headings - Made with Clipchamp
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[00:00:00] Hi everyone. It's Olga Czar from SEO slide. So today I want to talk about a very important topic, which is, as you can see, the structure of headings on lawyer websites. I wouldn't talk about it if I hadn't seen so many examples of that being done very incorrectly. So this is going to be a fun episode. I will be simply reviewing random pages that pop up in Google search and simply like checking the structure of their headings.
[00:00:29] Before we do that, I invite you to read my entire Lawyer SEO guide, which is like a very, very in depth piece. It has like, I don't know how many words currently it has because I was like reviewing that. It has 40k words, a very in depth piece where I talk about all the aspects of Lawyer SEO. Of course, I am still only scratching the surface because this topic is so in depth.
[00:00:52] There are so many nuances, so many things you can do, you can change, you can optimize, you can think about. That, but still, I think you will learn a ton from it. I know what I'm talking about. I've been an SEO for like 12 plus years. I am an independent SEO consultant. I have been working in lawyer SEO for around three, three and a half years now.
[00:01:12] Maybe three years is more accurate. Why headings? There are so many factors, so many things in lawyer SEO. Why am I talking about headings? Uh, headings, let me scroll to, to the heading section in my guide to give you maybe a little bit of the context for that. Because if you know me a little bit, you know that I'm very passionate about headings and read more links.
[00:01:36] And there is a separate video only I think about read more links. Here it is. Why? Headings, headings in SEO act like, basically like chapters in a book, right? And they should logically divide what a given section of the page is about. They should act like a title, subtitle, so that Google can understand the meaning, the semantics of those sections.
[00:01:58] They should never be used for styling purposes, which is very often the case in lawyer websites. Search engines better understand the page, the context, the meaning. And they also are very important for accessibility reasons. Users using screen readers, they rely on headings a lot. So if you have 100 headings and all they say is 1 million, 5 million, 10 million, this can not necessarily be, I would say the best experience such a user gets.
[00:02:26] And experience as we know is, is important. And it's, and when it comes to just on page SEO, keyword optimization, headings can really play a huge role. If you optimize your page using headings, you have a lot of headings. Their structure is correct. You map the right keyword to the page, you put those mapped keywords, variations, entities, LSIs in the right places in headings, you can really move the page up.
[00:02:51] Of course, to do that correctly, I recommend you use Quora tool, Quora SEO tool. I am talking about that tool a lot because I'm using this tool a lot because this tool really is a game changer for on page SEO and for off page SEO as well and for local SEO. So if you aren't using Quora, I strongly recommend you use it.
[00:03:10] So using my link, SEOfly. com slash Quora, you get 25 percent off. Quora at this moment tracks to 128, 000 tracking factors, including factors for local SEO. It basically tells you exactly. What, where you are against your competitors and what factors for that specific keyword play role in ranking highly and where you are versus competitors and where are the missing pieces you have versus competitors strongly recommend you check that, uh, because Tura Quora also show, tells you a lot about headings, how many you should have, what keywords you should, what exactly keywords you should have in heading.
[00:03:51] So. That's the first kind of step to knowing what you should put in those headings before you start putting them. And now let's have some fun and let's review some of the headings of random pages in Google. None of those pages, none of those lawyer websites are my clients. My, my purpose is not to like laugh at them and in any case, they are on the first page of Google.
[00:04:16] So definitely they're doing a good job in SEO. My goal is not to condemn them or anything like that. Headings are just one of tons of factors, as we know, and there are a lot of examples where page ranking number one has messed up headings, but they have a ton of other thousands, hundreds of other factors that are kind of working correctly.
[00:04:40] And the weight of those other factors may be bigger than the, those headings factors, right? So that's why they may be ranking highly even though they do not have headings done correctly But my approach to seo is very holistic. So Anything we have control over headings are one of those things We should make sure it is done according to the best seo practices Of course There's also the practical part which is how much time how much effort is involved in fixing a specific factor if the effort Needed is like months.
