Everett,

Thank you. Very much appreciate the detail. Will definitely check out JSON-LD.

Thanks for all the responses! Much appreciated.

Greetings All,

My law office features many pages with what are essentially directory listings (names, addresses, and phone numbers of places, agencies, organizations that clients might find helpful).

Am I correct in assuming that using schema for each of these listings might cause confusion for search engines? In other words, are search engines looking for schema on pages or sites to tell them only about the company running that page or site, or do search engines appreciate schema markup to tell them about all the pieces of content on the pages or that site?

I realize this is an old thread, but I came across it when looking for an answer to the question, "What is the ideal keyword density for SEO?" After reading several high-ranking pages on the subject (most of which did not or could not provide an answer), I came up with what I believe to be an answer: The ideal keyword density for a given web page is either: (1) one keyword less than what would cause a visitor of the page to form an opinion that the page is not a credible source of information for that keyword, or (2) one keyword less than what would cause Google to form an opinion that the page is not a credible source of information for that keyword.

Now, I'll leave it to someone better at math to calculate what exactly that number is.

Thanks Miriam. Much appreciated.

Thanks for detailed response, Zoe. I actually have the exact structure you're describing, but I still can't seem to get the main pages of the practice areas to show up in SERPs. Individual pages in the separate practice areas absolutely come up (for example: a search for "spousal support" will bring up the "spousal support" page in the "divorce" practice area), but a search for "divorce attorney" never brings up the "divorce attorney" page or the main page for the "divorce" practice area. It always directs users to the homepage.

This observation (not only on my page, but others) has caused me to wonder if Google is actually indexing pages according to profession or business type-- rather than sub-type-- for certain search terms, and then directing users to the homepage. For example, assume a strange restaurant specialized in three different types of fare (Indian, Japanese, and Mexican), and that their webpage had several pages for each cuisine (organized under each cuisine type). I'm wondering if a search on Google for "Indian restaurant" would cause the restaurant's page to come up in the SERPs, and if a click on the link would necessarily always result in the user landing on the main page of the restaurant's website rather than the page for that specific type of cuisine. This is not to say that a user couldn't find a more obscure page on the website by typing in a more specialized search, but if the user types in a rather generic search for a business type (e.g. "restaurant"), I'm wondering if Google has decided to index those search terms a certain way for a more simpler user experience.

My goal was to get the practice areas to come separately in the SERPs, rather than to force all users to the homepage. I can't seem to do that.

I have a law office and we handle four different practice areas. I used to have multiple websites (one for each practice area) with keywords in the actual domain name, but based on the recommendation of SEO "experts" a few years ago, I consolidated all the webpages into one single webpage (based on the rumors at the time that Google was going to be focusing on authorship and branding in the future, rather than keywords in URLs or titles). Needless to say, Google authorship was dropped a year or two later and "branding" never took off.

Overall, having one webpage is convenient and generally makes SEO easier, but there's been a huge drawback: When my page comes up in SERPs after searching for "attorney" or "lawyer" combined with a specific practice area, the practice area landing pages don't typically come up in the SERPs, only the front page comes up. It's as if Google recognizes that I have some decent content, and Google knows that I specialize in multiple practice areas, but it directs everyone to the front page only. Prospective clients don't like this and it causes my bounce rate to be high. They like to land on a page focusing on the practice area they searched for.

Two questions:

(1) Would using parent pages (e.g. http://lawfirm.com/divorce/anytown-usa-attorney-lawyer/ vs. http://lawfirm.com/anytown-usa-divorce-attorney-lawyer/) be better for SEO? The research I've done up to this point appears to indicate "no." It doesn't make much difference as long as the keywords are in the domain name and/or URL. But I'd be interested to hear contrary opinions.

(2) Would using parent pages (e.g. http://lawfirm.com/divorce/anytown-usa-attorney-lawyer/ vs. http://lawfirm.com/anytown-usa-divorce-attorney-lawyer/) be better for indexing in Google SERPs? For example, would it make it more likely that someone searching for "anytown usa divorce attorney" would actually end up in the divorce section of the website rather than the front page?