400 Pages, 0 Duplicates: Our Law Firm Meta Descriptions Audit

Law firm meta descriptions in the US get written by Google if you skip them. We don't skip them.

We treat every meta description like ad copy, not an afterthought. Our systematic audit formula made sure that there’s no duplicate content across 400 pages.

It also boosts our click-through rate and builds predictable local SEO visibility. 

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📄 CHAPTERS  

0:00 - Law Firm Meta Descriptions: Why Most Are Broken
1:55 - Treat Meta Descriptions Like Ad Copy, Not an Afterthought
5:29 - Match Search Intent With Clear Human Language
8:14 - The Service + Location + Value Formula for Local SEO
12:02 - Auditing 400 Pages for Duplicate Meta Descriptions
15:01 - Aligning Meta Descriptions With On-Page Content and CTAs 

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Transcript

0:00

healthiest way to think about a meta description after being an advertisement is that it's a promise for what is going to be on the page. you have to live up to that promise. Otherwise you're going to generate a bounce. So someone is going to click on your page and realize very quickly that they are not in the right place. Welcome back to the Sterling Family Law Show. We are continuing our deep dive into helping family law firms improve their website visibility with SEO. Today, we're going to dive into meta descriptions and why they are so important. We have our normal co-hosts and guests for this show, the co-founder of Sterling Lawyers, Tony Karls as well as our head of web development, Nick Perrow. Like I said, we're going to talk about a descriptions. We have five major points we're going to cover. The first one, Nick, is treat meta descriptions like ad copy, not like an afterthought. Why don't we start at the highest level? What the heck is a meta description in the first place? And then we can dive into our first Great, great place to start. Meta description is a small. It's a short description of the page. You don't actually see it on the page. It's in the code. But it's a it's a description. It literally just describes or should describe what's on this page. So if your divorce page or your family law firm, would a meta description be for that? Well, you'd want to jump in ahead here, but really want a purposeful and benefit driven meta description that reflects all the details of what somebody might find on that page. So you, you know, for a divorce page, it's likely going to be localized. So something like facing divorce and Milwaukee are dedicated divorce lawyers focus on your future kids and your financial security. Love it. So an actual description. We're not talking about a simple word. It's a little bit longer than that. Little more descriptive. Okay. Well how why should family attorneys treat meta descriptions like ad copy and not an Well, because we don't see them we don't always think about them. We need to actually be really diligent in considering how they're going to show up in the search results. And the reality is, with Google, for example, someone searches for divorce in Milwaukee, you're going to show up alongside, you know, a lot of search features. You're going to show up alongside the ads, you're going to show up alongside, you know, 5 to 10 other individuals for that same search. You need to hook that searcher in to click on your result and not go somewhere else. We want to grab that attention. It really is smart to think of it as the the the ad copy, rather than being just kind of a, an afterthought. One of the worst things we can do is not have a meta description. And at which point Google, for example, is going to write one for you. And I can tell you from experience, from looking at at clients who are not with rocket clicks or that they are bad. We don't want to let Google write our meta descriptions for us. They do not understand people. a You want to. You want to treat this like marketing. So basically you boil it down to its most basic essence, like who is this page for? What's the problem they're facing and what's the next step that they can take. So like really start to boil it down. Keyword stuffing. This is not going to have any benefit to you. So like make this something that is readable compelling. It's a good hook solves a problem. All of those things. This should be way more marketing, almost exclusively marketing, talking about what's happening on this page and why it's it's the right page out of the 20 that you might see on that search results page. That is why is it the right one for you to to click on so that you're solving your problem right there? It's important to call out that it does not have a direct a direct implication on your. It's not a direct ranking factor, but it does have some indirect effects based on your click through rate. So or the click through rate you're able to generate from from you know, just showing up at at a position where someone else has shown up before. So if you can outpace them on clicks and, you know, deliver what that page is about, you're going to do better, have more stability in ranking, and generally be tested higher. Yeah, I mean, we are in an ultra competitive space, right? We are trying to to outrank our local competitors for the very same services that that they provide. So any little thing you can do to help increase your visibility and authority online is worth doing when it comes to meta descriptions. Nick, would it be fair to say that like a good way to think about this is the if they remember one thing about this page, or what's the one sentence you want them to remember? Is that a fair way to think about this? I think it's it's you got to do a lot of things in a, in a short amount of space. But it's