The 5-Step SEO Heading Structure for Family Law Firms

SEO heading structure isn't sexy, but it's the on-page SEO hygiene that gets your family law firm ranked. Here's the 5-step system. 

Websites bleed traffic because their HTML hierarchy sends mixed signals to Google. 

So in this episode, you'll learn why one H1 per page is non-negotiable, how to structure H2s around real client questions (how divorce works, cost, timeline), and how templating page types creates predictable rankings across your entire site. 

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📄 CHAPTERS  

0:00 - On-Page SEO & HTML Hierarchy: 5 Heading Fixes That Rank Family Law Firms

0:50 - SEO Heading Structure Starts Here: Why Every Page Needs Exactly One H1 

4:39 - H2 Subtopic Headings: Answer the Questions Real Clients Ask 

6:25 - Nesting H3s and H4s: Build a Logical HTML Outline Google Can Crawl 

9:09 - The WordPress Mistake: Stop Using Headings to Style Fonts 

11:03 - Standardize HTML Hierarchy Across Templates for Predictable Rankings

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Transcript

0:00

I didn't know anything about headings prior to that, and I was literally using it to style the page. And then I learned it and looked at that and I'm like, what a mess. This doesn't communicate anything that I wanted to because it was I was just using it for call to action to help conversion. the reality is, as soon as I fixed it helped that site rank a lot better for all of the terms it makes a big difference. And like you can easily make this mistake and you're like, oh, this, this is cool. This changes the font for me. This makes it bigger, it makes it smaller. And then you don't you have no clue that it's actually an SEO tool and you're screwing your site Welcome back to the Sterling Family Law Show. We are continuing our in-depth series on websites and optimization. Today we're getting into the weeds. We're going to talk about HTML hierarchy. And I was joking with the guys that I'm going to be as educated as all of you listeners today, because this is this is a great one. So we have five HTML fixes that will help your family law firm rank better and become more visible. The first one is using clear h ones that state the core topic. As per usual, we have our normal guests. The co-founder of Sterling Lawyers, Anthony Karls as well as our head of web, Nick Perow. Nick, get us started on the H1. Sure. Well, before. Before we dive into each one. Just just something to lay out the way to think about this. Great pages follow a structured outline format. So I really think about this as like what is the outline of my page and how is that represented on the page. So that structured outline communicates to search engines information about what's important on the topic of that page. So you have you have a real you have hierarchy. And that obviously starts with with heading one. So H1 heading one, it's the main heading of the page. It's like the book title. So for divorce page, divorce is the H1. Yeah. Effectively it's it's very clear and present in that, that that page title. And there should only be one. So any more than one you're confusing the user likely. And the search engine. So. It's hugely important to not send those mixed signals to search engines and the user. And this is this is a key placement for the page topic. It really helps your page end up in the right search. For divorce attorney. They don't want to see your child custody page. Your divorce attorney page. That's a good way to think about this is like for for our divorce page in Wisconsin, the I believe the title title and the H1 have divorce in Wisconsin in the title. And then a sub page underneath that which is under the underneath the divorce page would be how to file for divorce. And then like another page under divorce would be legal grounds for divorce in Wisconsin. So like we're just we're kind of building out the topic in a structured way. I would also add, add to this the one of the large mistakes that we see is especially for self-administered WordPress instances, we see a lot of people use the headings to kind of dictate font size and boldness. We'll see pages with no H1 because they thought it was too big, or multiple H1 because they loved how it looked. Both are really bad. If you don't have an H one, you're telling Google there's no title to this this chapter. Yeah. And if you have multiple you have multiple. We don't know what this page is about and neither should you. So these are this is really important because if you're if you're doing if you're building an outline this is essentially kind of your main, your main heading of your outline for this for this section of the the site. So you should have one H1 for each page. Not more than one, not less than one. You should have exactly one for each page on your site. And to speak to your question earlier Tyler divorce lawyer that isn't necessarily the page title. You you're the the heading one that you want. Maybe it's something like Milwaukee divorce lawyers focused on your future. There's the primary keyword and location are present at the start of the title. But you you can still communicate with with a bit more, you know, empathy or, you know, be more interesting than just, you know, Milwaukee divorce attorney. point. All right. We've talked about the age one. What the heck is the H2? Yeah. So these are the H2 would follow in the outline the H1. So these are going to be your subtopic headings. They're like the chapters in the book. So if the H1 is the book title we've got chapters within that book. So these are going to be the well what I, what I tend to favor would be say, identifying those topic top level questions that the client, the real real clients ask about the topic at hand. So some common ones how how how divorce works in Wisconsin. I want to answer that question that the client has. How long does divorce take? What does divorce cost. So these would be heading twos to follow that heading one. So I'd say the the most common mistake we see is boilerplate non keyword non-tropical heading to. So this is a really important signal that reinforces your main topic. We don't want things like services to