Keyword research for law firms is usually done backward. The firm searches for the obvious vanity terms ("personal injury lawyer near me," "best divorce attorney"), sees that those have high search volume and high competition, gives up, and falls back on writing whatever content the agency suggests. The actual work is in the middle and the long tail, where commercial intent is highest and competition is lowest. This is the framework that produces the keyword list for a new client during the first audit. The pages those keywords become are laid out on the law firm marketing hub.
The three tiers, with real numbers
Head terms
High volume (often tens of thousands of monthly searches) and a top ten controlled by domains with strong authority and significant marketing budgets. A fresh law firm site cannot rank for these in year one regardless of on-page quality. One warning: Ahrefs KD scores on local head terms swing wildly between checks, so judge these by who actually ranks, not by the score.
Examples in the law firm space, with Ahrefs US data as of June 2026:
- "personal injury lawyer" (220,000 monthly searches, a SERP wall of directories and DR 70+ firms)
- "law firm seo" (10,000 volume, KD 16, SERP DR 67 to 87 wall)
- "seo for lawyers" (6,900 volume, KD 19, every result DR 33 to 87)
- "divorce lawyer" (52,000 monthly searches, controlled by directories and large firms)
Why most firms still target them: the volume is real and the temptation is obvious. The agency proposal looks good with these keywords in it.
Why they should not be the primary target: a fresh law firm site at DR 5 to 15 cannot close a 40-point authority gap on a head term inside twelve months. The work to rank head terms is real backlink investment over eighteen to thirty-six months, and head-term ranking should be a year-two or year-three goal, not a year-one one.
Body terms
Moderate volume (hundreds to low thousands of monthly searches), moderate keyword difficulty, and the queries where most commercially viable cases originate. Body terms have enough specificity that the searcher is in market for the service, but not so much volume that the SERP is locked up.
Examples, Ahrefs US data as of June 2026:
- "law firm seo company" (1,900 volume, KD 3, a DR 3 page ranks at position 5; genuinely soft SERP)
- "law firm marketing services" (1,800 volume; KD swung from 4 to 37 between our checks, a reminder that the SERP check in step 3 outranks the score)
- "local seo for lawyers" (2,000 volume, KD 4, SERP floor DR 39)
- "law firm marketing plan" (800 volume, KD 2)
- "seo for criminal defense lawyers" (700 volume, KD 0, a DR 26 page ranks)
- "immigration attorney seo" (600 volume, KD 0)
Why these are the right primary target: the math closes. A new firm site can rank in the top ten on a body term inside six to nine months with solid on-page work and modest link building, and the searcher is qualified.
Long-tail keywords
Low volume (dozens to a few hundred monthly searches each), low to zero keyword difficulty, and the most specific intent of any keyword class. A long-tail searcher is usually closer to hiring than any other.
Examples in family law:
- "seo for family lawyers"
- "divorce attorney seo small firm"
- "family law marketing plan california"
- "law firm seo for solo practice"
In personal injury:
- "seo for personal injury solo practice"
- "personal injury law firm marketing budget"
- "personal injury seo audit"
Why long-tail is underrated: the volume per query is small, but the volume across the long-tail in aggregate is often larger than the head term, and the cost per signed case from long-tail traffic is the cheapest of any keyword class. The reason is that long-tail searchers are highly self-selected: they know what they want.
How to find the right keywords for your firm
The keyword research method we use during the audit:
Step 1: list the practice areas the firm wants more of. Not all practice areas. The ones the firm is actively trying to grow.
Step 2: for each practice area, pull the body-term keyword list with a tool that gives real volume data. Ahrefs, Semrush, or the Google Keyword Planner all work, with Ahrefs being our default because the database is broader and the difficulty scores are more honest. The cap on keyword difficulty for a body-term pull is usually 20 or 30 for a new site. Higher than that and the site will not rank for the term in year one.
Step 3: for each body term that looks promising, check the SERP itself. Keyword difficulty is a model; the SERP is the truth. "DUI attorney marketing" scored KD 1 in Ahrefs but the SERP floor is DR 37, which is a wall. Every keyword the firm commits to gets one SERP check before its priority is final.
Step 4: build a long-tail map under each body term. For "law firm marketing services," the long-tail includes "law firm marketing services [city]," "law firm marketing services for solo practice," "law firm marketing services with seo," and similar variants. The body term becomes the page; the long-tail variants become the content sections inside the page and the supporting blog posts.
Step 5: map keywords to pages. Each body term gets one dedicated page. Long-tail variants either get sections within the body-term page or supporting blog posts that link up to the body-term page. Generic blog posts that do not tie to a body-term page rank nothing useful.
Keyword examples by practice area
The full keyword map for each practice area is more than fits here, but a few examples from Ahrefs-verified data:
Family law (quick-win):
- Body: "seo for family lawyers," "divorce attorney seo"
- Long-tail: "seo for divorce attorneys solo practice," "family law marketing plan small firm"
- Avoid as primary: "divorce lawyer," "family lawyer near me"
Criminal defense (quick-win):
- Body: "seo for criminal defense lawyers," "criminal defense law firm marketing"
- Long-tail: "seo for dui attorneys california," "criminal defense marketing plan small firm"
- Avoid as primary: "criminal defense lawyer," "dui lawyer near me"
Immigration (quick-win):
- Body: "immigration attorney seo," "immigration law firm marketing"
- Long-tail: "immigration attorney seo spanish," "h-1b attorney marketing"
- Avoid as primary: "immigration lawyer," "h-1b lawyer"
Personal injury (hard):
- Body: "seo for personal injury lawyers"
- Long-tail: "personal injury seo audit," "personal injury law firm marketing small firm"
- Avoid as primary: "personal injury lawyer," "car accident attorney near me"
What to do with the keyword list
Build the pages. The list is the brief, not the deliverable. The deliverable is one focused page per body term, internally linked from the firm's hub, written to the searcher's intent, with the supporting blog content that targets the long-tail variants.
For the broader content plan that sits around the keyword work, see the content marketing for law firms post. For the budget and channel context, see the law firm marketing plan. And for the practice-area page architecture the keywords map into, the law firm marketing hub lays out the cluster.
If you want a custom keyword list for your firm's specific practice mix and market, book a free audit and we will deliver the body-term and long-tail map during the call.
