Why is Google replacing my meta title with the business name on home page?

[katandmouse]

For all queries that return the home page, Google is not showing my meta title. Instead it replaced it with the official business name which of course makes it harder to rank for key terms since they don't exist now in the meta title. You can see this is you search on "mt view estate planning attorney". The site in question is dureelaw.com and the title showing is "The Law Office of Daniel L. DuRee." View the source and you'll see my meta title. Why is Google substituting it?

[seowoody]

Google doesn’t like duplicate content in any form, including title tags. Multiple pages on your website have the very similar title tags, so Google may elect to change one or more of them in order to provide a unique description for each one.

You could try changing the making the title tags a little more unique, or swap your logo for an image instead of text, since this is where Google is pulling the "The Law Office of Daniel L. DuRee." text from.

Alternatively, this could be Google being clever and trying to push your brand (Daniel L. DuRee), as it thinks it's more useful to the searcher than the current title tag?

[ClaytonJ]

In Titles google often "creates" a Title if it brand is not included in the first place. Hence we include them.

Recommend changing your Title ie Estate Planning Attorney | Estate Attorney | Duree Law

You may need to tweak the Title a few times to see what google will actually show in the SERP. But I recommend including the name of the Law firm at the end for each trial. If you use fetch for google should come up within 24 hours. Also consider changing your H1 to Mt View Estate Planning Attorney, that covers location.

Sorry if a bit blunt, but I will leave out all the standard comments re nuances of google which you are no doubt aware.

Let us know how that goes.  Pretty sure it will come up trumps - and no not talking about orange wigs...

[BradsDeals]

"which of course makes it harder to rank for key terms since they don't exist now in the meta title"

This is incorrect. The keywords are still in your meta title. Google isn't going to ignore them for crawling/indexing purposes based on what it chooses to display. They're still in your code, still getting crawled, still totally counting.

That said, if Google thinks your title is irrelevant, doesn't match the search query well enough, etc., it will display something it deems more appropriate given the page content and searcher's query. Take it as Google's hint that your titles may need some improvement.

I agree with seowoody that you should include your branding in your title line. I'm less crazy about John's suggested title tag. I used to work for an agency that specialized in lawyers of various stripes, and I know how the competitiveness really pushes hard into the gray there, the niche is so badly overoptimized, but it just looks spammy when the second kw just repeats 2 of 3 words from the first kw... and as you've discovered, Google may replace it anyway. I would use keywords but write it for the client, like "Estate Planning Attorney in Mt. View - Duree Law".

[katandmouse]

I tend to think you're right about the title. That most likely does look like a page title to Google and then you have identical titles on all pages! I replaced it with an image. We were already in the process of putting the first lines on the local pages into h1 tags, so that's done as well. It will be hard to know which one does the trick, but as long as it works I'm happy. This is standard routine SEO that needed to be done anyway.

[katandmouse]

Nuances welcome.

[katandmouse]

I'm back about a month later to report that it finally appears to have worked. Google is now pulling up my metatitle for a variety of queries.

Now I want to get Google to show local landing pages in the SERPS instead of the home page so that the location shows in the title and appears to be more relevant. Always a challenge.  I know the standard tactics, but specific ideas are welcome. Building a silo of local pages around estate planning is hard as the topic is not really local.