More threads by Larry Linson

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I may be way off base here, so I welcome those who would set me straight. I am looking at google SERP results for an attorney client in a specialty area. My attorney client limits her practice to a narrow field, but this area of practice is often an adjunct area of practice for civil litigation attorneys. I have noticed generally in different markets that the specialists like my client lose out in the SERPs to the generalist firms that offer her field of specialty as a "we also do..". This seems counterintuitive to me - I would think Google would prefer specialists.

When the generalist wins the day, it is with a specific interior page. The page often has the name of the specialty in the name of the page, and does often have good content. It seems to me that my client's homepage loses out because it does have less content since it is more general in nature, directing people to specific content pages. When my client ranks in the SERP it is with the homepage, and I notice the same for others like my client who specialize in this area.

I guess I feel like my specialist client is being disadvantaged. In her specialty, she has many pages about specific issues in the specialist. The generalist has generally one big page with all content about the specialty, and I feel like that results in the generalist winning the day. Again it feels like Google is penalizing the specialist who has enough content and expertise that she does not have all specialty content on one page.

What am I missing in helping my client here?
 
Seems like you have figured out a good portion of the issue.

Try structuring the home page to have more content on each of the sub-specialties, for example a couple of paragraphs under an H2 heading. Link to the internal pages from within the appropriate section of the homepage content as well as from the main menu.

What you didn't mention is that most likely the larger generalist firms will have more backlinks which is giving strength to the overall website.
 

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