Setfords Cheltenham — Cheltenham Law Firm Digital Visibility Score

Digital Visibility Score: 54 / 100 · Rank 8 of 8

Digital Visibility Score54/100Rank 8 of 8 Problems found2No XML sitemap found Furthest behind-19.5Visibility: 4 against a sector median of 23.5

Measured 3 October 2026 via the PYC Cheltenham Law Firm Digital Visibility Index. Every figure is objective and reproducible from the methodology. Spotted an error? Request a correction.

Pillar breakdown vs sector median

Each pillar scored 0–100 against the sector median for this index. The final column is this firm's distance from that median.

Pillar	Score	Median	vs median
Speed & CWV	89	73	+16
Technical	88	88	level
Local presence	—	81	not measured
Visibility	4	23.5	−19.5
AI search presence	0	10	−10
Content & trust	70	83	−13

Pillar performance against the sector median. Bars right of centre are above the median, left are below.

Speed & CWV		+16
Technical		0
Local presence		not measured
Visibility		-19.5
AI search presence		-10
Content & trust		-13

Problems found

These are specific, checkable faults on the site — not opinions about it.

Worth fixingNo XML sitemap foundSearch engines have to discover every page by following links. On a small site that is survivable; on a large one it is not.
Worth knowingThe site has not changed in a long timeThe homepage last reported a change 9 years ago.

Where this firm ranks

Ranks for 1 of 12 keywords, average position 44, in the local 3-pack for 0 keywords.

Keyword	Position
law firms Cheltenham	not in top 100
best law firm Cheltenham	not in top 100
commercial solicitors Cheltenham	not in top 100
corporate law Cheltenham	not in top 100
employment law Cheltenham	not in top 100
dispute resolution Cheltenham	not in top 100
commercial property solicitors Cheltenham	#44
litigation solicitors Cheltenham	not in top 100
business legal advice Cheltenham	not in top 100
law firms Montpellier	not in top 100
law firms Pittville	not in top 100
solicitors Montpellier	not in top 100

The gap to the leader

This firm against the sector median and the index leader, HCR Law, on every pillar.

Speed & CWV		89
Technical		88
Visibility		4
AI search presence		0
Content & trust		70

this firm sector median leader

Setfords Cheltenham trails HCR Law by 97 points across 4 pillars, but 70% of that is AI search presence and Visibility alone. It already matches or beats the leader on Speed & CWV.

AI search presence

Named in 0 of 5 AI answers. A domain citation is stronger evidence than a name mention.

✗	Who are the best law firms in Cheltenham?
✗	Which law firm in Cheltenham would you recommend for commercial work?
✗	Top rated employment law solicitors in Cheltenham
✗	I need a commercial solicitor in Cheltenham - who should I contact?
✗	Best law firms in Montpellier, Cheltenham

Lab speed against real users

Largest Contentful Paint measured two ways: one throttled lab run, against 28 days of real Chrome users.

Lab (Lighthouse, mobile)	3.0s	one throttled load on a datacentre machine
Field (real users)	2.7s	75th percentile of actual Chrome visitors over 28 days

The lab figure is 1.1× the real-user figure. The lab test looks acceptable while real visitors are failing Core Web Vitals. This is the more serious direction of disagreement: the problem is real and a one-off lab run is missing it. The metric failing for real users is loading (LCP).

Why this score

What each score is made of. Every input here is in the open dataset, so the arithmetic can be checked rather than taken on trust.

Pillar	Score	Made up of
Content & trust	70	about page: yes · people introduced: yes · credentials: no · blog or news: yes · homepage: 2,873 words · last changed: 3272 days ago
Visibility	4	ranks for 1 of 12 keywords · average position 44 · local 3-pack: 0
Technical	88	HTTPS: yes · page allows indexing: yes · robots.txt allows crawling: yes · sitemap: no · structured data: yes

Key findings

Visibility: 4/100, below the sector median of 23.5.
AI search presence: 0/100, below the sector median of 10.
Content & trust: 70/100, below the sector median of 83.

How this compares to the leader

HCR Law leads the index with 70/100. The largest gaps are: AI search presence (0 vs 40); Visibility (4 vs 32); Content & trust (70 vs 87).

Top fixes (ranked by impact)

Publish structured, citable content and entity schema so AI engines surface the business for core local queries.
Build local landing pages for the core keyword basket to lift organic and local-pack appearance.
Introduce the people who do the work, on an about or team page and the credentials that matter in this sector (SRA, Law Society), and refresh stale content.

Firms ranked near this one

The firms nearest Setfords Cheltenham in this ranking, beyond the two either side.

Firm	Rank	Score	Why it is here
Hine Solicitors	#6	56/100	2 places above you
Davis Gregory	#5	58/100	3 places above you
Pembridge Solicitors	#4	60/100	4 places above you
BPE Solicitors	#3	65/100	5 places above you

Context (not scored)

Recorded alongside the measurement to make it easier to judge, but carrying no weight in the Digital Visibility Score. See the methodology.

Companies House	No confident match on the registered name
Real-user speed (CrUX)	LCP 2719ms · INP 104ms · CLS 0 · does not pass Core Web Vitals
Lighthouse (lab, mobile)	Performance 88 · accessibility 85 · best practices 96 · SEO 92 — biggest losses: Background and foreground colors do not have a sufficient contrast ratio.; Touch targets do not have sufficient size or spacing.; Lists do not contain only `<li>` elements and script supporting elements (`<script>` and `<template>`).
Backlinks	606 referring domains · 3108 links · rank 272 · 6 broken
Site structure	8 pages crawled · 363 internal links per page · reachable in: contact 1 click, about 1 click, team 1 click, services 1 click · 0% of links use a generic anchor
Sitemap	567 URLs listed · declared in robots.txt · newest entry 1 day old

Where to get this fixed

Setfords Cheltenham’s lowest-scoring pillars among those we publish remediation guidance for:

AI search presence (0/100) — read generative engine optimisation on getting named by the answer engines this pillar measures. Background on analysing this pillar: ai search presence.
Visibility (4/100) — read topical authority on why ranking breadth across a sector beats chasing single terms. Background on analysing this pillar: visibility.

How this is measured: see the index methodology, and the statistical methods behind each pillar. This index is published by PYC; if you want this score moved, start here.