For any given search on Google, the first page in the results gets nearly 32% of the traffic. Targeting the right keywords allows your site to rank on Google and capture that traffic. They also allow you to choose the highest ROI terms for Google Ads campaigns.
But finding the best keywords for your personal injury law firm's search engine optimization or PPC campaign is only a small part of successful marketing.
We've put together a list of some of the best personal injury keywords for you to target. Many of the keywords below serve as an excellent jumping-off point for PPC and SEO. The important part is knowing how to use them effectively.
| Keyword |
Volume |
Cost Per Click |
| best motorcycle accident lawyer |
2700 |
$770.00 |
| semi truck accident attorney |
1300 |
$350.00 |
| 18 wheeler accident attorney |
1000 |
$355.00 |
| [city] trucking accident attorney |
700 |
$500.00 |
| trucking accident lawyers |
700 |
$320.00 |
| medical malpractice lawyers [city] |
600 |
$355.00 |
| medical malpractice lawyers in [city] |
600 |
$300.00 |
| [state] truck accident lawyer |
500 |
$515.00 |
| [state] construction accident lawyer |
500 |
$485.00 |
| mesothelioma cancer lawyer |
500 |
$430.00 |
| offshore accident lawyers |
500 |
$320.00 |
| personal injury attorneys [city] |
500 |
$310.00 |
| good car accident lawyers |
450 |
$500.00 |
| car accident lawyer [state] |
450 |
$400.00 |
| [city] construction accident attorney |
450 |
$310.00 |
| [city] car accident lawyers |
400 |
$780.00 |
| [city] personal injury attorneys |
400 |
$445.00 |
| personal injury attorneys [city, state] |
400 |
$395.00 |
| truck accident attorney [city] |
350 |
$515.00 |
| mesothelioma lawyers [state] |
350 |
$480.00 |
| accident lawyer [city, state] |
350 |
$475.00 |
| non injury car accident lawyer |
350 |
$360.00 |
| big rig accident attorneys |
350 |
$300.00 |
| 18 wheeler accident lawyer [city] |
300 |
$670.00 |
| accident lawyer [state] |
300 |
$365.00 |
| best mesothelioma lawyer |
300 |
$340.00 |
| personal injury attorney [state] |
300 |
$325.00 |
| medical malpractice attorney [city] |
300 |
$315.00 |
| auto accident attorneys [city] |
250 |
$560.00 |
| medical malpractice lawyer [state] |
250 |
$485.00 |
| car accident lawyer [city] |
250 |
$430.00 |
| personal injury law firm [city] |
250 |
$410.00 |
| [city] truck accident attorneys |
250 |
$385.00 |
| [city] accident attorney |
250 |
$340.00 |
| accident lawyer [city] |
250 |
$320.00 |
| truck accident lawyer [state] |
200 |
$650.00 |
| auto accident lawyers [city] |
200 |
$485.00 |
| [city] truck accident lawyer |
200 |
$395.00 |
| boating accident attorney |
200 |
$375.00 |
| car accident attorney [city] |
200 |
$345.00 |
| [city] wrongful death attorney |
200 |
$335.00 |
| [city] birth injury lawyer |
200 |
$335.00 |
| best mesothelioma attorney |
150 |
$840.00 |
| car accident lawyer in [county] |
150 |
$585.00 |
| [city] personal injury lawyer |
150 |
$560.00 |
| best accident lawyers in [city] |
150 |
$470.00 |
| auto accident attorney [state] |
150 |
$465.00 |
| auto accident lawyer [city] |
150 |
$460.00 |
| maritime injury attorney |
150 |
$430.00 |
| auto accident attorney in [city] |
150 |
$375.00 |
| [state] personal injury lawyers |
150 |
$370.00 |
| [city] car crash attorney |
150 |
$355.00 |
| [state] accident attorney |
150 |
$350.00 |
| auto accident lawyers [state] |
150 |
$350.00 |
| [city] construction accident lawyer |
150 |
$345.00 |
| [city] auto accident attorney |
150 |
$325.00 |
| [state] car accident attorney |
150 |
$305.00 |
| [state] auto accident lawyer |
100 |
$475.00 |
| accident attorneys [state] |
100 |
$465.00 |
| truck accident lawyer [city] |
100 |
$425.00 |
| auto injury accident lawyer |
100 |
$415.00 |
| [city] car accident attorney |
100 |
$410.00 |
| best medical malpractice lawyer in [city] |
100 |
$400.00 |
| personal injury attorney [city] |
100 |
$385.00 |
| personal injury lawyer in [state] |
100 |
$375.00 |
| best medical malpractice lawyers [city] |
100 |
$340.00 |
| accident lawyers [state] |
100 |
$310.00 |
| semi accident attorney |
100 |
$300.00 |
| [city] motorcycle accident attorney |
100 |
$300.00 |
| best car accident lawyer in [city] |
80 |
$395.00 |
| auto accident lawyers in [city] |
60 |
$440.00 |
| should i get attorney for car accident |
60 |
$365.00 |
| how much do personal injury attorneys charge |
30 |
$405.00 |
| mesothelioma and asbestos lawyers |
10 |
$445.00 |
| how to choose a mesothelioma lawyer |
10 |
$360.00 |
We’ve sorted this list by monthly search volume so that you can get an idea of how often people look for these terms. You can also look at these terms based on the cost per click. This is an estimate of how much you could expect to pay each time someone clicks on you ad when you bid on that term.
How Can You Use These Keywords?
You can use these keywords to inform and direct both an law firm SEO campaign and a Google PPC campaign. This can help drive traffic from prospective clients who see your website in the organic search results or the pay-per-click ads results.
