How Solicitors Rank for Wills and Probate Searches
Two entirely different readers arrive at the same practice area. One is planning ahead and is calm, comparing and price sensitive. The other lost a parent last week. One page written for the first will fail the second badly. The second is the one who instructs sooner.
Two Readers, Two Situations
One person is arranging something they expect not to need for decades. The other is dealing with something that happened last week. They share a practice area and almost nothing else.
What our own data shows about the split. In our pull of 10,003 UK solicitor keywords in July 2026, planning ahead terms covering wills and powers of attorney carried 167 terms and 82,580 searches a month at an average difficulty of 27.
In that same July 2026 pull, terms about dealing with an estate after a death carried 120 terms and 54,810 searches at an average difficulty of 20.
What that says. Planning is larger. Probate is more available.
Lower competition, closer to instructing, inside the price publication requirement per block five. The smaller half is the better commercial target.
Why one page cannot serve both. The states are incompatible. Somebody comparing providers over a fortnight is making a considered purchase. Somebody whose mother died on Tuesday is working out what to do first. Content pitched at the first reads as commercial to the second.
What follows. Everything below is about one reader or the other.
The Person Planning Ahead
This reader is not in distress. They are doing something sensible they have been meaning to get round to. They will take their time about it.
What prompts them. Four events. Knowing which helps enormously.
A birthday with a round number. A diagnosis, theirs or somebody else's. Buying a house. A new child or grandchild.
Why that matters for content. Each prompt brings a different question.
Somebody who has just had a child is thinking about guardianship. Somebody with a diagnosis is thinking about powers of attorney as much as about a will. A page written only about wills misses most of them.
What our own data suggests about that. In our July 2026 pull, powers of attorney appeared prominently within this half rather than as a minor variation.
How they behave. Comparing, price sensitive without being distressed about it.
They will look at several providers, including the non solicitor options in block seven. They will compare on price because the products look similar from outside.
What persuades them. Not urgency. Clarity about what is included.
What a will covers, what it does not, what happens if circumstances change, whether storage is included, what a review costs later. The reader is trying to work out what they are actually buying. Almost nobody tells them.
The Person Who Has Just Lost Somebody
This reader is not searching for a service. They are searching for a sequence, because nobody has told them what happens now and they have never done this before.
What they actually ask. Three questions, in this order.
What do I do first. Not what is probate. What do I do, today, before anything else.
How long does this take. Asked because other things are waiting on it.
Do I even need a solicitor. Asked more often than firms expect. Answered in block four.
What that means for the page. Answer the sequence rather than describing the service.
A page opening with the firm's probate expertise answers none of those three. A page setting out what happens, in order, answers all of them. The firm that answered them is the firm they contact.
The register this requires. Plain, calm, useful.
No urgency of any kind. Nothing framed as an offer. Nothing implying they should hurry, because they are already dealing with more than they can manage and the last thing they need is pressure from a website.
One practical point firms miss. This reader is frequently doing it on behalf of others.
They may be the sibling who was nearest. Or the one who copes. Content acknowledging that they are acting for a family rather than only for themselves lands, because it is accurate.
The Answer That Costs You The Job
Some estates do not need a solicitor. Saying so plainly, on the page, builds more trust than anything else a firm can publish here.
What that involves saying. That a simple estate can sometimes be dealt with without professional help.
Described factually, alongside what tends to make an estate less simple, so a reader can place themselves rather than being told what applies.
Why it works. Because the reader is expecting the opposite.
Somebody who has never instructed a solicitor half expects to be told they need one. A firm that says otherwise has done something the reader did not anticipate. It is the strongest signal available that the firm is not simply selling.
The commercial argument. The same position we take on drain responsibility in our plumbing guides.
The firm that explains when somebody does not need it gets the estates that genuinely do. Those are the larger, longer, more complicated ones. They arrive from a person who already trusts the firm because of the paragraph that told them they might not need it.
What it costs. Enquiries the firm would have declined anyway. An estate simple enough not to need a solicitor was never profitable work.
The line that must be held. Describe, do not advise.
Setting out that some estates can be handled without a solicitor describes the world. Telling a reader that theirs is one of them is advice about circumstances the page cannot know. This is general information rather than legal advice.
Price Publication Is Already Required For Part Of This
The two halves of this practice area sit differently with the regulator, which most firms have not noticed and which changes where the easier opportunity is.
The position, checked on 29 July 2026. Probate in uncontested cases with all assets in the UK appears in the Solicitors Regulation Authority's Transparency Rules.
The SRA requires firms offering that work to publish the prices they charge, what is included, any 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.
General will drafting does not appear in that list. This is general information rather than legal or compliance advice. Our compliance guide covers the requirement in full.
Why that asymmetry matters. The half you must publish is where the cost question is cheapest to win. In our own July 2026 pull, probate cost terms carried 23 terms and 8,340 searches at an average difficulty of 16, against 31 across the whole workable set.
What that produces. An obligation that happens to sit on the most winnable content in the practice area.
A firm writing its probate transparency information properly is compliant and occupying low competition, high intent content at the same time. That is unusual and worth acting on.
