Top 10 Legal Websites by Traffic
As a leading content production service, Scripted's team of writers and content strategists recognize the importance of offering engaging, search engine optimized content that ranks well and keeps readers coming back. Of course, creating great content like that isn't easy.
When it comes to creating content in the legal niche, this broad category can leave many website owners scratching their heads trying to find topics that engage readers while targeting the keywords they need in order to bring in organic traffic. Here at Scripted, we dig deep into niches to come up with an abundance of ideas, and competitor research is almost always part of the strategy.
So, if you're in the legal niche and seeking a better understanding of the best performing websites and what they're doing, look no further. In this guide, we'll take a closer look at the top 10 legal websites, ranked by traffic. We'll then analyze the content of each of these websites, along with their core audiences, allowing us to decipher the types of content you should be posting to check all the marks off your priority list.
What Is A Legal Website?
For the purposes of this guide, we've limited the list to legal websites pertaining to:
- Information about laws and policies for businesses and consumers
- Advice for businesses and consumers regarding the legal system and its proceedings
- Resources providing law codes, regulations, and other legal texts/documents
In order to meet the goal of this guide -- which is to help website owners, writers, and marketers publish better content for their audiences -- we've excluded certain websites, including lawyer directories and other platforms that generally don't offer a lot in the way of blog articles or actual content intended for reading.
Understanding Our Research
By analyzing data from SimilarWeb and other sources, we were able to compile a list of the top 10 legal websites with the most traffic worldwide. We have narrowed down our search to English websites. We have also excluded certain websites (such as the U.S. Trademarks and Patent Office website) from the list in order to offer a well-rounded, balanced understanding.
This list looks at consumer-focused, content-driven legal websites that are performing well in search results thanks to SEO strategies and engaging content, so let's dive in. If you're unfamiliar with any of the terms used here, the following glossary will help.
- Bounce Rate: This is the percentage of visitors who click "back" or close the tab within a few seconds of arriving on the website. A high bounce rate can be caused by accidental clicks, an unappealing website design, and other factors.
- Direct Traffic: A "direct" visitor is one who goes straight to the website through a bookmark or by typing the web address into their browser rather than clicking on a link in search results or anywhere else on the web.
#1 Justia
- Monthly Visits: 9.89 million
- Average Visit Duration: 2 minutes and 22 seconds
- Number of Pages Per Visit: Almost 2 pages
- Bounce Rate: About 7 out of 10 visitors bounce
A worldwide resource, Justia offers free information on case law, regulations, and various legal codes. In fact, the website primarily consists of "evergreen" content, which is content that isn't seasonal and will continue to be helpful to users in the long-term.
While the codes and other resources they publish do change over time and must be updated accordingly, Justia has done a fantastic job building a database around content that's built to last through the years. In addition, Justia also operates a Legal News section on their site, which gives them an avenue for touching on the more time-sensitive (and perhaps trending) topics that can provide a spike of traffic in the short-term.
The majority of Justia's visitors originate from the USA (about 64%), but they do have a fairly balanced global following, too. They see over 80% of their traffic from search, although about 12.3% are direct visitors. Another 1.7% come from social media links, and a very small slice from email campaigns (0.24%) and display advertising (0.02%).
#2 Find Law
- Monthly Visits: 8.84 million
- Average Visit Duration: 1 minute and 18 seconds
- Number of Pages Per Visit: About 1 and a half
- Bounce Rate: About 8 out of 10 visitors bounce
Trusted legal information can't be found just anywhere, which is why authority resources like Find Law have remained popular through the years. While the service is centered around helping visitors find a lawyer, they have their SEO strategy down to a science with a wealth of evergreen and time-sensitive resources that help them continuously rank for highly competitive keywords.
The Legal Blogs section of the website features a number of different categories, ranging from the business of law to legal news. This structure is very smart, as it allows Find Law to target a number of prospects and personas in an organized and orderly fashion. For instance, to help reach prospects in the business and commercial space, they have an entire section devoted to Free Enterprise.
#3 Justice.gov
- Monthly Visits: 6.60 million
- Average Visit Duration: 1 minute and 28 seconds
- Number of Pages Per Visit: About 2 pages
- Bounce Rate: About 8 out of 10 visitors bounce
With nearly 57% of the DOJ (Department of Justice) website traffic coming from search results, it's clear they're doing something right. They're the go-to resource for many news topics, as you can imagine, but their approach to publishing content certainly factors into its success. On average, they'll post about 5 articles per day, ranging from press releases to headlines about the latest case decisions.
