Optimizing for Lawyer vs Attorney Words
-
With Hummingbird update, my client's personal injury lawyer site went from very good positions for top terms in Google to oblivion. The site had primary landing pages for parallel terms such as "dog bite lawyer" and "dog bite attorney", among other.
He does work in Philadelphia and Pennsylvania, so we focus on key phrases for both "Philadelphia dog bite lawyer" and "Pennsylvania dog bite lawyer" etc.
I've decided to investigate siloing more deeply, but am unsure whether Google now considers attorney searches to be the same as lawyer searches, which would mean we would silo for "Pennsylvania" and "Philadelphia" not "Attorney" and "Lawyer".
Any real world experience in this anyone? Thanks
-
I read an article that explains a little bit more on what you are addressing here: link removed by admin
-
Thanks Cyrus. I guess I really should not have written any thing but the word SILO!
The entire first part of my discussion item was for background and example. I simply stated that I was "unsure if Google treated them the same". My question is discussed in the third paragraph and located in the fourth paragraph (if readers would pay close attention -- tip, a question mark at the end of sentence means it is a question) and is whether or not anyone has real, tested, experience that would indicate that it makes sense to Silo for the two terms by creating two separate silos.
That said, I have gotten the opinion from Danny Sullivan directly that he believes (and I'm paraphrasing) that Google has long treated the two as synonyms and that there should be no need to silo.
And (to your points Cyrus), I agree as long as the pages have unique content there should be no "penalty", which I always do anyway. That is simple SEO 101, but I include it for future generations reading this thread
-
I don't have any real world experience with these terms, but if I understand correctly, your asking if Google is treating the intent of "lawyer" and "attorney" as the same.
The only way I know to investigate is to search Google for similar terms, like Seattle Lawyer and Seattle Attorney. If we do this for a dozen searches there seems to be some overlap of intent, but it's certainly not 100%.
That said, I think Google would interpret "dog bite lawyer" and "dog bite attorney" as pretty darn close semantic matches, which if overdone could lead to a Panda, duplicate content like situation. I'd probably try to target these terms on the same page, and consolidate my unique content as much as possible.
Hope this helps! Best of luck.
-
Hi JCDenver,
Hang in there. I've asked for extra help from our staff on your question. It could be that the way it was originally phrased has caused some confusion, but you have provided good details and I do hope you'll get a helpful answer soon. Thanks for your patience!
-
Do tell what is clear then...
I see a mix of results, and without all the other variables that go into the rankings, they look just like the results I used to get when I optimized the two terms as separate terms. Sometimes Google showed my attorney keyphrase searches as the home page that was optimized for lawyer. Sometimes they showed it for lawyer.
-
Our primary key phrase for the site is "Philadelphia dog bite lawyer"... has only tangential relationship to the reference of "Philadelphia lawyer" historic meaning. Again, please focus on the actual question please.
-
Maybe you should explain in more detail?
On a tangent..... You know that "Philadelphia Lawyer" is an ancient term with very different meaning that "Philadelphia Attorney"?
-
Hi JCDenver,
I'm sorry I misunderstood your question. Let me ping our other staff members for you to see if anyone has experimented with this. I hope you will receive an on-target answer.
-
I thought that you got a really good answer, and if you do those two searches and compare side by site... the answer is pretty clear.
-
I'm not referring to Local. I am asking about siloing a website.
-
It is not what I was asking.
-
Hi JCDenver,
First, I want to zone in on your statement about the Hummingbird Update. When I think of this in connection with Local SEO and lost rankings, the first thing that springs to mind is this situation:
http://blumenthals.com/blog/2014/01/08/mining-for-google-hummingbird-guano-in-so-cal/
Are you talking about this? Have the results for your target city morphed into a single one-box for a spammy listing? Wanted to ask about this first.
Regarding lawyer vs. attorney, the important thing to find out is how your regional audience searches. Lawyer vs. Attorney is a classic example of this, as apparently, people in different parts of the US prefer one keyword over another. See the comments from Linda Buquet on this post regarding this:
http://searchengineland.com/google-merges-insights-for-search-with-google-trends-134629
This would be something you would need to further investigate, as it has become a bit harder to surface these regional differences. Hope this gets you started.
-
This might seem like a super simplified answer but just google the terms you're concerned about and that should answer your question as to how google is treating certain KWs. Use an incognito window to do so or read up more technical ways http://moz.com/blog/face-off-4-ways-to-de-personalize-google. De personalizing will allow you to see a better picture of how the terms get treated.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Fresh backlinks vs old backlinks: A solid ranking factor?
