How Many Keywords Should a Law Firm Target?
There isn’t a magic number of keywords every law firm should be targeting, and any firm promising a specific figure without knowing your practice areas, market, or content capacity is guessing. The right number depends on your location’s search behavior, how many keywords are long-tail versus short-tail, how much content your site can actually support well, and how much ongoing time you can dedicate to promoting each one. Getting the strategy right matters far more than hitting a target count.
Why There’s No Magic Number
Two firms in completely different practice areas and markets could both be doing keyword strategy correctly while targeting wildly different numbers of terms. A solo estate planning attorney in a small city might do well with 20 to 30 carefully chosen keywords. A multi-practice-area firm in a major metro might need 150 or more to properly cover the range of services and locations it serves.
Chasing a specific number without the strategy behind it usually produces one of two bad outcomes: either a handful of keywords that are too competitive to realistically rank for, or a huge list spread so thin that no individual keyword gets the content or promotion it needs to actually perform.
Long-Tail vs. Short-Tail: Where the Real Opportunity Lives
Short-tail keywords are broad, one or two-word terms like “divorce lawyer.” Long-tail keywords are longer, more specific phrases, typically three or more words, like “contested divorce attorney with payment plans near me.” Moz’s foundational research on search behavior found that long-tail queries make up the large majority of all search traffic, roughly 80% of total search volume, even though each individual long-tail phrase gets far less search volume on its own than a broad head term.
That distinction matters enormously for a law firm building out a keyword list:
- Short-tail keywords are usually the most competitive and expensive to rank for organically, often dominated by large, well-established firms and directories with years of authority behind them
- Long-tail keywords face far less competition individually, but collectively represent the majority of real search demand, and they tend to convert better since the searcher’s intent is already specific and clear
- A handful of long-tail keywords targeting the same underlying topic can often be served by a single well-built page rather than requiring a separate page for each one, since search engines increasingly reward pages that comprehensively answer a cluster of related questions rather than thin pages built around one narrow phrase each
A keyword strategy weighted heavily toward long-tail terms, with a smaller number of short-tail terms mixed in for the practice areas where competing head-on is realistic, tends to produce steadier, more sustainable results than chasing broad terms alone.
Location Matters More Than Most Firms Realize
For a law firm, ignoring geographic modifiers in a keyword strategy leaves a significant amount of relevant search volume on the table. A meaningful share of all searches carry local intent, and that share tends to run even higher for legal services specifically, since most people looking for a lawyer want someone who can actually represent them in their jurisdiction.
This means a firm’s keyword list generally needs to account for location in a few different ways:
- City or region-specific variations of core practice area terms, rather than relying entirely on non-localized phrases
- Neighborhood or county-level terms in larger metro areas, where competition for city-wide terms may be too steep to realistically win in the short term
- Location-specific long-tail phrases that combine a specific legal question with a specific place, which tend to face far less competition than either element alone
Skipping the location layer of keyword research is one of the more common gaps in law firm SEO, largely because it requires more upfront research than simply targeting the practice area terms alone.
Let Your Content Capacity Set the Ceiling
Here’s the part that gets skipped most often: a keyword list should be sized to what your content operation can actually support, not the other way around. Every keyword genuinely worth targeting needs a dedicated, well-developed page behind it, not just a mention buried in a paragraph somewhere on the site.
A firm publishing two blog posts a month and maintaining a handful of service pages simply doesn’t have the content infrastructure to properly target 200 keywords. Spreading limited content resources across too many terms means none of them get the depth, internal linking, or ongoing refreshes needed to actually rank and hold that position over time.
A more realistic approach starts with an honest look at content capacity, then builds the keyword list to match:
- Prioritize the highest-value, most winnable keywords first, rather than trying to cover everything at once
- Group closely related long-tail terms under single, comprehensive pages where it makes sense, which stretches limited content resources further than building a separate thin page for each variation
- Expand the keyword list gradually as content output and capacity grow, rather than committing to a number that outpaces what can realistically be built and maintained
Time Investment Per Keyword
Ranking for a keyword isn’t a one-time task. It requires ongoing attention: monitoring performance, updating content as it ages, building relevant backlinks, and watching how competitors respond. A keyword list that looks reasonable on paper can quietly become unmanageable if there isn’t enough time allocated to properly maintain each term over the long run.
This is where a lot of ambitious keyword lists fail in practice. It’s not that the keywords were badly chosen, it’s that there wasn’t enough ongoing time or attention to actually support all of them once the initial content was published. A smaller list of properly maintained keywords will consistently outperform a larger list that gets set up once and then left alone.
Targeting vs. Monitoring: The Difference That Changes Everything
These two terms get used interchangeably, but they describe genuinely different activities, and confusing them leads to a keyword strategy that either overreaches or misses opportunities.
Targeting a keyword means actively building content, internal links, and promotional effort specifically around that term, with the intent of ranking and converting for it. This is resource-intensive work, and it’s what most of the strategy above is actually describing.
Monitoring a keyword means tracking its performance and search volume trends without necessarily dedicating active content or promotional resources to it yet. Monitoring is useful for:
- Watching keywords a firm ranks for passively, as a byproduct of broader topical authority, without having built content around them directly
- Tracking emerging search trends or competitor movement on terms that might be worth actively targeting later
- Identifying keywords where a competitor is gaining ground, so a firm can decide whether to shift active targeting resources toward that term before losing more visibility
A well-run keyword strategy usually includes a smaller, focused list of actively targeted terms alongside a broader watchlist of monitored terms that inform future priorities without demanding immediate content investment.
A Practical Way to Think About the Number
Rather than starting with a target count, work through these questions in order:
- What practice areas and locations does the firm actually need to be found for
- How much of that opportunity is realistically long-tail versus short-tail
- How much new and updated content can the firm actually produce and maintain each month
- How much ongoing time is available to monitor and support each targeted keyword over time
The number that falls out of those answers will be the right one for your firm, whether that’s 25 keywords or 250.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is it better to target a few high-volume keywords or many low-volume long-tail keywords?
For most law firms, a strategy weighted toward long-tail keywords tends to perform better, since long-tail terms make up the majority of overall search volume, face less competition, and typically convert at a higher rate due to more specific searcher intent.
How do I know if I’m targeting too many keywords at once?
A common warning sign is content and rankings that seem to stall or decline across the board rather than improving steadily. This often means available content and promotional resources are spread too thin across too many terms to properly support any of them.
What’s the difference between monitoring a keyword and ignoring it?
Monitoring means actively tracking a keyword’s performance and relevance over time, even without dedicating content resources to it yet, so a firm can make an informed decision about when it becomes worth actively targeting. Ignoring a keyword means it isn’t tracked at all, which can mean missing an emerging opportunity or a competitor gaining ground without any warning.
