Always. You’re reaching two unlike buyers: the estate-planning client is calm, while the probate client is under pressure, often grieving, and racing a court deadline. Separate campaigns give each its own budget, bids, ads, and pages, so neither crowds out the other and each message actually fits the person reading it. Run them together, and you force one voice and one budget onto two people who share almost nothing.
PPC for Estate & Probate Lawyers & Law Firms
Every Estate Is a Case Waiting to be Signed. Your Ads Should Find It.
Two people search for an estate lawyer, and they could not be more different. One is planning, thinking about the kids and the house. The other just lost a parent and has a court deadline they don't understand. A single generic campaign talks past both. We build paid search that speaks to each one by name (wills, trusts, estate planning, probate, estate administration), and we judge the work by one thing: how many of those searchers became paying clients. Not clicks. Not rankings. Retained cases and the revenue they bring.
What you're buying
Campaigns measured in signed cases and revenue, run by a senior specialist who knows legal, with Jason Hennessey (who wrote the book on law firm SEO) leading the team
What you're not getting
No junior hidden behind a dashboard, no vanity-metric reports, no guesswork dressed up as strategy
What stays yours
The ad account, the landing pages, and all the data, kept by you. Month to month, cancel anytime, and you walk away with everything
Get a Free Teardown of Your Current PPC Spend
Tell us about your firm and current ad spend — we’ll show you where budget is being wasted.
✓ Free audit of your active campaigns · ✓ Matter-specific pages for will, trust, and probate searches · ✓ You own every asset we build
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- Law Firm PPC › PPC for Estate & Probate Lawyers
Pay-Per-Click for Estate-Planning and Probate Lawyers
PPC puts your firm at the top of Google the second someone searches “living trust attorney” or “probate lawyer near me,” and you pay only when they click. What you’re really buying is the chance to turn that click into a signed case before a competitor does. The timing could not be better for estate and probate firms. Roughly $124 trillion in wealth will pass down through 2048, about $105 trillion of it to heirs, and every dollar of that has to be planned, protected, or settled by someone like you. The catch is that this practice area hides two opposite buyers behind similar-looking searches. Estate-planning clients act early and think it over. Probate clients act under pressure, often while grieving, with a deadline bearing down. Because most of this work is flat-fee rather than contingency, a wasted click comes straight out of thin margins, so precision in who you reach and what you say to them is the whole game.
What is the Structure of an Estate-Planning and Probate PPC Campaign
Build one campaign per case type and never let planning and probate share a budget. Here's why it matters: lump them together, and Google quietly funnels your money toward whatever earns the cheapest clicks, which starves the higher-value work you actually want. Give each case type its own campaign, its own bids, and its own copy, then split further where the volume supports it: wills apart from trusts, probate apart from estate administration, so every ad answers a single search. Keep your targeting realistic about who these clients are, too. The clients filling your calendar are ordinary families settling an ordinary estate. Aim there, set your geography to the area you serve, run ads when someone can pick up the phone, and accept that a probate caller who hits voicemail is already dialing the next firm.
$1 BILLION in Revenue & Verdicts Generated for Law Firms Through Content Marketing & SEO
Work with Hennessey DigitalWhich Keywords Actually Sign Estate and Probate Cases?
Chase the searches that end in a phone call, not the ones that end in a blog post. A good keyword list sorts by case type (will, trust, estate planning, probate, estate administration) and by how ready the searcher is to hire. Just as important is the list of terms you refuse to pay for, because estate and probate keywords attract a crowd that never retains anyone: students, DIY filers, and bargain hunters after free court forms. Put your money behind searches that sign clients, and starve the rest.
1
What Makes an Estate or Probate Keyword High Intent?
The phrasing gives the searcher away. “Hire probate attorney,” “living trust lawyer near me,” and “executor needs lawyer” come from people reaching for the phone. “How does probate work,” “what is a living trust,” and “estate planning checklist” come from people reaching for information. Separate the two, back the ready-to-hire group with phrase and exact match, and raise your bids where the case is worth it. Probate searches carry a particular urgency (a filing deadline, a house stuck in limbo, relatives waiting on answers), which is why they convert quickly when your ad and page hand them an obvious next step.
2
Which Negative Keywords Should a Law Firm Consider?
Negatives are the cheapest lever you have, so pull it weekly. Block the freebie crowd with “free,” “template,” “DIY,” “forms,” “how to,” and “do it yourself.” Block the career traffic with “estate planning paralegal,” “probate jobs,” and “salary,” and the classroom traffic with “estate planning course” and “bar exam.” Block the services you don’t offer, so a probate search can’t drain the budget you set aside for estate planning. None of this is set-and-forget; new junk terms show up every week, and the search terms report is where you catch them.
Should PPC Traffic Go to a Dedicated Landing Page?
Yes. Never send a paid click to your homepage. Match the page to the search and the state of mind behind it: a probate click lands on a probate page, a trust click on a trust page. For probate, that page has a hard job: meeting someone overwhelmed with reassurance, a single clear step, and fast mobile load times. For estate planning, the job is a trust of a different kind, built with plain pricing, real credentials, and proof you've handled this exact situation before. Give every page one action and no competing links, and tag every click so each lead traces back to the keyword that earned it. Meet the searcher where they are, and the page converts; hand them something generic, and you've paid for a visit that goes nowhere.
What Should a Firm Budget Per Signed Estate or Probate Case?
Start from the value of one signed case and work the math backward. Flat-fee work makes this refreshingly clean: you already know your revenue per matter, so you can set a cost per signed case you're willing to pay, then size the budget to the case volume you want. Estate and probate clicks aren't cheap, since plenty of firms bid on the same terms, so the job is keeping your cost per signed case well under the fee each case earns and moving money off the work that can't clear that bar. The number that tells you the truth is cost per signed case by type, not cost per click. Fund what comes in under your ceiling and fills the calendar.
