Project overview
SEO-led website design and long-term legal SEO strategy for Wills.org
Wills.org approached Targeted SEO with an established domain, but an outdated website that needed significant technical, structural and content improvements before it could compete properly in organic search.
The project involved a full SEO-led website redesign and redevelopment, technical SEO, content strategy, on-page optimisation, schema implementation, E-E-A-T improvements, conversion rate optimisation and ongoing SEO consultancy.
Over the two-year campaign, Organic Search became the website’s largest and most engaged channel, generating 23,625 sessions, 11,333 clicks and 1.98M Google Search impressions. Organic sessions increased by 56.1%, engagement rate improved by 42.8%, and bounce rate reduced by 21.7%.
For a highly competitive legal SEO market, where online wills, probate and estate planning searches are dominated by large providers and authoritative legal websites, the campaign helped place Wills.org in a much stronger position for long-term organic growth.
About Wills.org & MW Legal
Wills.org is an online will-writing website associated with MW Legal. The website helps users create legally valid wills online, with services including single wills, mirror wills and other will-related products. The site also provides guidance around estate planning, deed of variation, protective property trusts, powers of attorney and related legal topics.
For users, writing a will online can feel like a sensitive and sometimes difficult decision. They need the process to feel simple, secure and trustworthy. They also need clear information about which type of will is right for them, what happens if they die without a will, and how their wishes can be protected.
This made trust a central part of the SEO strategy. The website needed to perform well in search, but it also needed to reassure users once they arrived.
The Challenge
The original website had potential, but it was not in the right condition to support a long-term SEO strategy.
When we reviewed the site, it was clear that the domain had existing authority and some keyword visibility. However, the website itself needed a significant technical and structural overhaul.
The original site was built using outdated technology, including an old page builder and a large number of plugins. The backend was bloated, with too many active plugins, outdated software and technical issues that could affect performance, security and future development.
There were also crawlability issues. The website structure was not as clear as it needed to be, and there were 404s, redirects and hierarchy issues that could make it harder for Google to understand the site properly.
From a content perspective, the site had some existing visibility, but it needed stronger topical coverage. Ranking for broad terms such as “online wills”, “will writing service” and “online will UK” is extremely competitive. To grow sustainably, the website needed to target both commercial and informational search intent.
This meant finding opportunities across:
- Online wills
- Mirror wills
- Joint wills
- Deed of variation
- Probate
- Protective property trusts
- Tenants in common
- Lasting power of attorney
- Estate planning
- Family and asset protection
- Common questions about writing a will.
The challenge was to rebuild the website properly, protect and improve existing visibility, and then grow the site’s authority through content and technical optimisation.
What we delivered
Our Legal SEO & Website Strategy
For Wills.org, we recommended starting with the website itself. There was no point investing heavily in long-term content if the site’s technical foundations were holding it back. The first priority was to create a stronger, faster, more reliable and more search-friendly website.
The strategy focused on five core areas:
- Redeveloping the website with SEO at the forefront
- Improving technical SEO and crawlability
- Expanding topical coverage across wills, probate and trusts
- Strengthening trust signals and E-E-A-T
- Improving conversion pathways for users ready to create a will.
This approach allowed us to treat the website as a long-term business asset, not just a brochure site.
SEO-Led WordPress Website Redesign
The first major stage was designing and developing a new website. The previous website looked dated and relied heavily on older design elements. It did not fully communicate trust, clarity or professionalism, which are all essential in legal and estate planning services.
We redesigned and redeveloped the website using WordPress, creating a cleaner, more modern and more search-friendly platform. The new design used a clearer structure, improved page layouts, more engaging visuals, stronger calls to action and better content formatting. We also introduced more helpful page elements, including contact forms, table of contents sections, featured images, improved internal linking and clearer service pathways.
The goal was to make the website easier to use and easier for Google to understand. This was particularly important because users looking for online wills need reassurance. The website had to explain legal topics clearly, answer common questions and help users feel confident taking the next step.
Technical SEO Foundations
Technical SEO was a major part of the project. The original site had too many plugins, outdated technology and crawlability issues. This created risks around performance, security, indexing and future SEO growth.
