Recently a divorce law firm I work with in Florida changed their name as a result of an update in the type of business entity. The firm went from an LLC to a PLLC which provides additional protections for professional practitioners such as lawyers.  My team made all the usual updates on the website as well as hundreds of off-site directories and citations. However, the Site Name in Google search results did not update. 

Only after I completed a deep analysis of the client’s online presence was I able to convince Google of the proper name to display. It took a bit of time, but below I will share the methods I used in case you get stuck changing the site name that appears in Google search results.

What is a site name?

A Site Name is very simply the name that Google assigns to a website at the very top of their search results.

On any standard search result, Google will display the following elements:

• Favicon
• Site Name
• URL
• Title
• Description

It will look like this:

In this case, “Lawyers.com” is the Site Name.

The Site Name is used across every page on the website as opposed to the site title which is specific to each page.

Why does a site name matter?

A Site Name is an important part of the Google search result. While a searcher’s eyes may initially focus on the website title that Google displays, the other elements listed provide reassurances that you have found the correct result.

Let’s say you were looking for a specific law firm or attorney.  

In this case I’ll do a search for Alina Habba, Donald Trump’s attorney. Google’s displays the following result:

You can see the Site Title is “Alina Habba” , the attorney’s name. However I also can see that she works for a firm called “Habba Law” so I know that the link is for a law firm website and not someone’s blog. If the Site Name used the firm’s URL or just repeated the attorney’s name that would provide me with no additional information.

In the case of my attorney, they were very concerned for legal reasons that the type of entity displayed is correct. It was crucial that their firm was not misrepresented with incorrect information. 

Examples of Site Names

There are several different ways that Google displays a Site Name in their search results.

Standard Site Name

For most websites, Google will display a standard name that it believes is the name of the entity or website. This name is often the name used in structured data and is often the name of the firm or organization. 

For example, here is how NVIDIA is displayed:

Here is another example of how Google assigned its own Site Name to the website for the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

URL

In some cases, Google displays the website URL (domain name or subdomain name) in place of a standard site name. This happens when Google is less confident in the name you call yourself.

For example, here is how NJ Chamber Business Directory is displayed:

This can happen for a variety of reasons. Sometimes Google is confused or uncertain what the site name should be. Other times the site name that is intended is already overrepresented in another one of the elements so Google wants to show something different.

For example many lawyer websites use the firm or attorney’s name in the title tag on most pages. When this happens Google may decide to show the URL in place of the site name as that name is already included in the title display.

To demonstrate, a search for Parsippany NJ car accident lawyer reveals the following result where the law firm’s URL is used for the Site Name:

It is very likely this is happening because they have overused the firm’s actual name in their title tag element as seen below:

Custom Site Name

Some crafty marketing folks have found a way to manipulate the Site Name that Google shows and use this to their advantage. They create a unique name that they want the business to be known by and use various tactics that I describe below to convince Google to display it.

The idea here is you can create an image that you are a known business for a specific niche because it says so on the internet in Google’s search results. 

Imagine if you could name your website like this:

• Florida’s car accident lawyer
• Top pizza shop in New York
• Affordable garage door installations
• Long Island divorce lawyers
• Hair restoration near me

Now those are some titles that may grab attention. 

How to influence a site name in Google’s search results?

Google does provide some guidance on how to change a site name that appears in their search results. 

However, they don’t go into a lot of detail. 

Here is the step by step guide on how to change the site name that appears in Google’s search results.

For this guide, let’s assume you are changing your firm’s name. The lawyer I helped, changed the firm name from LLC to PLLC. But these same steps will work even if you are trying to update your site from a URL to a custom site name.

1. Replace the firm name throughout the website – When a business changes names, you want to make sure to update it correctly on every page of the website. 
2. Include the name a few times on the home page – Use the business name 3-4 times consistently on the home page. Include the name in the content, footer and headers.
3. Change the site title – Most website software will allow you to change the “Site Title”. In WordPress go to “General Settings” and update that to the new name.
4. Update Structured Data (name, alternate name) – Google recommends adding Structured Data (Schema Markup) to indicate the name. You can use both name and alternate name elements.
5. Update the firm’s logo(s) / alt tag – Remember to update your firm’s logo with the new name. When saving the logo include an alt tag using the new name.
6. Update images used on the website – Use appropriate URL structure and alt tags on all images. Be sure to include the firm name in a few where warranted.
7. Update some title tags to include the firm name – Use the full firm or business name in some of the page titles. A good place to start is 10% of all pages. Then increase that over time if needed.
8. Meta descriptions – Use the firm or business name in some page meta descriptions.
9. Update or add internal linking using the new firm name – Use the new name as the anchor text for some links to the home page on prominent pages. Start with 4-5 links and add more later if needed.
10. Research and update primary directories with the firm name – Update all major directories and social media sites such as Google Business Profile, Apple, Facebook, LinkedIn with the new name. Be sure to update the business name, text on the page, images, etc…
11. Research and update all other directories and citations – This will take some time but research and locate every directory and website that lists your business. Then claim your listing and update it with the new name.
12. Secretary of state website – Every state has an official business name search. Look for your business and make sure it has the correct name.
13. Law firm licensing (for lawyers) – Make sure you update your law license to reflect the correct name.
14. Add your business name to the Contact Us page of your website – It may seem obvious but many firms don’t include their name on the contact form page.