really I mean, think about who is searching for that, that content, what they're searching for their content and really speak to them directly. Beautiful number two match search intent with clear human language? Tony, you were starting to say this, right? Don't keyword stuff. It. It needs to be clear as day. So you're, you're going to want to really understand like you want to get into the head of the searcher based on the different keywords that are going to trigger this page and try to understand, like, what are they actually what's the problem? What's the question that they're asking? And writing your meta description as a solution for that question that they're typing into Google with, with some benefits and advantages as it pertains to why they should consider what you're what you offer from a service perspective. So, you know, if it's a how to file, you know, how to file for divorce in Wisconsin, type query like you're going to want to address that specifically. Like who who is searching for this? This is probably someone that's going through the process right now. What are what are the things that they're they're concerned about that aren't actually explicitly in the in the keyword search. So it's going to be things like alimony, child support, child custody, those types of things. And what are what are the benefits of coming to this page. What are the answers that you're gonna be able to give to them so that they're they're more inclined to click on click on your result versus somebody else's. And you have control over how you write these. Like Nick said, if you don't do it and you don't pay attention to these googles in a write them for you and they're going to be pretty choppy. I would say not to great human language. So which will lower your click through rates and decrease your rankings? Another example of this might be in child child custody. So someone searches how does child custody custody work in Wisconsin? That person probably needs a level of detail and clarity and reassurance. And this is how it's going to work for you. Whereas someone who's searching for child custody lawyer Milwaukee Free Consult is probably looking to hire or much closer to hiring, it's going to be a different conversation. Maybe they're not. They're less interested in how it works. They're just ready. yeah, they're just there. They need To buy. to those two different individuals differently. I mean Yeah, that's a that's another podcast episode. But what we found is the buying cycle is very long for family law customers. And your website needs to do both education so that you can get them at the top of the funnel, as well as convert them when they're ready to buy. Hey, family law firm leaders. My partner Tony Carl's just released his book where he lays bare our precise blueprint for growing sterling lawyers from 0 to 17 million. This is the blueprint that we still use daily. And Tony explains it in very simple terms. The truth is, this is not simple to do. Success requires and demands hard work. But if you have the patience and the work ethic to do it, your family law firm will succeed. Okay, moving on to number three. And Nick, you were kind of alluding to this earlier, which is used service plus location in your meta descriptions to help juice that local value, which we know is so important. got about 160 characters going to max. That's at the. That's at the maximum end of of the amount of space that you have to communicate. You've got you've got to speak to your audience and let them know that you are relevant to where you where you are basically needs to match where they are. So I like the formula of service plus location plus value. And I want to lead with what and where. That's the easiest part to get out of the way. I want to confirm hey, this is what we do. We are where you need us to be and here's why you should choose us. It's a nice, simple way to navigate this, you know, meta description that often gets clipped off. I don't want my location to be clipped off. I don't want my service to be clipped off. Sometimes an ellipse at the very end of a meta description can be very compelling. So I might structure the way I'm writing this to, to kind of trail off and, you know, compel someone to click on the next section. So there's there's a lot you can do here, but you can't lose the relevancy, what you do, where you are. And now I can speak to value. No, I mean I think you from a, I think one of the areas that we see kind of if we're going to look at service location value, the one that's probably the least optimized when we look at this. I mean, oftentimes you'll see service kind of in their location kind of in there, but there won't really be any value statements because they're not obvious. These these should really be more from a marketing perspective. So it's like some things that we've we've used at work are referencing where we've been affirmed as, you know, really knowing what we're doing by third party experts. So or maybe local shows that we've been on where we've talked about it. So like, I know in in the Milwaukee area, one of our local news news channels will reference that in our meta descriptions as seen you know, Fox six in in Milwaukee. So like there are some opportunities for you to like create some local relevancy that like allows you to create value and like further strengthen your position versus everybody else's. So whether that's like third party affirmations of your ability through an award or something like that, or from your appearance on something that is locally relevant or, you know, reviews or whatever you might have that can affirm the value of what you're going to deliver compared to somebody else. Like that's going to give you a much better opportunity