Will Writing And Probate Are Different Searches
Firms routinely publish a single wills and probate page. It is the most common structural error in this practice area. It follows from thinking about the department rather than the reader.
Why the combination fails. It serves neither reader properly.
The page has to open somehow. Opening for the planner reads as commercial to the bereaved. Opening for the bereaved is irrelevant to the planner. Whichever is chosen, half the audience is being addressed as though they were somebody else.
What separating them allows. Each page can do its own job completely.
The planning page can compare, explain what is included and address the alternatives in block seven. The probate page can answer the sequence in block three, carry the price information in block five and stay in the register bereavement requires.
The sub intent worth noticing. Disputed estates are a third search.
In our own July 2026 pull, contentious probate terms appeared with meaningful volume at notably low difficulty. That is a specialism rather than a variation. A firm doing that work should treat it as its own page rather than a paragraph.
How to connect them. Lightly, mostly one way.
The planning page can reasonably mention what happens afterwards. The probate page should not be selling will writing to somebody who has just been bereaved, which is a judgement about decency rather than about linking.
Competing With Non Solicitor Providers
Will writing services, banks and online platforms all offer versions of what a firm offers. A page attacking them loses the reader, who has already looked at one and found it reasonable.
What they genuinely do well. Worth stating first.
They are frequently cheaper. They are usually faster. They are available at ten at night, which a high street practice is not. For somebody with simple circumstances who knows what they want, that is a real proposition.
Where a solicitor's involvement matters. Stated as a difference rather than as a criticism.
Where circumstances are not simple. Blended families, business interests, property abroad, somebody who may be vulnerable to influence, an estate where tax questions arise per block eight.
The point that carries most weight. A solicitor is regulated and on a public register.
Our EEAT guide makes this argument in full. It is a statement of fact rather than a claim about quality, which is why it survives comparison.
What not to do. Suggest the alternatives are unsafe.
It reads as defensive, it is a comparative claim a firm would have to substantiate. It is not something we write. The framing that works is two products for two situations. The reader decides which they are in.
The Tax Question And Where It Overlaps
Estate planning and inheritance tax sit across legal work, accountancy and financial advice. A firm publishing here is writing into a space where three professions all have a legitimate position.
What that means for the content. Stay on the part that is legal work.
How an estate is administered, what a will can and cannot do, how ownership is structured. That is the firm's territory and it is defensible.
Where the boundary sits. Anything that is a recommendation about somebody's money.
That belongs to a regulated adviser rather than to a web page. Our guide for advisers in that field covers the same overlap from the other side. We link across rather than competing.
What we will not publish. Any threshold, allowance or rate.
Not because they are secret. Because they change. A page carrying them is wrong the moment they do. A reader who finds an out of date figure on a solicitor's website has learned something about the firm rather than about the tax.
What can be said instead. That the tax exists, that it is relevant to some estates and not others, that thresholds and reliefs change. That the position should be checked when it matters.
That is accurate, it does not date. It does not require the firm to advise anybody. This is general information rather than legal or tax advice.
What The Page Has To Contain
What happens first. Per block three. It belongs at the top of the probate page rather than after an introduction about the firm.
Timescales. As stages rather than a total, with what typically extends them.
Cost and what is included. Per block five, required for uncontested probate and worth publishing for wills regardless.
Who handles it. A named person, per our EEAT guide, with the experience and qualifications the requirement also asks for.
How to make contact without an appointment. The one this reader needs most.
Somebody who has just been bereaved is not ready to book a meeting. A telephone number answered by a person, a note saying they can ring simply to ask what to do first, then no form standing between them and a conversation.
What the page never contains. Legal or tax advice, any statement of what a reader's estate requires, then urgency of any kind.
The middle one is the trap. Describing what typically applies is publishable. Telling a reader what their estate needs is advice about circumstances the page cannot know.
How We Target It
Two pages rather than one. Per block six, written for the two readers separately.
The probate side first. Per block one, where difficulty is lower and the reader is closer to instructing.
That is a sequencing recommendation rather than a judgement about which work a firm should want.
The sequence content as the entry point. Per block three. What happens first, in order, in a register that does not sell.
The transparency information written properly. Per block five, connected to the practice area page rather than duplicated, with one source for the price.
The planning page built to compare. Per blocks two and seven, addressing the alternatives fairly.
What we will not do. Apply any urgency device to the probate content.
No countdown, no limited availability, no offer framed as expiring. That is not a stylistic preference. The reader has just lost somebody. Anything borrowed from ordinary marketing reads as exactly what it is.
What we measure. The two halves separately, since they behave differently and one will move before the other.
One page cannot serve
both readers.
Somebody comparing will providers over a fortnight and somebody whose mother died on Tuesday share a practice area and almost nothing else. We build them separately. The probate content carries no urgency device of any kind.
What is included every month:
£350 per month, one target area. No setup fee, nothing billed separately.
Ten guides.
One sector.
This guide covers wills and probate. The rest of the series covers the whole picture, credentials and trust, structured data, the compliance argument, comparison websites and four further practice areas.