How some firms have manipulated a site name

Let’s face it. Google wants you to accurately represent your business so they can show accurate results in their search engine. However in some cases using highly targeted keywords as I noted above can make your business look like an authority. 

When you have a high-end divorce law firm with a URL of smithjones.com, that is not going to help much when someone is looking for an attorney and doesn’t know about your firm. But if you were able to change that URL to Long Island Divorce Lawyer, that could be a game changer. 

Long Island Divorce Lawyer

This first example was clearly designed as an effort to rank the website for “Long Island divorce lawyer”. I have worked on two websites that rank higher in Google’s search results for that term but even though the firm does not have the best lawyer seo, this website does have the exact term in the coveted Site Name.

While obtaining a custom Site Name may not have been the goal, a bit of detective work uncovers most of the tactics that got this result.

First is some obvious stuff. The website uses the exact term in the H1 header and the title tag. The exact term is also used two other times on the home page.

Next, the exact term is used on 80 pages of the website in the footer section. The site has a lot of content so they tend to mix up the phrases a bit. 

The final piece of the pie that appears to be influencing a custom Site Name for this website is an external blog that has about 20 pages linking to the homepage of the law firm using the exact term as anchor text.

This is an old tactic that may have some impact on search results, but I think here it is showing Google that an off site entity is recognizing this firm as a Long Island Divorce Lawyer.

There are some other lesser impactful things that also help but these appear to be the main things. Of course you won’t really know until you try them yourself but if you do I recommend doing these types of changes slowly over time.

Long Island Bankruptcy Lawyer

Here is another example but in this case I think the lawyer just got lucky. The website for this firm is so antiquated, but it is loaded with original content. In fact, the attorney has been writing articles for more than one decade for various news publications. Each of those articles has a small bio for the author mentioning that he is a “Long Island bankruptcy lawyer”. I believe it is these off site mentions that make the difference in what Google chooses for a Site Name. This attorney is known as a Long Island bankruptcy attorney everywhere so regardless of what it says on the website, that is how Google recognizes him.

Even though this law firm has a great Site Name, they should consider a better bankruptcy lawyer web design to get much more business.

A few mistakes firms make

Using a different name than the firm name

You can see from the example below that this law firm uses one name for their firm in the homepage title and another name on other pages:

As a result, here is how their Site Name appears in Google:

Not using a separator

This firm gets a lot of things wrong that causes their Site Name to appear as the domain name. But I want to highlight the title tag for their homepage which fails to use a separator between keywords which is very likely to confuse Google. Also look at how many variations they use for the firm name on other pages:

As a result, here is how their Site Name appears in Google:

Failing to use the Site Name consistently

Here is a firm that only uses the firm name one time on the home page. In fact, the exact name is only used four times on the entire website and not at all in the title tags.

As a result, here is how the Site Name for this firm with 11 attorneys appears in Google:

How long does it take for Google to update a site name?

For my client it took more than 6 months for Google to recognize the new firm name and update their results to reflect it.

The attorney’s website had a lot of pages and the firm has been around for a long time so there were hundreds of offsite citations that needed to be updated. I started off with small changes to the website and continued to make progress each month as I was not sure what it would take to get Google to update the site name.

So while it took a long time for the site name to be updated for that business, it does not always have to take that long. 

If you have a website with only a few pages and not a lot of offsite mentions, it may only take a few days. 

A few things you could do to speed up the process are:

• Make sure you have a sitemap.xml file installed. This will make it easier for Google to crawl your website.
• Use Google Search Console to reindex your pages. When there are only a few pages, you can manually enter them in the tool for Google to recrawl.
• Adding some new links could also get Google to notice your site changes faster and make the necessary update.

Now that you have this guide, it should be easy for you to make the changes needed that will get Google to update the site name for your website.