to get a click through. But this is really a how can you differentiate yourself against all of the other places, all the all of the other options on the page, and some of them aren't actually there nothing to do with what's actually on your page. It's how do you how do you convince someone in 160 characters that they should visit your site, not somebody else's? So good. Okay. Moving on to item number four. Give every important page a unique meta description. This is not a copy and paste exercise. It is taking the time to actually understand what every page is about, right? Nick. That's exactly right. Well, there isn't a direct bearing on on on ranking. The duplication is likely a sign that you you you are not speaking directly to the audience for that specific page. So you really want to make sure that distinct, especially for your most important, most valuable pages, the pages that drive drive, conversions and people reach out and contact your your firm. So do an audit for duplicate meta tags if they're missing. If there if they're duplicate you can you can pretty much flag them immediately for for a rewrite and really like take the opportunity to to make them distinct and speak to the content that's on the pages. So if you are struggling to figure that out, say you have a lot of practice area pages where where you're, you know, it's the same, same practice area, but maybe in a different location. Well, tie in, tie in the city. Name speak. Pull from what? Pull in some local relevancy. So speak to that area in particular. But you'd say, hey, we know we know this area. You want to get those nuances in. Yeah, I would I would say in today's world, with the ability to leverage AI to help me understand the intent of this query and give me ten meta descriptions that I could potentially use for this page, that's about X, y, z. Then just read through them and like, pick the one that's the most compelling. You know, this is this is no longer as difficult as it used to be to like kind of go comb through a site and do you know, some some law firm sites, even on the small side or, you know, 3 or 400 pages, that can be a labor intensive exercise to kind of go through and write unique creative meta descriptions for all, for all of those leverage, you know, leverage the tools at your disposal. It's a lot easier today than it was when we originally building Sterling Lawyers. I will say the first tool I built with AI was a a meta description generator, and it literally did. That was 1010 versions, but scaled across a website. And it was, yeah, Brave New World. Yes, leverage the tools. Do it the right way. Totally agree. Okay, moving into our fifth and final point. Align meta descriptions with on page content and CTAs. I think we've been talking about a version of this the whole time. Right. We have to make sure that they're unique and that they actually target what what we're trying to communicate on the page. Yeah. I think the healthiest way to think about a meta description after being an advertisement is that it's a promise for what is going to be on the page. So you have to you have to live up to that promise. Otherwise you're going to generate a bounce. So someone is going to click on your page and realize very quickly that they are not in the right place. And this is not what they were looking for, at which point they go back and you can look at that as a vote against your site that's going to hurt your your website's ability to rank that page's ability to rank for the target keyword. We really want to make sure we live up to the promise of that meta description. So I would recommend that we think about each page, the most important pages on the site, really deliberately, and make sure that the meta description accurately aligns with the headline that HH1 on the page, the very first section, and I, you know, would say also really represent the call to actions, if you can, in that meta description, kind of mirror them, pull them in. So you have this really relevant experience. Just as a reminder, your home page is your most powerful page on your site. And from there it's your service and attorney pages. And so take the time on specifically those pages. Am I forget any tone location pages? Those would be the important ones, I think. Nick. Nick, just to reiterate, some of the Nick said is like, if you if you create an overly compelling experience from a click through perspective, but you can't meet that promise on page, like you will see your ranking actually go down because you're you're over promising and under delivering. And some of that clicks on your on your link. It doesn't experience what they thought they were going to based on what you've communicated. And then goes back to Google, you're going to see your rankings actually go down. So you may you may have won the first battle, which was get the click, but you've lost the war because now you've created a really bad experience for the user, which didn't result in a terminated search, which is user doesn't go back to Google and continue trying to find the answer for their original query. So you want to do this diligently and with good intentions, or you will be negatively impacted overall. It's pretty easy to spot check as well. So if you just do a search, you know that you, you, you rank four for a key page that you rank for. Read your meta description. I recommend you read it out loud, a lot of value and reading it out loud. And then open the page as a user and just ask yourself, hey, if I clicked based on this description, do I feel like I'm in the right place? Love it gentlemen. Appreciate this. I know that what we have here is valuable, and I hope our listeners are enjoying it as much as I am. We will see you on the next