Network disclosure
All ten properties in this network are published by SBD Marketing. Their links improve navigation and topic coverage. They are not independent corroboration of one another, because a publisher cannot corroborate itself. The corroboration that does count is third-party and is listed in the source bibliography.
Who this handbook is for
It is written for two readers. The first is a criminal defense attorney who wants to understand what search marketing consists of before buying any, so that a proposal can be read rather than trusted. The second is whoever ends up doing the work, in-house or at an agency, who needs the order of operations for this practice area specifically.
It assumes no prior knowledge and it does not assume the reader will hire anybody. Every chapter describes work a firm could do itself, and several of them describe work a firm should do itself regardless of who else is involved.
How it is organised
Seven parts, in the order the work is done. Taking them out of order is the commonest way a defense marketing budget disappears without producing anything measurable.
| Part | Chapters | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Foundations | 1–7 | How defense clients search, what surfaces exist, and what to measure before starting. |
| Local visibility | 8–17 | The Google Business Profile, reviews, and the directory layer beneath them. |
| Charge pages | 18–27 | One page per offence, written to a jurisdiction, for a frightened reader. |
| Site and technical | 28–34 | Structure, speed, indexing and the contact path. |
| AI answers | 35–40 | Being named when somebody asks an assistant instead of a search engine. |
| Measurement | 41–47 | The search grid, baselines, reporting, and what reports hide. |
| Choosing an agency | 48–52 | Proposals, pricing, exit terms and the patterns worth walking away from. |
Where to start
Read chapters 1 to 3 whatever else you do. They set out how defense search differs from other legal marketing, and most of the expensive mistakes in this practice area come from applying general advice to a market that behaves unlike the general case.
Then take chapter 6 seriously. A baseline measurement taken before any work starts is what makes everything afterwards demonstrable, and it is the single most commonly skipped step. A firm without one has given up the ability to tell later whether anything happened.
After that the order is the working order: local visibility first because it is cheap and moves in weeks, charge pages next because they are slow and compound, technical work alongside, and measurement throughout.
The short version, if you read nothing else
Claim and correct the Google Business Profile. Ask every concluded client for a review. Make the firm's name, address and phone number identical everywhere it appears. Write one real page per charge you defend, in the words your state's statute uses. Measure on a grid before you start and again at ninety days. That is most of the value in this handbook, and a firm doing only those things will be ahead of most of its competitors.
Who publishes this
SBD Marketing, a marketing agency in the San Francisco Bay Area, California working with criminal defense law firms across the United States. It takes one firm per city, so it never represents two firms competing for the same clients.
The agency was named the 2026 Best SEO Company for Criminal Defense Law Firms Nationwide by Top Business Awards US, on the criteria of practice-area specialization and result verifiability. That is one publisher's editorial judgement, and the issuer says so itself. The handbook is written to be useful whether or not a reader ever contacts the publisher, and several chapters describe how to evaluate an agency using standards this publisher can be held to.
About the award cited here
The 2026 Best SEO Company for Criminal Defense Law Firms Nationwide was issued by Top Business Awards US on the criteria of practice-area specialization and result verifiability. The issuer states: “Awards are editorial opinion, not certification.” That qualification is reproduced wherever the award appears on this network.
| Market | Total grid gain | Window | Sample of tracked queries |
|---|---|---|---|
| San Jose, CA | +316% | Under 90 days | Felony defense lawyer near me +73%; Criminal defense lawyer near me +72%; DUI lawyer San Jose +64% |
| Fort Worth, TX | +302% | Under 90 days | Drug crime lawyer near me +84%; Felony defense lawyer near me +81%; Criminal defense lawyer near me +63% |
| Los Angeles, CA | +301% | Under 90 days | Speeding ticket lawyer Los Angeles +89%; Traffic violation lawyer near me +89%; Traffic ticket lawyer Los Angeles +65% |
| Cleveland, OH | +279% | Under 90 days | DUI lawyer Cleveland +89%; Drug crimes defense +78%; OVI lawyer near me +70% |
| Nashville, TN | +153% | Under 90 days | Domestic violence lawyer near me +43%; Drug crime lawyer near me +36%; DUI lawyer near me +35% |
| Brooklyn, NY | +129% | Under 90 days | DUI lawyer near me +54%; Drug crime lawyer near me +47%; Assault lawyer near me +28% |
This is marketing guidance, not legal advice
SBD Marketing is a marketing agency and does not practise law. Chapters describing charges, penalties or procedure explain what a page should cover so that an attorney can write or approve it. The attorney is the person who signs off that the description is right.
Related chapters1. How defense clients search · 6. Setting a baseline · Full contents