How Solicitors Rank for Employment Law Searches
The only practice area with two opposed audiences searching the same terms. An employee who has just been dismissed and an employer trying to dismiss somebody safely want opposite things. Most firms serve one while writing content that speaks to neither.
Two Audiences, One Set Of Searches
Two people with directly opposed interests type broadly the same words. Nowhere else in this cluster does that happen. It is why employment content so often reads as though nobody had a particular reader in mind.
What our own data shows. The asymmetry is the finding. In our pull of 10,003 UK solicitor keywords in July 2026, employment terms carried 155 terms and 74,120 searches a month at an average difficulty of 24.
Within that same July 2026 pull, terms carrying an employee side signal, meaning phrasing about being dismissed, discrimination or bringing a claim, accounted for 43 terms and 17,750 searches at an average difficulty of 15. Explicit employer side phrasing barely appeared at all.
What that absence means. Not that employers do not instruct solicitors. They do not find them this way. Employer work arrives by referral or by name, which is why block eight matters more to an employer facing firm than any category content.
The consequence for a firm. The two sides need different strategies rather than different pages of the same strategy.
Employee side work is available through search, at low difficulty. Employer side work is largely not. Pursuing it as though it were produces a page nobody arrives at.
Why One Page Cannot Serve Both
An employer reading content written to reassure a dismissed employee will not instruct. The reverse is worse, because it looks like the firm acts for the other side.
Why the second direction is more damaging. A dismissed employee is looking for somebody on their side.
A page explaining how to dismiss somebody safely tells that reader the firm is not it. They leave immediately. No amount of separate employee content further down the site recovers them.
What firms do instead. Write for neither. The page becomes a neutral description addressed to nobody, which is the shape most employment pages take. It offends neither reader and persuades neither either.
How to choose commercially. Three questions, in order.
Which side does the firm act for most already? The existing book rather than the ambition.
Which produces the work the firm wants more of? Employee matters are individual and finite. Employer relationships recur, per block eight.
Can the firm act for both without a conflict problem? A practical question for the firm rather than for us.
If the firm genuinely does both. Separate pages, clearly labelled, each addressing its reader.
Block nine gives the recommendation on how far to take that.
The Employee Side
Somebody who has just lost their job is distressed, frequently angry, worried about money and working to a deadline they may not know exists. That combination is unusual and it shapes everything about the page.
What they search. Four questions, none in legal language.
Was this allowed. The first thing anybody wants to know. The one a page can never answer for them.
What am I owed. Notice, holiday, redundancy, anything outstanding.
How long do I have. The one with a factual answer, covered in block four.
Can I afford this. The question that stops people making contact.
What our data says about how they phrase it. In that same July 2026 pull, employee side terms averaged a difficulty of 15, against 31 across the whole workable set.
Notably, funding phrasing appeared prominently, which tells you what the reader is worried about before they have described their situation.
What the page has to do. Answer the affordability question early rather than at the bottom.
A person who cannot work out whether they can afford a solicitor will not read far enough to find out. Setting out how the firm charges, plus what an initial assessment costs, removes the obstacle that loses most of these enquiries.
Time Limits Are Real And Short
This is one of very few places in our work where urgency is legitimate, because it is a fact about the law rather than a device. It still has to be stated as a fact rather than as pressure.
The position, checked on 29 July 2026. It is about to change. Most employment tribunal claims must currently be presented within three months less one day of the act complained of.
Under the Employment Rights Act 2025, that period extends to six months less one day for most claims from 1 October 2026. Regulations giving effect to it have been approved by both Houses of Parliament.
The transitional position, which is the part that will catch firms out. The six month limit applies where the act or failure complained of falls on or after 1 October 2026.
Claims based on acts arising wholly before that date remain subject to the three month limit. Where there is a series of acts, the extended limit applies if the last falls on or after that date. Some categories of claim sit outside the change.
Notification to Acas before issuing a claim is unchanged. Early conciliation still pauses the clock.
This is general information rather than legal advice. Nothing here tells any reader what applies to them.
Why this is the clearest verification case in the programme. A firm publishing three months today is wrong for many claims within nine weeks.
Anything a firm publishes about time limits needs a date on it and a review point. That is the whole argument for dating regulatory content, demonstrated rather than asserted.
The Employer Side
An employer is not in distress. They have a situation to handle correctly, several people involved in the decision. A strong interest in not being the subject of block four.
What they search. Process rather than rights.
How to run a procedure properly. What the risk is. What it costs to get something wrong. Whether a particular step is safe.
How that differs from the employee reader. They are buying prevention rather than remedy.
The employee arrives after something has happened. The employer arrives before or during, wanting to avoid the position the employee is already in.
Why the work is worth more. It repeats. An employee matter concludes and the client does not return, which is a good result for them. An employer has staff issues continually, so one relationship produces work for years.
The difficulty, per block one. They largely do not find firms by searching.
Explicit employer side terms barely appeared in our July 2026 pull. That is not an argument against employer work. It is an argument that the site's job here is different: it confirms a firm somebody already heard about rather than introducing one.
What the page must do. Withstand scrutiny rather than attract traffic. Named people, sector experience, described matters, how the firm charges, measured on enquiry value rather than volume.
Settlement Agreements Are The Volume Work
These recur constantly, they behave unlike anything else in the practice. The search demand for them is substantial and cheap.