Compared to other sites on this list, it's also interesting to note that over 10% of the site's traffic comes from referrals. These primarily include links from other government websites but also links shared on various forums and other resources. Meanwhile, almost 9% of the site's traffic comes from social links, which shows how publishing intriguing, timely content can really drive interaction and shares.
#4 SEC
- Monthly Visits: 6.47 million
- Average Visit Duration: 3 minutes and 43 seconds
- Number of Pages Per Visit: About 4 and a half
- Bounce Rate: About 6 out of 10 visitors bounce
Easily one of the most modern government websites, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission showcases authoritative, engaging content to consistently perform well in the SERPs (search engine result pages). In fact, of the nearly six-and-a-half million visitors the site gets each month, almost 49% comes from search traffic. Another 37% comes from direct visitors.
In addition to providing official information and resources, the SEC stays relevant and ranking with an obligatory Legal News section. However, the SEC works hard to avoid dry legal content that's always talking about policy and regulation. With SEC Stories, for example, they work in niche-relevant yet timely, moving content on topics like diversity, inclusion, and what the SEC is doing to build community.
#5 Lexis Nexis
- Monthly Visits: 5.64 million
- Average Visit Duration: 3 minutes and 30 seconds
- Number of Pages Per Visit: About 3 and a half
- Bounce Rate: About 6 out of 10 visitors bounce
Any professional familiar with or in need of legal assistance will surely know the Lexis Nexis name. They provide a trusted, premium service for those looking for legal solutions and business insights. As a public resource (and the backbone of their SEO strategy), they also offer a number of timely articles that go beyond the basic legal news.
On this site's blog, you'll find the company's announcements alongside articles touching on topics that truly matter to the Lexis Nexis audience, which primarily consists of law firms, agencies, and companies. Given their membership-style service, it's no surprise that about 52% of their traffic is direct. However, their written content accounts for much of the 34% of search traffic the site sees.
#6 United States Courts
- Monthly Visits: 5.49 million
- Average Visit Duration: 6 minutes and 10 seconds
- Number of Pages Per Visit: About 7 and a half
- Bounce Rate: About 4 out of 10 visitors bounce
While uscourts.gov happens to be an official website operated by a government agency, they make the list because they offer an abundance of readable content. A lot of visitors may come for the resources regarding federal courts, judges, and so on, but the Judiciary News section of the website is also a highly authoritative and timely source for relevant content in the legal niche.
Given that this is an official website, it's not surprising to see that there's almost a 50/50 split between direct traffic and search traffic. However, the number of visitors who arrive at the site through search results (46.8%) is just slightly higher than the number of direct visitors (45.24%). The small remaining slice of traffic primarily comes from links on social media platforms, typically links to news articles. Still, that small slice of social traffic represents over 102,000 monthly visitors for this website.
#7 Nolo
- Monthly Visits: 5.48 million
- Average Visit Duration: 1 minute and 20 seconds
- Number of Pages Per Visit: About 1 and a half
- Bounce Rate: About 8 out of 10 visitors bounce
Established for over 48 years, NOLO's website has long been an authority in the legal niche. In modern times, they offer a legal encyclopedia and other resources to help everyday consumers, entrepreneurs, and businesses gain a better understanding of the law. In addition to the "DIY" legal products they offer, NOLO also has a database of over 30,000 attorneys for those in need of legal services.
As far as SEO goes, their strategy is backed by an ever-growing database of legal articles within their "Legal Encyclopedia". Due to the sheer amount of content they have live (and the fact that they're continuously adding to it), they've come up with a nice way to organize everything. Similar to Find Law, they have things laid out in a way that it's both easy-to-navigate for prospects and enables them to target a wider audience without things becoming disorganized or overwhelming.
Thanks to all their excellent content, about 84% of Nolo's traffic comes from search results. Another 12% comes from direct visitors. Additionally, they do very little paid advertising, with over 99.2% of their traffic being entirely organic. However, only a small amount (about 0.24%) of their traffic comes from social media, which can be directly correlated to the fact that they focus on evergreen how-to content and don't maintain a timely legal blog, like most other sites on this list.
#8 Legal Zoom
- Monthly Visits: 3.41 million
- Average Visit Duration: 2 minutes and 24 seconds
- Number of Pages Per Visit: About 3 and a half
- Bounce Rate: About 7 out of 10 visitors bounce
Without a doubt, Legal Zoom pays for a larger percentage of their traffic than any other site on this list. While others mentioned so far pay for less than 0.5% in most cases, if any, Legal Zoom gets nearly 1/4 of their traffic from paid advertising and other initiatives. Still, of the site's organic traffic, almost 77% comes from search traffic (and almost 20% from direct visitors) thanks to their strong branding, easy-to-use services, and breadth of content.
