The Framework Behind Sterling's Zero Duplicate Title Tags - #225

Duplicate title tags are tanking law firm SEO, and most owners don't realize they're competing against themselves.

Here's the on-page SEO framework Sterling Lawyers used to avoid duplicate title tags from day one and win local search traffic in family law.

Same framework that helped scale Sterling Lawyers from $0 to $18MM in family law revenue.

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📄 CHAPTERS  

0:00 - Why Duplicate Title Tags Tank Family Law SEO Rankings 

1:28 - Title Tag Play One: Service And Location Beats Firm Name First 

4:00 - Why 42% Of Family Law Cases Come From Google Maps Searches 

4:19 - The 50 To 55 Character Title Tag Length Sweet Spot Explained 

8:31 - Duplicate Title Tags And The Semantic Cannibalization Problem 

13:53 - Three High-Intent Family Law Pages Most Firms Are Missing

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4. TELL US WHAT YOU WANT:  
Tell us in the comments if you liked this episode and what other kinds of episodes you would like to see.

Transcript

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a big mistake in our space is not understanding what semantic languages in the eyes of Google. divorce lawyer and family lawyer are essentially the exact same term. So if you have a page for Milwaukee Divorce lawyer and a page for Milwaukee Family lawyer, you are actually competing against yourself and you're sending mixed signals to Google you're going to rank lower as a result, not higher, Well, gentlemen. Welcome back. Today we are going to get into the weeds. When it comes to title tags for law firm websites. We have the co-founder of Sterling Lawyers, Tony Karls as well as our head of all things websites, Nick Perow, with us today. Nick, we're going to talk about title tags. And obviously let's let's help our audience get a refresher on what these things are in the first place. Title tags are a lot like the title of a book. For any web page, it is the code title. You don't see it on the page, it's in the code. It's a little tag that says, this is what this page is very specifically, and it relates to search engines is the it's the book to the internet internet's library effectively. So if you have a divorce page, you're going to have divorce in the title tag. Child custody page. Child custody until tag. Easy peasy. Well we're going to talk about the five title tag plays. Law firms can make to help enhance their visibility online. The first one is leading with your service and your location, not your firm name. Tell us why this is Yeah. That's right. Primacy matters in title tags. And that just means the words that you put first actually tell the story of what that book is about, that web page. So you need to make it really clear up front what the page is about and where the page is about where where you serve. So. Divorce in San Antonio, Texas. It's very it's a very specific divorce service in a very specific location. You want to tell the story in that in that way. And then because we're kind of character limited here, we're talking about 50 to 60 characters. You can actually you want to use what space you have left to tell the story of your firm, Love it. And simple nuance is so important because the way people search, if they're searching for divorce attorney in San Antonio, they're not looking for your firm. They're looking for a divorce attorney in San Antonio. Ample room on your site to tell the story of your firm. Do we learn this the hard way? Or is this kind of how we've always set up sterling? This is kind of how we set up sterling. So we really clear delineation on our location pages. So that's primarily what you're going to see. One of the things that we see is a. Opportunity for most firms that we work with is kind of an overuse of overuse of these specific types of pages for specifically the location. So not using what's called semantic language, that'll kind of be discussed in another episode. But essentially we've always had one page for our divorce lawyer keyword type traffic. And that's worked really, really well for us. Where we see over optimization is when you have one for every single variant of every single potential type of practice that you'll do, and you actually end up confusing, confusing Google in a pretty significant way, and then you don't end up ranking it And back to that local search, right. Over 42% of all divorce or family law cases come from the maps, you know, and part of being able to rank in the maps is having great title tags. So very important. Number two is the length, right? Nick, you started to mention this. You got to keep it within the bounds and you don't want to get cut off. So is there exact parameters Well, we we we shoot for between 50 and 55 characters. You can go up to 60, but really try and keep it in that safe realm. The goal here is to not have anything get cut off in the search results pages, and that can vary from search to search, but and from from week to week. So we want to want to be really mindful of how we're showing up on both desktop and mobile searches. And you don't want to get any you don't want anything to be cut off in those titles. You want it to be clear and readable. You want it to stand out. One of the with getting the little ellipses. Yeah, if you really want to tell the story and get the click, which is the point after all. So we talked about not including the firm name at the beginning. You want to include the service and potentially a location. What else are firms putting in the rest of those characters? We often find when we first take on a new client, any combination of secondary keywords, especially right in the middle. For a long time there was every effort to try and stuff these title tags full of full of new or additional meaning. Oh, maybe I can rank for more keywords if I put more keywords in the title tag and it just doesn't work like that. You really you want to say you want to stay on point. The book is about this. It's for people in your area and you want to you really want to emphasize that remaining the remaining characters to really, you know, sell the click, sell the click, sell the emotion, sell the, sell it, really get the hook. I'm jumping ahead here because I got another tip. And the point is to to really use that space well to to grab attention. So part of part of that uses space well is negative space is also an advantage because most people are stuff like a lot of the law firms in the space are stuffing, which means they're taking the entire space in there when their search results are coming up. So there is no negative white space. So actually a strategy that we use as sterling is we're intentionally extremely short. So we we just do our format for all of our location pages city comma, state divorce, divorce, lawyers, pipe brand name. And we actually get a nice piece of negative space there, which gives us white and actually draws your eyes to that spot because it's the only white spot on the page. So or if you're using a dark mode, it's going to be a negative space there that it's going to be to your advantage from a user experience perspective, because all the rest of it just kind of blends together as like a blob of text. And then you use negative space as a strategy. So like when you're writing these and crafting them, it's really important to like think about what you want to do, what else is in the marketplace so that you can take advantage of different types of opportunities, and they're all going to be slightly Nick, you were kind of hinting towards this, but the use of emotion and differentiation. Tell us more about that. You don't you don't have to go. You don't have to go wild and