Examples of Good SEO Keywords for Attorneys

If you type into Google the most popular legal keywords to target, your content will be misguided. Seeing all these keywords and their high volume can quickly become confusing and overwhelming. Which ones should you choose to secure the best ROI for your law firm?

Continue reading to see our solution to your issue. Then, contact our team to create your custom strategy, and instead of you hopelessly trying to find keywords to write a legal blog while also taking on new clients, let us help you with the burden.

The SEO legal field is competitive. Get involved now.

If your law firm does not use search engine optimization (SEO), you are falling behind the game. This is one of the most important ways for firms to develop leads for potential clients. The law firms that utilize the benefits of SEO are more competitive and more accessible to their clients.

What does this mean to you? Keywords like “Brooklyn criminal attorney” are becoming increasingly more challenging to rank for. Ranking is critical. It means that people who are looking for the legal services you offer can see your website when they type in that query into the search engine. You need to rank on these pages, called search engine results pages (SERPs). Yet, that is harder now to do than ever before.

Consider this example. “What to do after a car accident that’s not your fault” – that’s a keyword that is hard to rank for in 2023. There are a lot of people who are typing that into the search engine who want an answer to it. There is a great amount of traffic for it.

This one shows the history of the keyword. In 2015, you can see there was barely any traffic visiting a law firm site for this specific keyword. Those lawyer websites that started using it then are benefiting now. This is why starting SEO as soon as possible is the best move. It will continue to get more challenging as time progresses. This is a core component of any digital marketing strategy. If you want to get more potential clients to your website and more conversions from visitors to clients, you need to start investing in SEO now.

Discovering good keywords for attorneys

Ultimately, there are numerous factors to consider when choosing the best keywords for a law firm’s website. To provide some insight into this, let’s look at some of the different law firm SEO keywords.

Family law

Family law is a practice area that includes a variety of subsections, including divorce, child support, child custody, and military divorce. If you provide services in any of these areas, you must ensure your website offers insight into these topics.
There’s more competition from other family law attorneys for those in a larger state. The more people, the more law firms, and the more options potential clients have. Because of this, you need to find a way to stand out.

Some areas are quite saturated. For example, in California and New York, you’ll have competition no matter which area of the state you operate your firm. Let’s use a big city as an example. Let’s take a look at “Atlanta divorce attorney.”
This keyword is the keyword you want to rank for in the SERPs. Here’s what it looks like:

What about good SEO keywords for family law attorneys in general? Most SEO agency websites aimed at family lawyers will provide you with a list of keywords, but it’s likely that those keywords for family law attorneys will be too vague and ineffective to try and work towards.
Just like above, you want to be more specific, especially with the geographical region of your practice area. You are knowledgeable! Show your potential clients that knowledge by presenting answers to questions like these:

We’ll find high-intent keywords specifically for your firm. Receive your custom legal strategy by contacting Array Digital.

A common mistake often made is using “near me” phrases. It’s true that there are search queries like “car accident attorney near me.” Yet, this does not provide any real geographical insight. It isn’t providing a location for your content to target. That means that anyone that could be located anywhere might see your website. That is not relevant or valuable traffic to try to capture.
Instead, you need to focus on a keyword like “car accident attorney Virginia Beach” or other local areas to capture the potential leads in your area. This is a core component of law firm SEO. A near-me search is simply too subjective and not specific enough to be worth your time trying to compete against all of the others using this phrase.
Ready to get started on your custom legal SEO strategy? Contact Array Digital today.

