Which Category Should a Family Lawyer Use in Google My Business?

For family lawyers, there are two categories in Google My Business to consider using as the primary category: "Divorce Lawyer" and "Family Law Attorney." So, which one is better?

By Diana Shepherd, CDFA®Updated: October 13, 2020

For family lawyers, there are two categories to consider for use as the primary category: “Divorce Lawyer” and “Family Law Attorney.” So, which category should a family lawyer choose in Google My Business?

By Joy Hawkins, SEO Expert

Google My Business currently has just under 4,000 categories for businesses to choose from. Choosing the right category is important because it has a large impact on where you rank in the local pack results on Google.

Although you are allowed to pick up to 10 categories, whichever one you pick as the first category (also known as the “primary category”) holds more weight when it comes to ranking on Google.

This can be a bit confusing if your business has more than one category that accurately describes what you do.

Which Category Should a Family Lawyer Choose in Google My Business?

For family lawyers, there are two different categories that they could use as their primary category: “Divorce Lawyer” and “Family Law Attorney.”

According to the descriptions that Google uses for their categories, a family law attorney is “A legal professional that deals with family-related cases and domestic relations,” and a divorce lawyer is “A lawyer or law firm specialized in dealing with divorces and the issues raised such as splitting assets and custody of children.”

We work with a multi-location divorce lawyer in Arizona (Stewart Law Group) and wanted to know what the difference was between these two categories and which was a better choice as the primary category. We decided to test two of his locations and swap the primary category.

Which Category is Better: “Divorce Lawyer” or “Family Law Attorney”?

Family Law Attorney

On the listing that we switched to make Family Law Attorney the primary category, we saw ranking increases in the local results on Google for keywords like “child support lawyer”, “family law”, and “spousal support lawyer”. We saw decreases for keywords containing “divorce lawyer”.

Divorce Lawyer

On the listing that we switched to make Divorce Lawyer the primary category, we saw ranking increases for keywords containing “divorce lawyer”. We saw decreases for keywords like “family attorney” or “custody attorney”.

In This Case, “Divorce Lawyer” was the Better Category

We ended up concluding that “Divorce Lawyer” was the better primary category to use in Google My Business due to the fact that it correlated more with keywords including “divorce.” These keywords are searched a lot more than the ones containing “family law” or “child custody.”

Joy Hawkins has been working in the Local SEO industry since 2006. The founder of Canadian SEO agency Sterling Sky, she loves being a Google Top Contributor who has also been certified in both Google Search & Display. Joy has been a speaker at various SEO marketing conferences, including SMX & LocalU, Pubcon & Mozcon. www.sterlingsky.ca

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Published on: August 03, 2020

About the Author

Diana Shepherd, CDFA®

Diana Shepherd has over 30 years of experience as a marketing, branding, SEO, copywriting, editing, and publishing expert. As Content Director for Family Lawyer Magazine, Divorce Magazine, and Divorce Marketing Group, she oversees all corporate content development and frequently creates SEO-friendly videos, podcasts, and copy for family law and financial firms. The Co-Founder of Divorce Magazine and Divorce Marketing Group, Diana is an award-winning editor, published author, and a nationally recognized expert on divorce, remarriage, finance, and stepfamily issues. She has written hundreds of articles geared towards both family law professionals and divorcing people, and she has both performed and taught on-page SEO for 20+ years. Diana spent eight years as the Marketing Director for the Institute for Divorce Financial Analysts® (IDFA®), and she has been a Certified Divorce Financial Analyst® since 2006. While at IDFA, she wrote, designed, and published The IDFA Marketing Guide, and she also created seminars for CDFA professionals to present to family lawyers (approved for CLE), as well as to separated and divorcing individuals. She has represented both DMG and IDFA at industry conferences and events across North America, and she has given marketing as well as divorce financial seminars at many of those conferences.