Hi Moz community, Backlinks being a major ranking factor, do they must be very recent or fresh to make a ranking difference compared to the backlinks which are years old? We know usually fresh content ranks well, but I wonder how much the fresh/recent backlinks impact in rankings. Do the years old backlinks from related and reputed website have same impact on rankings? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
PR Directory Vs Non PR Directory
Hello Guys, i thought to do some directory submission for my website, i am little confused. I have list of page rank directory and non pr directory. Can anyone suggest me which one shall i prefer most. **Getting approved by pr directory takes long time, so shall i prefer non pr directory to get my listing approved fast. ** please suggest me which one i have to prefer, if anyone have fast pr approval directory list please share. Thanks In Advance
Algorithm Updates | | sumit600 -
Google dance/over optimized/paranoid?
Hi guys, hope your all OK and thanks in advance for taking a nosey at this. OK where to start - my rankings for the last 12 months have progressively improved every week, usually of the 300 KWs i track the last few months has seen approx 70 up/70down per week, but the improvements usually outweigh the declines. This week I saw a sudden drop though - 35 improvements and 112 declines. The strange thing was though, the improvements came on the more competitive KWs, and the less competitive words I haven't done much or any back linking for dropped. Seems silly me asking this question when I run that through my head ofcouse KWs you don;t work on will drop like flies? It should be plainly obvious those words would drop off but all have been improving on there own slowly over the last 6/7 months. Now if this was a penalty (nothing showing in webmaster tools) I would have expected it to come through on my KWs I have over done the backlinking for, but these are the 1's that improved. So is it just the Google Dance? I normally see some words such as the big 1 we target DJ Equipment go from position 13 - 24 can change hourly sometimes! Could it just be quite a few have dropped all at once and will pop back up this week? Also if anyone could give us any pointers in general on where you think we should be taking our SEO it would be much appreciated. I know we have been a little lazy with our backlinking and could do with some much better/ industry related websites linking to us, and there are title tags/metas on product page that need sorting.. aside these couple of issue's? DJs Only
Algorithm Updates | | allan-chris0 -
SinglePlatform's Restaurant Menu Across Web Properties vs "SEO-Optimized"
Surprised I wasn't able to find an existing answer given that SinglePlatform apparently serves 500,000 SMBs with menus that appear on over 150 publisher websites. Given Panda's razor-sharp intolerance for duplicate content, am I safe to assume that any claim of SinglePlatform's menu on a local restaurant being beneficial to your SEO is now spurious? If so, what's best way to handle this as a potential SEO liability while still having one of their nicely formatted restaurant menus on your site? For reference: http://www.openforum.com/articles/using-singleplatform-to-build-a-digital-presence Update May 7, 2012 Connected directly with the folks at SinglePlatform, and the answer here is a lot simpler than my over-thinking of it. The menu usually sits within an iFrame or widget so that's that. But the ability to truthfully show an up-to-date menu for any given establishment is a legit way to address the healthy amount of local search intent that seems to be directed at exactly that. Overall a pretty slick platform, looking forward to seeing how they grow into the SMB, local & mobile in the coming months, I think the space is ripe to benefit from products/services that take advantage of these sorts of economies of scale.
Algorithm Updates | | mgalica0 -
Google Algo Update In Que. What consititues over optimization?
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2401732,00.asp According to this, Google is bringing the hammer down soon on another 10-20% of the search results. While we don't advocate keyword stuffing, exchanging links, or anything too risky I am still concerned. Do we know if the example "perfectly optimized page"; http://www.seomoz.org/blog/perfecting-keyword-targeting-on-page-optimization is now going to be penalty bait? Is this over stuffing? Also, how might this effect ecommerce sites in particular?
Algorithm Updates | | iAnalyst.com2 -
Top 5 most optimized websites
Throwing this question out to the community but was wondering if anyone can direct me on how I can find the top 5 or 10 ten sites that have been most optimized for search engines. Meaning which web sites have the best reputation when it comes to website optimization for search engines or is there a resource where I can read about websites that have been ranked as the best when it comes to following best practices and have constantly ranked well within their industry? Figured it's always a good idea to learn from the best by looking at what they are doing. Thank you.
Algorithm Updates | | DRTBA2 -
Is There Any Problem For Google When We Use Capital Letters in the Beginning of Each Word in TITLE?
I'm just wandering is there any difference when we use "Cheap Holidays to Egypt" or "Cheap holidays to Egypt". It is easier for users to read first option but would the second be more relevant for crawls?
Algorithm Updates | | fleetway0 -
Google Directory vs DMOZ
What is the difference between the Google Directory and the DMOZ if any?
Algorithm Updates | | BrandonC-2698870