What our own data shows. In our July 2026 pull, settlement agreement terms carried 16 terms and 9,970 searches a month at an average difficulty of 20, with only 16% of that volume returning a map pack.
That is roughly an eighth of all employment volume in the pull, concentrated in a handful of terms, decided on pages rather than in the map.
Why the search behaviour is unusual. The employer customarily contributes to the employee's legal costs.
So the person searching frequently has a budget already, is looking for somebody to advise quickly, then is not comparing on price the way every other employee side client does.
A defined piece of work, at a known value, from a client who is not price sensitive. That combination is why this is the volume work rather than the sideline most firms treat it as.
How a firm positions on the employee side. Speed and availability.
Somebody handed an agreement wants it dealt with. Saying how quickly the firm can see them, plus what the process involves, matters more than anything about expertise.
How a firm positions on the employer side. As part of the wider relationship in block eight.
An employer producing agreements regularly is exactly the recurring client the whole employer side strategy is aimed at.
Price Publication Is Already Required For Part Of This
Part of this practice area sits inside the price publication requirement. Unusually, it appears on both sides of the divide.
The position, checked on 29 July 2026. The Solicitors Regulation Authority's Transparency Rules cover employment tribunals for claims of unfair or wrongful dismissal, listed as work for individuals.
They separately cover employment tribunals for defending claims of unfair or wrongful dismissal, listed as work for businesses.
What that means in practice. A firm acting for either side in those claims is required to publish.
Price, what is included, services not included that a consumer might reasonably expect to be, the experience and qualifications of those doing the work, plus typical timescales and key stages.
This is general information rather than legal or compliance advice. Our compliance guide covers the requirement in full.
Why it helps more here than elsewhere. Because of block three.
Affordability is what stops an employee making contact. The firm is already obliged to publish the answer, so the obstacle and the obligation cancel each other out.
One caution. Not all employment work is covered.
The requirement is specific to those tribunal claims rather than to the practice area generally, so a firm should be clear which of its pages the obligation attaches to.
Retainers And Ongoing Employer Work
One employer client placing regular work is worth many individual matters. It is also the hardest thing on this page to obtain through search, per block one, which is precisely why it needs a deliberate approach.
What the arrangement usually looks like. Ongoing access rather than a transaction.
A retainer, a fixed monthly arrangement or simply a relationship where the firm is the first call. What matters commercially is that it recurs without being won again each time.
Why search cannot originate it. Employers do not search for this.
They ask an accountant, a fellow director or a trade body. Explicit employer side search barely exists per block one, so a page written to capture it captures nothing.
What the site does instead. Confirms the recommendation.
Somebody told about a firm looks it up before making contact. What they find decides whether the introduction survives, which is the argument our comparison guide makes at length.
What that reader needs to see. Four things.
Named people with real employment experience. The size and type of employer the firm acts for. How the firm charges for ongoing work. And evidence the firm handles the situations an employer actually faces rather than only the ones that reach a tribunal.
The content that reaches them. Process material written for a director or an HR manager rather than for a lawyer, which is what a referrer forwards.
What The Page Or Pages Have To Contain
Our recommendation on splitting. Separate pages where the firm genuinely acts for both. A single clearly addressed page where it does not.
Splitting is not about volume. It is because per block two the reverse case is actively damaging. A shared page cannot avoid it.
Coverage. Which side the firm acts for, said plainly near the top rather than inferred from the tone.
The basis of charging. Per block three, early rather than at the bottom, plus required for the claims in block seven.
What happens first. The initial assessment, what it involves, what it costs, what the client needs to bring.
Timescales, including the limit. Per block four, dated, with the change flagged.
Who handles it. A named person with employment experience, per our EEAT guide.
What the page never contains. Legal advice, any statement of whether something was lawful, then any prediction of an outcome.
The middle one is the constant temptation here, because it is the question every employee reader arrives with. A page cannot answer it. A page that appears to is doing something worse than being unhelpful.
How We Target It
The choice of side settled first. Per block two, before anything is written, since it governs every sentence afterwards.
Separate content where the firm serves both. Per block nine.
The time limit content as the entry point. Per block four. It answers a factual question at the moment somebody is looking for it. It is the most useful thing an employee side firm can publish.
Settlement agreements as their own page. Per block six, given the volume, the difficulty and the funding position.
The transparency information for the covered claims. Per block seven, connected to the practice area page with one source for the price.
Employer content built to be forwarded rather than found. Per block eight.
What we commit to on the time limits. Reviewing that content before 1 October 2026 and again afterwards.
Anything regulatory is verified immediately before publishing rather than relying on what was accurate when drafted. This is the clearest case of that in the programme, so it is worth stating as a commitment rather than a practice.
What we measure. The two sides separately, with employee enquiries counted and employer enquiries valued.
Three months becomes six
on 1 October 2026.
A firm publishing the current limit today is wrong for many claims within nine weeks. Anything regulatory carries a date and a review point. We verify immediately before publishing rather than relying on what was accurate when it was drafted.
What is included every month:
£350 per month, one target area. No setup fee, nothing billed separately.
Ten guides.
One sector.
This guide covers employment law. The rest of the series covers the whole picture, credentials and trust, structured data, the compliance argument, comparison websites and four further practice areas.
