Most Expensive PPC Keywords for Lawyers

By Mike , Updated December 27th, 2023 In

• Pay Per Click Management

In the law firm marketing space, the cost per click charges on Google Ads can sometimes be incredibly expensive. Especially in the tort/personal injury area of law. This is why many firms opt for law firm SEO services instead of paid ads. We looked at just the law related keywords, which dominated the list of 100 most expensive keywords.

Top 20 Highest Priced PPC Keywords for Attorneys

Feel free to hover over the bar charts to see CPC or simply browse the table below the chart.

Below the table shows the top 75 most expensive law related Adword costs.

The cost for a single click to your site can sometimes be enormous depending on the keyword you are bidding on.

To put these numbers into perspective, the majority of the PPC campaigns we manage are for personal injury lawyers and our average click cost for the year is currently $27.

As this sunburst chart below shows (hovering over it triggers tool tip information), Texas, California, Arizona and Pennsylvania clearly have aggressive marketers going after personal injury related keywords!

The original study, which looked at millions of keywords, was conducted by Emperical Proof and used SEMrush data to find the 100 most expensive Google Adwords keywords. To be clear, this means that these numbers are only an estimate and is not actual data from Google Adwords campaigns . SEMrush uses a formula to estimate CPC costs that takes into account CTR multiplied by search volume and then multiplied again by the average Cost Per Click. Without having access to Google analytics they cannot account for Quality Score which does factor in to actual PPC costs. Even though it’s not actual Google Adwords data, it is still helpful and does provide a good idea of what click charges may be in a given market.

Does this mean you shouldn’t do PPC?

No, but what it should tell you is that you should have someone who is truly an expert with extensive experience managing law firm PPC campaigns running your campaign. Even in this set of results above we see some keywords that you would not want to be paying for (at least at that price) if you were a personal injury lawyer. It pretty common knowledge in the legal marketing space that mesothelioma related searches have always been one of the most expensive keywords, but at nearly $1,000 for a single click that’s still simply shocking. And Texas really loves those truck accident keywords don’t they? If the keywords you’re bidding on priced too high then you should have a smarter strategy in place so that you are not wasting all your campaign budget in a matter of a few clicks.

With competition for Pay Per Click (as well as law firm SEO) tougher than it has ever been and click charges so high, it’s especially important that you are conducting A/B tests on your PPC campaigns to make sure you are maximizing click-throughs and conversion rates. This will help make sure you are getting the most bang for your PPC spend.