Our technical SEO work included:
- Rebuilding the website on a cleaner WordPress setup
- Reducing technical bloat
- Improving the site structure
- Reviewing redirects and crawlability
- Improving page hierarchy
- Configuring SEO plugins correctly
- Optimising metadata
- Implementing schema markup
- Improving site speed and performance
- Setting up Google Analytics and Google Search Console
- Hosting and managing the website on Targeted SEO’s dedicated server
This gave the website a stronger foundation for long-term content growth. It also meant that future SEO work could build on a stable platform, rather than being held back by outdated technology or technical debt.
Content Strategy for Online Wills, Probate and Trusts
Content was central to the SEO campaign. The online wills market is competitive, and many users are not ready to convert immediately. They often search for information first, asking questions about different will types, what happens if someone dies without a will, whether a codicil is enough, how deed of variation works, or how to protect property and family assets.
We built the content strategy around both commercial and informational intent. This included optimising key product and service pages, such as:
- Online wills
- Mirror wills
- Joint wills
- Online wills for couples
- Protective property trust wills
- Online wills and power of attorney
- Prices and will packages.
We also developed supporting blog and guidance content to build topical depth, answer user questions and support internal linking. Topics included:
- Deed of variation
- Whether a new will is more beneficial than a codicil
- Health and welfare lasting power of attorney
- Safeguarding your family home and assets
- What happens if you die without a will
- Common will-writing questions
- Estate planning considerations.
This helped the website appear across a broader range of will, probate, trust and estate planning-related searches.
E-E-A-T and Trust-Led Legal SEO
Legal SEO requires careful attention to trust. Users are not just looking for information. They are making decisions about their estate, family, property and future wishes. This means the website needs to demonstrate credibility quickly.
We worked to strengthen E-E-A-T signals across the website by improving content quality, author visibility, service clarity, internal linking and trust messaging.
The site also included useful trust-led features such as reviews, legal service explanations, supporting content, personal expertise sections and clear product information.
Later strategy work also focused on improving trust even further, with recommendations around:
- Elevating reviews and testimonials higher on key pages
- Improving explanations of will types
- Making service choices clearer
- Adding stronger calls to action
- Improving homepage flow
- Moving personal expertise sections higher on the page
- Adding FAQs and helpful prompts
- Addressing common barriers to writing a will directly within the content.
This mattered because trust and clarity directly affect conversions, especially in legal and estate planning sectors. As the site developed, we applied on-page SEO best practice across key pages.
On-Page SEO & Schema Markup
This included optimising:
- Page titles
- Meta descriptions
- Headings
- Internal links
- Image alt text
- Content structure
- FAQs
- Schema markup
- Review/star visibility where appropriate
- Product and service page layout.
Schema was an important part of the technical and AI-search strategy. By helping search engines better understand the content, service types, reviews and page purpose, we improved the way the website could be interpreted in search results.
The campaign also showed visibility in AI Overviews and AI-led search features. While this area continues to evolve, creating structured, useful and trustworthy content gave the site a stronger chance of being understood and surfaced by AI-driven search systems.
Conversion Rate Optimisation
The campaign was not only focused on organic visibility. For Wills.org, organic visibility needed to support commercial action. Users needed clear routes to start a will, submit a form, ask questions or compare will options. As the campaign progressed, we reviewed key conversion pathways and recommended CRO improvements across important pages.
This included:
- Simplifying user journeys
- Improving calls to action
- Making will types easier to understand
- Strengthening trust signals
- Improving mobile journeys
- Reviewing landing page layouts
- Encouraging clicks through to will forms
- Adding clearer prompts for users with questions.
Later reporting showed that key transactional actions, including form submissions and will form clicks, were rising. This indicated that the website was not only gaining visibility, but also encouraging more meaningful user actions.
Local SEO & UK-Wide Visibility
Although Wills.org provides an online will-writing service, there was also an opportunity to improve visibility through location-led search. The strategy included building UK-wide landing pages for online will-writing services, supported by local schema markup and improved service positioning.
Planned location activity included areas such as Hampshire, West Sussex, East Sussex, Surrey, Berkshire, London, Kent, Sheffield, Birmingham, Southampton, Portsmouth and Winchester.
This approach supported wider search visibility by helping the site appear for users looking for online will-writing services in specific regions.
Reporting & Ongoing SEO Consultancy
Throughout the campaign, we provided SEO reporting, strategic recommendations and ongoing SEO consultancy. The work evolved over time based on performance data, search trends, conversion behaviour and wider changes in Google search.