take up that space that that could be, you know better optimized. I know we've said this before, and it feels like website maintenance is very much it's hygiene, right? It's it's creating the right processes on your site so that it is easily navigable by both users and the search engines. While we have our H2, I got to believe H3 or next. I think I think we we go all the way to like age five H7 I mean they keep going headings, headings nest. So this is this is your outline. Sometimes you need to nest additional topics under your, your, your your in your chapter basically. So we might have a subsection that subsection might relate to okay. If we have a heading two that's round child custody and parenting time then an H3 might be legal versus physical custody. There's a direct relationship to the sub. The heading two topic. There might be another H3. How parenting schedules are decided that relates back up to the H2. Within that H3 there might be an age four, might be a couple of H4 that split additional topics. We just we want to follow a very logical structure. Again this is an outline H3 and and higher nest I'm thinking about like a bullet point list you would build in Microsoft Word, and every time you indent that topic, you're staying on topic, but you're you're adding Yeah, there's a couple extensions that you can get for Chrome, where it will just pull your headings, and then you'll be able to see what is the outline just based on your headings. What does it. If you just look at headings and don't look at anything else, what does your what is your page about. And if like you're heading outline doesn't make sense as it's like constructed by you know that problem extension it it you that should be an indication to you that your page is communicating really poorly to anything that's crawling it, whether that's Google search or it's, you know, the LMS for generative search. So it's again, this is this is definitely hygiene. And like if you're not doing it well you're communicating poorly. And if we were to be, you know, drafting a legal agreement, we wouldn't be just randomly putting things in a contract. We would be doing it in a, in a structured order that made sense, that we could just look at the, that the section headers without looking at any of the contract language and be like, okay, we've covered most of the main topics. Now let's dig into exactly what we say for all of those topics. So this is this is very important. And if you can be ignored because it's it's boring work. It's not exciting. There's nothing sexy about it. Honestly most of SEO, if it's done well it's boring. It's not sexy and it works. Tony, I know you've talked about this before using your headings to make text big and bold. Yes. This is the web designer. Web developer move most often not following SEO best practices but just really following the font, chasing the font, making the font the star of the show and not thinking in terms of the structure and the hierarchy. H1 are big and flashy, so if you throw those around. Oh, I need big text. Let's use this. Oh I like oh I like the way the red one looks. So select the red structure throughout your site, you can end up with a real mess. So don't have your graphic designer do this. I can speak on that. In terms of the first site I built, it was a painting site for my brother, and I didn't know anything about headings prior to that, and I was literally using it to style the page. And then I learned it and looked at that and I'm like, what a mess. This doesn't communicate anything that I wanted to because it was I was just using it for call to action to help conversion. And the reality is, as soon as I fixed it, it helped, you know, walkie painters. Com which is what the site was. It's closed now, but it helped that site rank a lot better for all of the terms in Milwaukee forward for the painting business that we were running. So it makes a big difference. And like you can easily make this mistake if you're kind of self administering a WordPress site. That's what I was doing. So WordPress sites are fairly simple and easy to build. And you get this little selector on the right hand side and you're like, oh, this, this is cool. This changes the font for me. This makes it bigger, it makes it smaller. And then you don't you have no clue that it's actually an SEO tool and you're screwing your site up. Leave it to the experts. That's what I hear you saying. Don't mess around and find out. Okay. Final item is standardize HTML hierarchy across templates. So. You know, you're speaking to sort of the hygiene of the site and all that. It really starts with, with putting some rules in place from the start. Now, some of those rules we use, especially on modern websites, it's template templates. I mean template ties, we want to templates page types so that there's some consistency across pages. I don't want to redesign every every page like it's novel and and unique. I want I want consistency across my my brand, across those pages. I want predictability for the searcher. So what I want to do is think about, okay, well, my practice pages are going to follow a format, naturally that supports an H1 that has a maybe the service plus City plus tagline H2 that have. How it works, how much does it cost? Supporting topic subtopic. Why choose law firm? And I want to follow that structure across that practice. Template page. The the location page really any page that you're going to reuse across the site, it's a great opportunity to sort of set that structure. Attorney pages are great for this, you know, and that that basically gives you a content template. Then that just about writes itself. And you can always deviate if you need to build out additional content for that page. But you have you start from a place that isn't that is inherently good to go off the shelf. What I'm hearing is if you're going to go to the gym for the first time, bring a trainer. If you're going to build a website for the first time, don't do it yourself, because there's a lot of complexities here that need to be taken into account as you're building your firm for the long term. Great stuff gents. Really appreciate your time. Excited for the next one.