In Your SEO Campaign
SEO keywords can help you choose what topics to target for content. They'll help you select which service pages belong on your site and which topics make for good blog posts. They can also enrich that content when you use them right.
SEO keywords are what your potential clients use to search the web for information or answers to questions. The more you can align your content with their needs, the easier it is to capture that traffic. When done right, this allows you to introduce yourself and your firm to visitors.
On your personal injury website, you will use your keywords in multiple places, including:
- URLs: the page’s web address
- Titles and H1s: your page titles and high-level headlines on each page
- Headings: the subheaders used to break up content on the page
- Meta descriptions: the 1-2 sentence overviews of what's on the page that appear on search engines
- Body copy: the main text of your post or page
- Image alt text: text that explains what the image is for the visually impaired
Together, keywords in all these locations signal to Google about the primary topics of the individual page and your website as a whole.
In Your Google Ads Campaign
Google Ads is built around keywords. Bidding on the right ones can help get your ads in front of people who are at the bottom of the law firm marketing funnel.
Your best bet on Google ads is to bid on high-intent keywords. These are the terms that indicate someone is ready to hire an attorney to assist with their legal issue.
PPC for personal injury lawyers can get expensive.
The value and the level of competition among lawyers can drive the cost per click up. It's not uncommon to see terms that cost several hundred dollars per click. This makes it important to be selective with the terms you choose to bid on.
Keywords Alone Won’t Guarantee Success
Keywords are crucial for SEO and Google ads results, but on their own won't get you the new clients you need. If you took our list of PI keywords and added them all over your website, you won't get the traction you want.
To get the best results, you have to know how to use these terms as a component of your marketing efforts.
Haphazardly Using SEO Keywords Won’t Get You Far
Getting a list of ideal law firm keywords is the first step. Law firm keyword research is important, but it only informs the decisions you'll need to make next.
When looking through keywords, take some time to think about search intent.
What did the person entering this term hope to find? Does this align with any possible service page types or blog posts? This process requires research and intuition as part of your lawyer content strategy.
It's useless to create a post or page too without putting in the time to think about the searcher's intent.
If someone lands on that page and doesn't get the help they hoped for, they'll just hit the back button. That doesn't help that page to rank, and it doesn't keep the reader on your site long enough to learn about you.
Searcher's intent also relates back to where the reader is in the law firm marketing funnel. Content for people at the top of the funnel is different from content for someone who is on the verge of hiring a lawyer.
The hard sell can turn those top of funnel readers off. They're looking for useful information about the topic and may not even know they need a lawyer yet.
Avoid Keyword Cannibalization
A common problem that inexperienced SEOs run into is keyword cannibalization. This is when two closely related pages on one website compete against each other on Google.
Keyword cannibalization can be caused by poor keyword research and topic selection. When Google indexes keywords, it groups them into categories.
For example, the results for the keyword car accident injury and injury from car accident are the same. That's because Google has grouped them together into a cluster.
If you know this, then you know that you only need to create one page to target both terms.
If you tried to create two pages for these terms, those pages would confuse Google. It would see two pages both about the same thing, and would have trouble deciding which to rank.
You might end up with two site pages ranking on the third page of search results in Google, which does no good for you. Meanwhile, your competitors who created only one page get the win.
The best way to avoid this is to hire a skilled SEO expert who knows how to recognize keyword topic clusters. This takes knowledge, data, and research to figure out.
A legal SEO expert will identify related keywords to avoid cannibalization. Instead, they can create hubs of content that reinforce one another. This can draw visitors further down the marketing funnel, leading to more traffic and new cases.
Keywords Don't Guarantee Quality Content
The content that you put on your law firm website must be high quality. To succeed, it needs to be written for both search engines and people.
It's tempting to try to write all the content yourself or to hire someone who will write it at little cost. The former is almost always a waste of a lawyer's time. The latter introduces a different problem.
Years ago, people would try to trick Google into ranking content through "keyword stuffing." They'd write anything as long as the right keywords were on the page in the right amount. The end result was unhelpful content full of stilted language.
That doesn't work anymore.
Now, Google looks for the best content that matches the searcher's intent. The search engine looks for language that works naturally and addresses the reader's primary concerns.
A good SEO campaign is about more than keywords. It takes an understanding of balancing those keywords with intent and natural language. It requires knowledge of technical nuances that make your site search engine-friendly. It also requires knowledge of things like internal linking and link building.
All of these elements combined make it so that users can find what they need, and Google can gather crucial context about your site, your firm, and your services.
Bidding on Low-Intent Google Ads Keywords is a Waste of Money
If you're putting up the money to invest in law firm Google Ads, don't waste your efforts on low-intent keywords. Some keywords might seem great on the surface but have nothing to do with the law.
If the person using them is not interested in hiring a lawyer right now, they won't get you results. Bidding on the wrong keywords is just throwing good money after bad.
Much like SEO, winning on Google ads takes time and dedicated research. You have to find the right keywords that will net you results.
Making a good ad for Google PPC also requires copywriting skills. It's not worth your time to try to master those, either. Find a good marketing partner who understands all elements of running these ads to get the most out of your ads.
Work with a Law Firm Marketing Partner to Get the Most Out of Your Personal Injury Campaigns
Working with a law firm marketing expert is your best bet to get the most out of organic search and paid ads on Google.
Too many law firms either try to take on everything themselves or hire a partner who doesn't understand the legal industry. This gets bad results and leaves lawyers feeling like they wasted their time.
Personal injury lawyer SEO and Google Ads can work for personal injury attorneys when you choose a trusted expert to handle it for you.
Rankings.io is an industry leader in these services, with client testimonials to back it up. Make a sound investment by contacting Rankings.io to handle one or both for you.