[00:05:13] You probably don't want to do that That's why Quora becomes so useful because Quora shows you very often thousands of, not thousands, I'm exaggerating. In a given report, you get hundreds of factors and you do not have to fix all of them. You can fix 10 of them, 5 of them, 15, and sometimes that's all you need to do.
[00:05:33] But let's talk about headings. So I, ideally, this is an example of a bad structure of headings. This is an example of good structure of headings from my website. because I'm obsessive about headings. The way I check headings, you can do it in many ways. The easiest way probably is using a Chrome web developer tool or some other in built Chrome extension like Details SEO.
[00:05:57] So I strongly recommend you download this free tool and it will let you diagnose not only headings but a ton of other things including, for example, you can display images without alt. A lot of other diagnostic things that for SEO and for web development are very useful. I will make my screen bigger a little bit so that you can see less of me and more of the screen.
[00:06:19] Okay, so let's now do a search for Personal Injury Lawyer Chicago. So these are the search results for Personal Injury Lawyer Chicago. Here we have sponsored results. I won't be clicking on them because I know that, um, they have to pay a lot for every click. So let's start with organic results. Of course, we have maps.
[00:06:36] The first organic result. This is an interesting example. They have a lot of authority. They have a very nice site and from what I remember, they have a lot of visibility. They're doing great in terms of SEO, but they're not doing great in terms of headings. And this is one of those examples. The site is great, has a lot of authority, a lot of links, but they suck at headings.
[00:06:59] I'm using Chrome Web Developer, opening it right now. I have no idea why you cannot see that I'm opening it when I share the screen. You will see that in just a second, I'm just opening this extension. And now you can see the structure of headings, as you can see. There is an H1, but above the H1 we have those, so like the structure is off.
[00:07:18] H1 has what it should have, the most important stuff. And other things, not necessarily. You have those numbers, numbers, numbers. numbers. This is practice areas. The entire sentences in h5 headings. Definitely not ideal. I'm not saying it is like the worst, but this is like the classic mistakes. You don't want to have headings used for styling purposes, and this is definitely what they're doing.
[00:07:43] I'm pretty sure their site is custom coded, so you probably want to avoid that. This is like, I think this is a heading. This is definitely a heading. Let me inspect that. Yes, this is, this is a heading. I'm not sure if you can see that, but this is, this is a heading. Okay, so They have a ton of other factors that are working in their favor.
[00:08:02] Let's go to, um, the second result. Uh, second result. It looks like a little bit older site. Let's see how they're doing in terms of headings. Document outline. Yeah, they're, I think they're doing better because, like, we have h1, we have the main phrase. Here we have the main phrase. Here we have something that is not necessarily the phrase, but we can say it may be a variation.
[00:08:27] Here, unfortunately, we have the same story. We should, we could easily like format it with span. And here, yeah, so not, not the best structure of headings, but again, I'm pretty sure they have a lot of content. They have images. Let's say if they have alt text in the images, again, I'm opening Chrome web developer and clicking images display alt attributes to see the alt attributes.
[00:08:50] So yeah, they have something here. here, they have something, but probably in this alt I would rather have partners at personal injury lawyers, blah, blah, blah. And I would also add a caption below. So, but their site is doing, probably is doing okay. I haven't like reviewed that in Ahrefs, SEMrush, but if it is ranking number two for personal injury lawyer in Chicago, I talked about this Chicago modifier.
[00:09:20] Those results are pretty much what you have without Chicago, if you are looking from Chicago. So they're pretty relevant. Super lawyers, so this looks like a directory, so we probably don't want to investigate it because it is kind of a different type of site. Of course, we can take a look at headings, it may also be fun.
[00:09:40] Yeah, so their headings are okay, right? Names of specific personal injury lawyers, that's okay. Justia, the same story, probably the same story. Let me check headings. Oh, they only have one heading, but their ranking, they have a ton of authority, In some places authority is everything is all that matters and you have authority you cannot have headings and you are okay another one I see some differences in rankings the same pages are ranking from chicago But I see that in slightly different positions, but it doesn't matter this one Nice effects nice effect probably a lot of javascript.