While Legal Zoom's web content -- which explains everything from Wills & Trusts to Business Formations while promoting the company's services -- drives a lot of their organic traffic, so does the Legal Zoom blog. Like Nolo, Legal Zoom caters its blog to speak directly to its audience, which primarily consists of businesses and individuals in need of legal guidance so they can meet their goals.
Since Legal Zoom targets such a wide audience, they've also broken up their blog into major sections, ranging from Estate Planning to Business Management. However, unlike Nolo, they also include a Legal News section, which likely contributes to their better hold on social media platforms, which bring in almost 25,000 organic visitors every month.
#9 Clio
- Monthly Visits: 3.18 million
- Average Visit Duration: 13 minutes and 13 seconds
- Number of Pages Per Visit: About 10 and a half
- Bounce Rate: About 3 out of 10 visitors bounce
When first looking at Clio's statistics and how they stack up to other sites on this list, it's easy to be impressed by the low bounce rate, high number of pages/visit, and above-average visit duration. However, a closer look at Clio's offerings -- and the fact that over 67% of their traffic comes from direct visitors -- begins to explain these anomalies.
Clio is a service provider of practice management software for lawyers and other professionals, and so a great majority of their visitors are likely already members looking to log-in or prospects checking out Clio's services. With all of that said, almost 15% of Clio's traffic does come from search results, representing about 477,000 organic visitors every month. Between the blog, free law firm resources, and the news/events section, Clio shows that they are trying hard to build up their organic visitors -- and, looking back, growth is occurring.
#10 Rocket Lawyer
- Monthly Visits: 2.27 million
- Average Visit Duration: 3 minutes and 45 seconds
- Number of Pages Per Visit: About 7 pages
- Bounce Rate: About 5 out of 10 visitors bounce
While Rocket Lawyer's competitor, Legal Zoom, pays for almost 25% of their traffic, Rocket Lawyer has them beat. Paying for over 38% of their traffic, Rocket Lawyer invests a lot to make sure they're at the top of the SERPs for some of the industry's most competitive keywords. However, of the 61% of traffic they get from organic search results, they perform quite well.
With the average visit lasting almost four minutes, they beat Legal Zoom by quite a bit. Plus, Rocket Lawyer's visitors frequent twice the number of pages per session, on average. Rocket Lawyer also sees a lower bounce rate than Legal Zoom, but why? It might be due to the fact that Rocket Lawyer's design places more emphasis on their free offerings. As far as SEO goes, their strategy is driven by an extensive selection of legal help articles, a free legal dictionary, and their Everyday Law blog.
What Makes a Legal Website Successful?
Looking more closely at these ten top-performing legal websites, you should be able to draw a few conclusions with confidence and implement them into your content strategy.
Legal News Can Drive Shares
It's a known fact that timely content gets the most shares on social media networks, and sites from none other than the Department of Justice and SEC help prove this. When comparing their social shares to the statistics of websites that don't publish legal news or other time-sensitive topics that often, it's easy to see how strictly evergreen content can impact your social strategy. In other words, you should focus on taking a balanced approach if you want to drive organic traffic from social platforms alongside search (all the while benefitting from social signals and other perks).
Evergreen Content Provides More Steady Traffic
Sharing strictly legal news can lead to less predictable traffic as big headlines will cause spikes while quieter periods without news can lead to significant drops in traffic. That's why all of these websites have attempted to incorporate some type of "evergreen" content into their structure, with some doing it better than others. For your evergreen content, make sure you're building it around topics people are actually searching, as a legal encyclopedia covering obscure subjects isn't likely to get you far.
Take Time to Sort, Target & Organize
If you're dealing with a legal website that has the potential to attract prospects from many different backgrounds or situations, take note of what the professionals are doing. Sites like Legal Zoom have a wealth of resources for individuals and businesses in many different scenarios, yet a prospect in any given situation can easily navigate the Legal Zoom website and find what they're looking for thanks to a great menu layout and overall clean, intuitive organization. If you hope to offer a lot of valuable resources to your readers, make sure you do the same.
Keyword-Rich, Reader-Centric Content
One thing you certainly won't find on any of these top 10 websites is content that forgets the reader. Too often, website owners try to rank quickly by coming up with content that's built entirely around keywords and optimization, which seems great on paper until you start seeing the long-term effects of readers who find your content unhelpful or irrelevant to their needs. That's why your content strategy should start and finish with your actual readers (and their needs) in mind.
Here at Scripted, our expert legal writers can help you accomplish this by pitching ideas and creating content that your readers will find informative, engaging, and worth sharing. Plus, with our plans ranging from self-service options to our fully-managed Cruise Control service, we are prepared to fulfill the content needs of legal websites big and small.
