Keyword research for law firms: a step-by-step guide

Part of the Law Firm SEO guide. This article is one chapter — start with the pillar guide for the full picture, or read on for this piece of it.

01Why Keyword Research Is the First Step in Law Firm SEO

According to lawpay.com, Google generated 51,664 leads for law firms in their 2023 benchmark period, outpacing client referrals (47,440) as the top source. Referrals depend on relationships; search depends on visibility.

Our pillar guide on law firm SEO lays out the full SEO strategy for law firms; this article focuses on the first and most important step inside it; figuring out which keywords you should pursue.
You'll leave with a method for evaluating whether a keyword is worth targeting, and a content architecture that maps each term to the right page type.

02How to Evaluate Keywords: The Three Filters That Matter

There are three filters that matter when assessing if a keyword is worth pursuing: search volume, difficulty, and search intent.

Volume

Volume tells you whether anyone is searching for the phrase at all. Low volume isn't automatically a disqualifier. A term with 50 monthly searches from people ready to hire an estate planning attorney beats a term with 5,000 monthly searches from people who just want a definition.

Keyword difficulty

Keyword difficulty measures how many strong, established sites are already competing for the phrase. Competitive keywords require more unique content to rank higher in the search results, higher trust from google, which can take years to achieve.

Search intent

Search intent is where most keyword guides stop short. Intent in SEO usually designates where the searcher is in their decision process, and getting it wrong means you build the wrong page entirely. The four types that matter for law firms:

• Informational: "what is a retainer fee?" The person wants an explanation, not a lawyer yet. A blog post earns this traffic.
• Navigational: searches for your firm by name. These people already know you; optimize your homepage and Google Business Profile.
• Commercial: "best family law attorneys in Chicago." The person is comparing options. A strong service page with credentials and reviews fits here.
• Transactional: "family law firm near me." The person is ready to call. This needs a local service page with a clear CTA, not an article.

When elaborating your keyword strategy, understanding the intent behind each search will help you write content that's actually relevant to the reader and will drive conversion when appropriate. 

The fastest intent check costs nothing: Google the phrase yourself and read what the top results actually are.

03The Three Keyword Types Every Law Firm Needs

Understanding which keyword tiers exist, and what each one does for your pipeline, is essential in order to elaborate an optimal keyword list:

• Practice-area keywords: "divorce lawyer", "personal injury attorney"... Carry high volume and strong commercial intent. They anchor your service pages and tell Google what you do. The catch: everyone targets them, so competition is brutal and ranking takes time.
• Local keywords: "divorce lawyer in Seattle", "personal injury law firm near me"... Narrow the field considerably. In addition to limiting competition to local firms only, local search terms convert at a higher rate than broad equivalents because the searcher is ready to hire, not just browsing.
• Long-tail informational keywords:  such as "how long do I have to file a personal injury claim?" carry low volume but almost no competition. They pull in prospects earlier in their decision, before those prospects even know they need a lawyer.

We can use SEO tools such as Ahrefs to quickly assess how relevant and difficult each keyword is. For example, "personal injury lawyer" has 220,000 monthly searches but is very difficult to rank for with an estimated keyword difficulty of 55 (Hard). 
Meanwhile, a more specific local search such as "orange county personal injury attorney" has a much lower monthly search volume of 1,600, but a significantly lower estimated difficulty of 9 (Relatively easy). 

04Can Your Firm Actually Own This Topic?

Volume, difficulty, and intent get you to a strong shortlist. This filter is what keeps you from publishing content you have no business publishing.

Legal content is YMYL (Your Money or Your Life). Google applies stricter quality standards here than almost anywhere else on the web. Thin or generic content on legal topics faces a harder penalty because the stakes for a reader acting on bad advice are real. That means a keyword's attractiveness on paper doesn't matter if your firm can't produce authoritative content behind it.

The practical question to ask before committing to any keyword: does a licensed attorney at our firm have genuine experience with this? Not passing familiarity. We mean real case experience, jurisdiction-specific knowledge, or credentials that back the content.

A firm that genuinely specializes in, say, maritime personal injury has a credibility advantage on those terms that a generalist firm cannot replicate. Specific credentials, documented case outcomes, and jurisdiction depth are exactly the signals Google's quality evaluation rewards.

This principle is at the foundation of our process at Godaki. We leverage all your past experiences, wins and expertise to build your exclusive content engine that will help us produce content only you could have written.

Here's a simple check before you build a page for a specific keyword:

• Which attorney at this firm handles this matter?
• Does that attorney's bio reflect relevant credentials or case history?
• Does the firm actually practice in the jurisdiction the keyword implies?

If all three answers are yes, build the page. If one is shaky, fix the bio first or deprioritize the keyword until the authority is real, not assumed.

05Step 1: Brainstorm from Your Practice, Not a Tool

Before you open any SEO tool, open a blank document and write down what your firm actually does. This keeps your list anchored to real services rather than generic terms a tool happens to surface.

