Willans — Cheltenham Law Firm Digital Visibility Score

Digital Visibility Score: 67 / 100 · Rank 2 of 8

Digital Visibility Score67/100Rank 2 of 8 · top 14%Problems found1No XML sitemap found One page from the first1Closest: employment law Cheltenham at #11 Furthest behind-55Technical: 33 against a sector median of 88

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	80	73	+7
Technical	33	88	−55
Local presence	91	81	+10
Visibility	48	23.5	+24.5
AI search presence	80	10	+70
Content & trust	—	83	not measured

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

Speed & CWV		+7
Technical		-55
Local presence		+10
Visibility		+24.5
AI search presence		+70
Content & trust		not measured

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.

Where this firm ranks

Ranks for 4 of 12 keywords, average position 5.5, in the local 3-pack for 9 keywords.

Keyword	Position
law firms Cheltenham	#5
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	#11
dispute resolution Cheltenham	not in top 100
commercial property solicitors Cheltenham	#5
litigation solicitors Cheltenham	not in top 100
business legal advice Cheltenham	#1
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		80
Technical		33
Local presence		91
Visibility		48
AI search presence		80

this firm sector median leader

The whole deficit to HCR Law is Technical and Speed & CWV — 68 points. It already matches or beats the leader on Local presence, Visibility, AI search presence.

Closest to the first page

Ranked between #11 and #20 — one page from the first, ordered by how close.

employment law Cheltenham

#11

1 position sits between #11 and #20 — one page away, and the cheapest ranking work available to this firm.

AI search presence

Named in 4 of 5 AI answers. A domain citation is stronger evidence than a name mention.

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

Local presence

Google Business Profile.

Rating	4.4 / 5
Reviews	211
Locations	1
Reviews in last 90 days	8
Address matches website	yes

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)	10.3s	one throttled load on a datacentre machine
Field (real users)	1.7s	75th percentile of actual Chrome visitors over 28 days

The lab figure is 6× the real-user figure. Both agree the site is performing acceptably for real visitors.

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
Visibility	48	ranks for 4 of 12 keywords · average position 5.5 · local 3-pack: 9
Local presence	91	211 reviews · rated 4.4 · 8 new in 90 days
Technical	33	HTTPS: yes · page allows indexing: — · robots.txt allows crawling: — · sitemap: no · structured data: —

Key findings

Technical: 33/100, below the sector median of 88.

How this compares to the leader

HCR Law leads the index with 70/100. The largest gaps are: Technical (33 vs 100).

Top fixes (ranked by impact)

Add valid LocalBusiness/LegalService schema, fix indexability, and ensure a fresh XML sitemap is referenced in robots.txt.
Build local landing pages for the core keyword basket to lift organic and local-pack appearance.
Cut mobile LCP below 2.5s (optimise images and remove render-blocking resources) — the biggest score and ranking lever.

Firms ranked near this one

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

Firm	Rank	Score	Why it is here
Pembridge Solicitors	#4	60/100	2 places below you
Davis Gregory	#5	58/100	3 places below you
Hine Solicitors	#6	56/100	4 places below you
Converse Law	#7	54/100	5 places below 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	Company OC334485 · 18.7 years old · active
Real-user speed (CrUX)	LCP 1713ms · INP 105ms · CLS 0 · passes Core Web Vitals
Lighthouse (lab, mobile)	Performance 54 · accessibility 78 · best practices 100 · SEO 92 — biggest losses: Reduce unused JavaScript; Largest Contentful Paint; Image elements do not have `[alt]` attributes
Backlinks	586 referring domains · 1573 links · rank 248 · 6 broken
Site structure	Not crawled — homepage HTTP 403

Where to get this fixed

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

Technical (33/100) — read SEO automation on running these technical checks continuously rather than once a quarter. Background on analysing this pillar: technical.
Visibility (48/100) — 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.