[00:10:21] I'm pretty sure Document outline not necessarily right like entire sentences marked as headings The H1 tag, uh, heading, the most important one, is okay. But other, definitely I think there is a lot of room for improvement, but at least they are not marking those as headings. So, like 3, assessment 3 out of 10.
[00:10:47] Find law, so again, this is a directory from what I remember, yes. Yeah, this is okay. This is, this is okay, this is acceptable, but this is a directory, so this is a different type of site. So whenever you are doing keyword research and you are determining whether to target a specific keyword for your lawyer, lawyer client, like let's say personal injury lawyer, but probably if you have a personal injury lawyer, this will be your keyword.
[00:11:12] But whenever you are deciding whether to target a specific keyword, you always want to check it of course in SEMrush, Ahrefs, see what's ranking, how many backlinks those pages have versus how many you can build or you have. And also you want to look at SERPs, how many ads, how many other features, maps, videos, what's there, because if there's a video, you may also create a video and you can have two spots instead of one.
[00:11:36] And what types of pages are ranking organically? If for this specific keyword, there were only lawyer directories, probably I wouldn't recommend my client to target this keyword unless he wants to create a lawyer directory because he may not rank unless he Google changes search intent or search intent changes and Google adjusts search results to start showing lawyers again, but this is not the case.
[00:12:01] Let's, let's review one or two more and we'll be wrapping up the document outline. Oh, maybe it's not, not the worst. I've seen worst. So Chicago personal injury attorneys, and then we have featured attorney, but why not featured personal injury attorney or featured Chicago personal injury attorney. And then featured Chicago personal injury, uh, lawyer.
[00:12:27] Why not do this and then have those names? And then, oh, something went really wrong here. Probably too much content. Too long sentences. Too many things that are not relevant. Let's type the main keyword. I guess they're targeting personal injury attorney, but basically they should be targeting two personal injury attorneys.
[00:12:50] Uh, so. Yeah, it only appears six times. They have 58 headings. What about personal injury, just, so it appears 12 times. Definitely they should have it in almost every heading, to be honest. In one way or another, if you use Quora, it shows you variations and with those variations, you can put it in very different ways and you do not have to, and you will not sound like a keyword stuffer.
[00:13:17] Let me check if I can show you quickly a report I have for a personal injury lawyer, a CORA report I created. You have to check CORA because this is the tool that will, uh, if you want to make your lawyer client shine or your employer, use CORA. This is an example CORA report for a lawyer website. And this was done for personal injury lawyer.
[00:13:44] And as you can see here, we have all the variations for personal injury lawyer. And you can use those variations. You can use those variations in headings, in text, in FAQs. all text in schema whenever you want, uh, and you can actually make your site way more relevant. One more result and we'll be wrapping up.
[00:14:04] This one. Okay, uh, Ankin Law, let me open view document. Yeah, this one. I think this is the first result out of the ones I have checked, which actually, I think they're doing it right. And do you know why they're doing it right? Because I taught them, and this isn't my client, but I, uh, I taught them how to do headings, but it was a long time ago, so maybe they changed them, something, maybe they're not ideal, but they're close to being ideal, so Chicago personal injury lawyer, uh, personal, yeah.
[00:14:37] As you can see, it is in most cases, it is, it's happening, it is there. Probably I would add more headings, probably I would add FAQs. I would add more variations, but this is pretty okay. Okay, so I think that's all regarding headings for lawyers. Please watch my entire playlist with lawyer SEO. There are a lot of aspects of lawyer SEO I get frustrated at some aspects.
[00:15:03] Or I get crazy and I simply need a way to kind of express my feelings. And I think you can actually use that knowledge to your benefit. And I can kind of become calmer because I see those examples over and over again. I recently was diagnosed with ADHD and it turns out this is really a huge advantage for me because my type of ADHD is the one where I become obsessed, hyper focused, uh, like I'm obsessing with headings.
[00:15:33] And this, in my case, is combined with exceptionally high IQ level, which I didn't know about, it doesn't matter, and very, very high attention to details. I'm not this person that is like throwing objects, screaming, not this type, but I become obsessed, sometimes even too much, but that's a different story.
[00:15:51] So that's all from me, see you in the next video, bye bye!