make, you know, basic claims or anything like that. It can be something simple like Milwaukee divorce lawyer, flat fee, family law. Oh that's interesting. Let me click on that. Madison child custody attorney protecting parenting time. These all fall within the character limit. And they tell a story about what the page is about. You've qualified. Hey, you searched for this. This is the right service for you, in the right service area for you, and makes you feel good to Well, in the end of the day, it's just like providing the answer. You know, with our very short attention span these days, we need to know that we're in the right spot and then we're getting the answer we need, especially in a high emotional state that our clients are in. Okay. Number four is make every important page's title tag unique. So Tony mentioned this right. We have a certain process that's Sterling where we say the service name and then the location and then the brand. Why can't you use the same same title tag for every page? Duplicate title tags are a real problem. Effectively, try and think. The best way to put this. If you're publishing two books on the same exact topic, neither which one has more authority in the eyes of the consumer? Oh, they're the same book, you know, the contents are a little bit different, but they're the same book. Well, you're going to split. You're going to split down the middle people. Some people are going to go to a, some people are going to go to B, and that's how Google is going to look at this. Or any search engine is going to look at this. You're going to split your authority between those two pages. Neither of them is going to rank as highly as one with that unique title, on that unique topic, in that unique location. That's where the real power is. You can build authority on that page. You're not splitting it up. I was think of it as a finite amount, and the moment you duplicate it, you've just split that percentage. This is where the keywords is really important like make a big mistake in our space is not understanding what semantic languages in the eyes of Google. So like a perfect example that everybody should be aware of in this space is divorce lawyer and family lawyer are essentially the exact same term. So if you have a page for Milwaukee Divorce lawyer and a page for Milwaukee Family lawyer, you are actually competing against yourself and you're sending mixed signals to Google and you're going to rank lower as a result, not higher, because you're you're essentially duplicating content. You have two you have two books with the same exact title. When you look at it from a semantic perspective I think even if you expand on that idea, if you try to create content for both of those pages, you'd be saying the exact same thing. And Google can pass all that, like they're going to see it and they're going to be like, this is which one is the right one, I don't know. So I'm going to give you an either. I think one of the common pitfalls we see is on home pages, where the home page will be optimized from a keyword standpoint, like you would want other your locations pages, your location specific page, your attorney page, your. We see all manner of it, but we find that a lot of firms are competing with themselves in that regard. Just right off the bat. It's easy to do if you're not, if you're not mindful. So okay, final tip is align title tags with search intent and your call to action. Yeah, I think there's a there's an element of consistency here. We want we want the potential client to search for what you do. You want to show them, hey, we do what you want it. And we want that consistency of CTA, that conversion element, that that language you're going to use on the page. If it's free consultation or schedule a consultation schedule account mirror that image. And that's using the second half of that title tag. But keep it consistent with how you're going to show it on the page. Don't confuse the user any any more than they're already confused. They're going through a lot. Make it simple. So if you can bring that language in, it's a great use of space. It's a good hook. Sell yourself in the in the the sell the conversion action in a title tag and you're creating a through line from the search to the actual console. And I think this is becoming even more important with the generative search. Because if you have multiple like main ideas on your page and you're actually not covering any one in completion, you're just not going to show up in generative search or the LMS or OpenAI or whatever you would like to call it. So it's really important that this is done well. And like firms that are doing this well, they're showing a better in generative search in the LMS as they're as people are doing their research and the ones that aren't like they're just not being shown because they have like a quarter of an idea or half of an idea mixed in with like 3 or 4 other ones. And it's just like a very incomplete page. And it doesn't match the criteria of what looks like a content. All right. Nick, since I know our listeners are sitting down and taking copious notes, let's lend them a hand. Give me 3 or 4 great examples of title tags for family law firms. All right, Tony, we know our listeners are sitting here taking notes on this episode. Let's let's deliver them a few great examples of title tags for family law So if you don't have these three pages on your website, you should. If you're doing family law, one is how to file in your state. So the title take should be how to file in your state abbreviated. So ours is how to how to file in. We pipe in our our firm name. So that's one. It has a lot of traffic. It should not be about it should be about how to file. That's what I just said. So don't make it about a lawyer and like try to do something weird because then you're not going to rank for it. But that's going to be a good term for you that has high intention and you're going to get lots of interest in traffic. Another one is year. So 2025 or soon in a couple of weeks as we get into 2026. Alimony calculator pipe your firm name and describe on that page exactly how calculations. Even if you don't have a calculator built, describe how calculations for alimony are done in your state. So if you do your alimony calculator in state, you're going to get lots of traffic. There's tons of traffic on that one. Same thing with child support. If you do your child support calculator in your state abbreviated and then put your firm after again, tons of traffic, that's high intention. These are often missed. They're so easy to do. You know the answers because you are a lawyer. So create these pages and you're going to see yourself show up in searches that you are not showing up for currently that have a lot of qualified traffic, of people that are trying to figure out what to do in the process. Stop just optimizing for divorce lawyer. That is not going to make you win. I can tell you for from the Stirling Stirling lawyers. Com the vast majority of our traffic is research intent traffic. Obviously we win on those lower funnel terms. But most of our traffic comes from high intention, high funnel research terms that allow us to win along their process of researching, because that's that's how people actually buy the service. Give you a bonus tip on that. Don't put the year in the URL on that on that page. You want to keep it out of there. You want an evergreen page there because that that content is going to be updated yearly, and it's just going to grow in authority and help help feed your, your service, your practice areas. That's gold. There's some secrets from our own. Our very own law firm. Thank you. Gents, very much. Looking forward to the next one.