This included reviewing:
- Organic traffic and visibility
- Keyword performance
- Commercial page growth
- Engagement data
- Conversion actions
- CTR and average position
- Content opportunities
- CRO recommendations
- AI Overview changes
- Page layout improvements
SEO in the legal sector is not static. Search behaviour changes, competitors update their content, Google’s results evolve and user expectations shift. The campaign therefore needed to be flexible, with regular strategy reviews and ongoing updates to content, design and conversion pathways.
Legal SEO Results
When we began the campaign, we launched a brand-new website on an aged domain. While the domain had some historical authority, the site itself required structural rebuild and optimisation, content expansion, technical SEO foundations, E-E-A-T reinforcement and commercial page optimisation.
Over the two-year period, the strategy focused on rebuilding authority, expanding topical coverage across wills and probate, and strengthening conversion pathways.
By the end of the campaign, Organic Search had become a primary growth driver. Engagement metrics had strengthened significantly, and commercial pages were seeing consistent uplift.
The site was in a materially stronger position than at launch, both in visibility and user trust.
This performance shows that the site built a substantial search visibility footprint across a broad range of will, probate, trust and estate planning-related queries.
The average position of 35.24 should be understood in context. Rather than indicating a lack of progress, it reflects the breadth of the site’s visibility across thousands of long-tail and informational queries. In competitive legal SEO, this broader footprint is valuable because it shows Google recognising the site across a wider topical area.
Organic Search also became the website’s largest and most engaged channel, which is one of the strongest outcomes from the campaign.
Keyword Growth & Commercial Visibility
The website also achieved strong visibility for commercially valuable will-related keywords.
Important rankings included:
- joint wills online ranking #1;
- mirror will online ranking #1;
- online wills for couples improving to #5;
- online wills and power of attorney improving to #14;
- online will writing service UK trending upward.
These rankings are important because they relate directly to services users are likely to consider when they are ready to take action.
The site also generated significant visibility across broader informational and long-tail queries, supporting the wider authority-building strategy.
Key Outcomes
Key outcomes from the campaign included:
- A new SEO-led WordPress website designed and developed for Wills.org
- Stronger technical SEO foundations
- Improved crawlability and site structure
- A cleaner, more future-proof WordPress setup
- Expanded content across online wills, probate, trusts and estate planning
- Improved E-E-A-T and trust signals
- Better page layouts and conversion pathways
- Schema implementation to support search understanding
- Increased organic search visibility
- 23,625 Organic Search sessions
- 11,333 organic clicks
- 1.98M Google Search impressions
- 56.1% growth in Organic Search sessions
- 42.8% improvement in engagement rate
- 21.7% improvement in bounce rate
- Organic Search becoming the largest and most engaged channel
- Strong rankings for commercial will-writing keywords
- Ongoing CRO recommendations to improve form clicks and will completions
What Made This Project Successful?
The success of this project came from addressing the foundations before scaling the SEO strategy.
The original website had organic potential, but technical issues, outdated development and limited structure were holding it back. By rebuilding the website properly, we created a stronger platform for long-term organic growth.
From there, the campaign combined technical SEO, content strategy, E-E-A-T, on-page optimisation and conversion-focused improvements.
This mattered because legal SEO is highly trust-led. Users need more than a page that ranks. They need clear explanations, reassurance, evidence of expertise and a simple route to take action.
The project also showed the importance of building topical authority over time. Rather than only focusing on broad terms such as “online wills”, the strategy expanded into related areas including mirror wills, joint wills, deed of variation, protective property trusts, probate and estate planning.
This helped the site build a wider search footprint and appear across a broader range of relevant searches.
Need SEO for a legal website?
Legal SEO is competitive, technical and trust-led
Whether you offer online wills, estate planning, probate services, conveyancing, family law, employment law or another legal service, your website needs to do more than look professional. It needs to explain your services clearly, demonstrate expertise, build trust and give search engines the right signals.
At Targeted SEO, we help legal and law service businesses build SEO-led websites designed for long-term organic growth.
Our work combines website design, technical SEO, content strategy, on-page optimisation, E-E-A-T improvements, reporting and ongoing consultancy.
If your legal website needs stronger visibility, better content and a clearer route to enquiries, speak to our team about SEO for legal websites.
