you take cases in.
Harris County from the air, one of 254Law Firm SEO
A rebuild we shipped: five pages to thirty-two (California)Law Firm Web Design
Verified result+82%
Verified result7.3%
Verified result5 → 32
Compliance10 min readTexas Lawyer Advertising Rules and Your Website: Rules 7.01 to 7.06 in Plain English
Local SEO9 min readLaw Firm SEO in Texas: 116,127 Active Attorneys and Where the Clients Actually Search
Law Firm Marketing9 min readDallas Law Firm Marketing: Divorce Outsearches Personal Injury in DFW