Personal injury

If you are a personal injury lawyer, you need to tailor your keyword research to the search volume surrounding this practice area. We know that personal injury can be very broad, covering a wide range of incidents and injuries. Most of the time, accident lawyers will break up this practice into very targeted types of clients they are aiming to target. Their landing pages typically will include the following:

• Car accidents
• Truck accidents
• Motorcycle accidents
• Slip and falls
• Boating accidents
• Medical malpractice
• Birth injury
• Construction accidents
• Other accidents (this category is often used for blog pages more so than its own landing page)

Take a look at the two keywords above. If you are looking at recommendations for keywords in this area, chances are good that you will see most sites recommend that you target these keywords. They receive a large amount of traffic. However, what those terms are lacking is the reason why targeting them would be a mistake.
Instead, consider these better options that focus on local SEO and targeting long-tail keywords:

The reason targeting the keywords in the first table would be a waste is that you’re not likely to move into a top position on the SERP for it if you acquire it. There is just too much competition, and if the searcher is not in your local area, they won’t see your site. Targeting the right keywords with a more local focus will help you in those “near me” searches, and more relevant leads will find your site.

Criminal law

Criminal defense is another example. If you are a defense attorney, you must narrow your target keywords by location. A good way to do that is to incorporate your geographical information – the cities where most of your clients are.
Then answer very specific questions. When you build your SEO campaign around legal questions like these, you give people the information they seek on topics like DUI or theft. You are also including related keywords to your services. These are search terms that people are using to try to find a criminal defense lawyer.

Also, don’t be discouraged by keywords that have a low search volume. When writing blogs, there are numerous questions you can answer in one piece, which compounds the potential keywords for which your site can rank.

Estate planning

An estate planning attorney can also answer legal questions and incorporate them into their website content and blog. As an estate planning attorney, you are going to focus on web pages that discuss wills and trusts, for example, but you also need to target what people are typing into the search engines to rank high in Google search results.
Here are some better keywords to target:

Workers’ compensation

If you are a workers’ compensation attorney, you need to incorporate a focus on job injuries and workers’ compensation claims. Your organic traffic is likely to be very targeted to people suffering injury or illness at work. Your legal marketing strategy, then, should incorporate location information and specific answers to questions like these:

Immigration law

An immigration lawyer is perhaps one of the most common to receive questions long before someone contacts them. If your website can answer questions about these areas, you are likely to get more targeted results, which often means ranking higher in organic search results. Incorporate geographical keywords along with questions like these into your content.

Customized strategies for your legal practice

• Take a look at your firm’s Google Business Profile. Perhaps you are listed on sites like AVVO, Justia, or other directories. What type of topics do you list there? These are often the very specific areas that you provide services for, right? The content you put on your website needs to do the same thing; it needs to target the people you want to reach that are searching for the services you offer.
  You, as an attorney, need to provide the answers to these questions. You can use keyword research tools to gather ideas, but ensure you are not just focusing on high-volume keywords. Doing so does not guarantee that your law firm website will be seen anymore so than targeting low-volume, easy-to-rank-for keywords.
  Where do you get started? Consider a few tips:
• Take a look at your pay-per-click (PPC) ad campaigns. If you are spending a lot of money on those keywords, there’s a significant amount of traffic for them. Look to keywords with a lower price point as that means that they cost less in Google Ads, but they will also be easier to rank for in organic search.
• Be sure you are using tools to help you find questions to answer. For example, you can use social media to find out what searchers are looking for in your field. Find out what people are talking about as it relates to your law practice.
• Make it clear in your blogs that you are not giving legal advice. Rather, you are providing valuable information through your content, and representation can only be obtained through direct contact with your firm.
• Don’t overlook user experience in your website design. You need to have high-quality content on your site that serves a purpose. Otherwise, your traffic will not convert into potential clients.
• Utilize all of the tools you have for improving SEO ranking, including meta descriptions, headings, title tags, schema markup, and more.
• Keep up to date on what’s working, too. Google Analytics can answer many of your questions about your metrics, as can other tools like Google Search Console.
• Don’t overlook the value of link building. Backlinks can also contribute to your success and support your SEO strategy. The more high-quality backlinks your site acquires, the better your chance to rank for highly competitive keywords.

Take advantage of your competitors’ blind spots. Schedule a free SEO assessment with Array Digital.

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Whether you are working to build your firm’s website from the ground up or updating an existing one, our SEO services can help you make the most out of every single dollar you invest. Call our phone number (757-333-3021), or use our contact form now to reach out to us and learn more.