Start with practice areas. For each one, write every question a client asks before they hire you. "What happens if I miss a child support payment?" is a keyword, not just a conversation. Using the real language your clients use will help identify the correct strategy. 

Next, layer in geography. Every city, county, or region you serve becomes a local modifier. For example "estate planning attorney Cook County" and "estate planning attorney Chicago" are different pages serving the same practice area but volume and difficulty can highly vary depending on the geography.

Then mine your intake conversations. The phrases people say when they call, such as: "I was rear-ended and the other driver has no insurance". These are often better seed keywords than anything a tool suggests. If you've never systematically captured that language, this is where Godaki's brand & audience modeling can help you. Our structured onboarding surfaces exactly those intake phrases and buyer questions, so the brainstorm reflects how clients actually think rather than how attorneys describe their own work.

Finally, run your draft list through Google's "People Also Ask" or AnswerThePublic to catch question-format long-tails you'd otherwise miss.

Your target output at this stage: 30 to 60 raw phrases, unfiltered, before any volume or difficulty data touches them.

06Step 2: Validate and Filter with SEO Tools

Your brainstormed list is raw material. Now you attach real data to it so you can cut the dead weight and rank the rest.

Three tools do most of the work:

• Google Keyword Planner is free and pulls directly from Google's own data, good enough to confirm whether a term has search activity.
• Ahrefs and SEMrush are paid industry standards, but their keyword difficulty scores and SERP breakdowns are worth it once you're building a content calendar. These tools also offer ways to expand on your keyword list by searching for matching terms, which will be very useful when it comes to finding niche keywords worth going for.
• Check Google Search Console if your firm already has content published on your site. Filter for positions 8 to 20 — those are keywords you're already showing up for but not capturing clicks on. The fastest wins on the list.

Once you have an initial list of 30 to 50 keywords, it is time to use your SEO tool of choice to check for search volume and keyword difficulty. 
Your goal  should be mid-range volume, manageable difficulty for where your firm is on it's SEO journey, and, most importantly, the right intent for the page you'd build.

It is important to group synonyms into clusters. "Divorce attorney," "divorce lawyer," and "divorce law firm" are the same topic. One page, one cluster.

Creating separate pages for synonyms or the same keywords is the fastest way to trigger keyword cannibalization and dilute your own rankings, because multiple pages will be competing for the same keywords!

07Don't choose between SEO and your sleep

Are you so busy winning cases you don't have time to research keywords and draft the high quality content your practice deserves unless you give up sleeping hours?

That's the exact problem our done-for-you content engine solves.
We draft your strategy, ingest your unique expertise, and then continuously publish expert-quality articles that showcase the unique knowledge and experience of the attorneys who built the practice.

08Step 3: Find the Gaps Your Competitors Left Open

Your validated shortlist tells you what's worth targeting. Competitor gap analysis tells you where you can actually win.

Start by entering two or three competing firms' domains into Ahrefs or SEMrush and exporting their top-ranking keywords. Then cross-reference that list against your own current rankings. The overlap is table stakes. Both you and your competitors are already fighting for those terms. The gap is what matters: keywords they rank for that you don't, and keywords neither of you rank for yet.

Not every gap is worth chasing. Prioritize terms that are relevant to your practice areas, sit at mid-to-low difficulty, and where the competitor's ranking page is thin or outdated. If your competitor's pages hold rankings but are genuinely short, generic pages, publishing high quality content for those keywords will yield great results.

For example, if a competitor ranks for "how to file a wrongful termination claim in [city]" with a 300-word page. A 1,200-word guide covering jurisdiction-specific filing deadlines, administrative prerequisites, and what evidence to preserve can outrank it in a reasonable amount of time.

Run this across two or three competitors before calling the list done. One competitor's gaps can be coincidental. Three competitors sharing the same blind spot is a pattern worth building pages around.

09Step 4: Map Keywords to the Right Page Type

A keyword list without a page assignment is just a spreadsheet. The mapping step turns it into a content architecture. Every keyword gets a home, and every page has a clear job.

Here's how the categories translate to page types:

• Practice-area keywords → dedicated practice area pages. One page per practice area, targeting 3 to 5 closely related terms. "Car accident attorney" and "auto accident lawyer" belong on the same page; "truck accident attorney" probably earns its own.
• Local keywords → location pages or location-modified service pages. A URL like /personal-injury-lawyer-seattle/ is the right container (not your homepage, not a blog post).
• Informational long-tails → blog posts or FAQ pages. One primary question per post, supported by 2 to 3 related questions. Informational queries are where prospective clients begin their search, before they know which firm to call. That means these posts are the top of your funnel, and could be captured as leads with a checklist or self-assessment widget embedded in your pages.
• Commercial comparison keywords → comparison or "why us" pages (e.g., "best family lawyer in [city]").

Track this in a simple spreadsheet: keyword | intent type | target page | existing or to-build. That single view tells you what to build next and what to update first.

Once again, be careful of keyword cannibalization. Two pages targeting the same keyword compete against each other in Google's index. Cannibalization quietly kills rankings neither page deserves to lose. 

10Your checklist for your keyword research