How Does Hennessey Digital Manage Estate and Probate PPC to Sign More Cases?
Treat estate and probate PPC as a standing assignment, not a launch, because demand in this space shifts constantly. Probate need arrives on its own schedule, triggered by events you can't predict, so we match targeting and ad timing to the hours your intake can actually answer the phone. Every week we review the search terms report, add negatives, cut keywords that spend without signing anyone, and move budget toward the work that converts at a healthy cost. Call tracking and form tracking follow each lead to a signed case, so you can see cost per signed case by type instead of a pile of clicks. The account, the keywords, the spend, all of it is open to you. And since the contract is month-to-month, we keep your business by producing, not by locking you in.
How Should Estate and Probate Advertising Claims Be Controlled?
Remember that the bar holds the attorney responsible for the ad, so platform rules are only half the picture. Most states build on the ABA Model Rules. Rule 7.1 forbids any false or misleading claim about a lawyer or the services offered, and “misleading” includes leaving out a fact the reader needs to avoid the wrong impression, not just stating something untrue. Rule 7.2 permits advertising across any medium and permits paying for lead generation, provided the lead source doesn’t recommend your firm and its messaging also clears Rule 7.1. On the ground, that rules out “best estate planning attorney” with nothing behind it and any hint of a guaranteed result, and it calls for real restraint in probate ads pointed at people who are newly grieving. Each state adapts these rules its own way, so the campaigns have to track the rules where you practice. We bake that check into the build rather than bolting it on later.
Why Choose Hennessey Digital for Estate and Probate PPC?
Pick an agency that counts what you count: signed cases and revenue, not applause-meter metrics. The need in this market is enormous. A 2025 Pew Research Center survey found that only about a third of US adults (32%) have a will, and most people don’t create one until their 70s, so the firms that pull ahead are the ones whose marketing turns that gap into retained clients. Jason Hennessey wrote the book on law firm SEO, and over ten years, our team has built paid search and SEO that convert legal searches into clients, more than $1 billion in leads and verdicts and counting. Our recommendations come from our own research into how firms actually win and lose clients. You see the whole operation, no black box. You stay month to month and keep ownership of your account, your data, and your pages, which means we have to earn the relationship every single month. And we treat your intake and your numbers as part of our job, because a lead that never signs isn’t a result worth billing for.
“My account manager is extremely responsive, as are the writers and technical workers. We have refined our efforts and I am getting an excellent ROI now, better all the time. This company is the real deal. I only wish I made the decision to hire them sooner.”
Verified Review“I learned more about SEO in a one-hour call than I did for the past 15 years with a previous company. I had a clear understanding of what was lacking in my website’s SEO management and how to improve the deficiencies. I also had a front seat to the tools that Hennessey used to analyze the metrics. This was pretty powerful to help me see the technical data firsthand and not just “word of mouth.”
Verified Review“Everything has fallen well within my high expectations. The quality of the product is paramount and it is the single best expense that I pay each month. The results in terms of high quality-leads make it easy to follow what is being done and what impact it is having. I feel like I am an insider in their highly-effective enterprise. I have seen my leads skyrocket in a very, very short timeline, and feel like Hennessey Digital celebrates my wins with me.”
Verified ReviewFrequently Asked Questions
Should estate-planning and probate campaigns be separated?
Should estate and probate law firm PPC traffic go to a dedicated landing page?
Yes, and your homepage is the wrong destination. Each case type needs a page that mirrors the search, names your service area, points to one clear next step, and proves itself with specifics instead of platitudes. A probate page should steady an overwhelmed visitor and show them the first move; an estate-planning page should earn confidence with transparent pricing and credentials.
H3: What counts as a qualified PPC lead for an estate and probate law firm?
Someone who needs work you take and is ready to act, not a browser or a form-filler. In probate, that’s usually an executor with a real estate to settle; in estate planning, a client ready to put a will or trust in place. Follow each lead through to a signed case, which is the only way to separate a genuine prospect from a stray inquiry, then steer budget toward whatever keeps producing the genuine ones.
How much should an estate and probate law firm spend on PPC?
Let your case economics set the number. Take your average fee, decide the most you’ll pay to win one case, and size the budget to the volume you’re after. These keywords run expensive because the field is crowded, so the right spend is whatever holds your cost per signed case comfortably under what the case pays. Flat-fee pricing sharpens the math, since you know your revenue per case from the start.
How long does an estate and probate law firm PPC take to produce useful campaign data?
Traffic shows up in days, but trustworthy conclusions take longer. You need enough conversions to see which keywords and pages are actually producing signed cases, and that usually means several weeks to a couple of months, depending on budget and volume. Early clicks tell you almost nothing. Once the data is in, cost per signed case tells you everything.
Should probate and estate-planning firms bid on competitor names?
You can, and some firms do, but run the trade-offs first. Putting your ad in front of someone searching a rival’s name occasionally wins a client who’s still shopping around. The downsides stack up, though: those visitors usually want the other firm and convert poorly; the price can spike if the competitor bids back; you can’t name them in the ad text without risking trademark and bar-rule trouble; and it invites them to target your name in return. For most estate and probate firms, money spent on high-intent case keywords and protecting your own brand name earns more than going after a competitor’s. We’ll run the numbers honestly and only green-light it if they work in your favor.
Law Firm SEO Results
Hennessey Digital’s law firm SEO campaigns have increased average organic search traffic by 169%, 3X the number of leads, and have achieved a 1000% increase in page rankings on Google across Los Angeles, Baltimore, and other US markets, all through consistent and strategic SEO efforts.
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