As a business looks to build its online presence and grow its market share, there is one key fundamental practice that remains consistent regardless of the industry or the region. It’s all about online credibility. In other words, the reputation that a business creates and earns in the digital space. This is especially true for law firms, whose very business is in the reputation game. This is where SEO for law firms becomes incredibly important, where a strategy is deployed to create, build, and communicate credibility.
For these types of businesses, one key area is law firm local SEO, which is focused on developing a positive online presence in the specific area that a law firm or attorneys practices in. The first step for this type of strategy involves effectively creating and managing a Google Business Profile (GBP). There are a number of best practices that many law firms miss, which give their competitors an unnecessary advantage.
A law firm’s Google Business Profile is often the very first point of contact between your practice and a future client. In this profile, people will be able to find out a variety of information about who you are and what you do. They’ll be able to find your contact information and your website address, as well as read what other people have said about you in Google reviews.
While it is an important source of information when someone is looking for it, what a GBP profile is very effective at doing is improving your local SEO and, more recently, influencing the results of AI search engines. This is, of course, if you’re doing it right.
This really isn’t a case of Field of Dreams, as in “build it, and they will come.” For the younger lawyers out there, this was a popular 1989 movie featuring Kevin Costner that was quite the hit back in the day. To be completely honest here, we’ve done what many others have by misquoting the movie, because the line was actually, “If you build it, they will come,” but for the purposes of effect, we’re including the misquoted line here! What we mean is that you can’t simply create a GBP profile and sit back and expect magic to happen. There are key fundamentals that need to be considered, something that many law firms don’t think about.
For legal practices, however big or small they may be, local search intent is incredibly strong. Consider when someone is in need of legal services and the action they take. They aren’t going to look for the best lawyer in the U.S. unless it’s quite serious, but rather they’ll be searching for something like “family lawyer near me” or “defense attorney in Fort Lauderdale”.
Having a profile optimized to answer these types of search queries is important. Here’s what many law firms don’t consider with their GBP profile.
What do we mean by primary category? This is essentially one of the most influential individual ranking factors in Google’s local algorithm. You (or the law firm local SEO company you’re working with) will choose a category for the business when the profile is set up. A lot of law practices make the mistake of selecting the broad “Law Firm” or “Attorney” classification as their primary option. To be more specific, you should be choosing the specific area of specialization you’re in, like “Personal Injury Attorney” or “Family Law Attorney.” Specific, as they say, is terrific.
While your primary category will define your core business, you have the option to select secondary categories, which will allow you to reach a broader range of legal searches that people in your area may be typing into their search platform of choice. Choose secondary categories that are relevant to your practice.
Many law firms will have clients across an entire region, as opposed to focusing on one single town or area within a city. When you set up your GBP profile, it’s important that you include not only the major city center but also specific neighborhoods, adjacent suburbs, and even county names. For example, a practice located in a major city should list the surrounding districts and key municipalities where their target clients live.
Unlike most other industries, legal teams don’t always have standard business hours. There are often unique schedules that are influenced by court calendars and holidays. In your GBP profile, you can set your business operating hours, so make sure to consider updating these times to reflect the various elements that might influence your ability to respond to potential and existing clients. If they try to reach you according to the hours you’ve listed and you’re not available, frustration will follow.
In your GBP profile, you can feature a standard website link that directs users to your site, which is great, but Google Business Profiles for lawyers offer a unique “Appointments” URL option. This button will appear prominently on your profile, but you need to activate it first. It’s simple to do, and if you’re unsure, one of our SEO for law firms experts will gladly talk you through it.
Within your GBP profile, you can publish posts up to 1,500 characters in length. You can’t write an essay, but you can do short, sharp posts about what you’ve achieved as a business. If you’ve been given unique recognition, successfully concluded a big case, or achieved something unique, post about it on your Google Business Profile. This not only gives users seeing the posts confidence, but it’s also great for law firm local SEO.
When you do write these posts up, make sure that you follow your local bar association’s advertising rules. Keep the tone informational and professional, and make sure that you use high-resolution images to give the posts a polished look.
The Questions and Answers section of your profile is open to the public. This means that anyone can ask a question, and unfortunately, anyone can answer it. While it’s a great way of having an open communication channel for your target audience, you should be including Q&As on your profile before a competitor does. Consider what the top five to ten questions your office receives most often are and write up answers to them. Then, publish the Q&A on your profile.
While online reviews are a primary trust signal for consumers and a great mechanism for local search rankings, how you collect these reviews is important. Don’t do a big push to bring in a stack of reviews in a short period, but rather keep them coming in a steady flow. If you do suddenly receive a plethora of reviews quickly, Google may see it as spam and penalize you.
It’s not only important to respond to Google reviews to answer or address a specific query, but it’s also good SEO practice to respond to each and every review authentically. What legal businesses also have to consider is responding to the reviews in such a way that it is professional and that they navigate strict confidentiality standards. When you do respond to reviews, avoid mentioning any specific case details or revealing confidential information. Consider how what you say is being received in the public space.
When it comes to legal matters, these are often deeply personal. Being able to add personality (professionally, of course) can become important for many people when they are deciding on which legal service provider to go with. Add photos of your team to your profile, your office space, and any events, which might add a bit more of a human element to your business. Remember to upload high-quality images that reflect the level of professionalism you are going for.
In your Google Business Profile, you can include service descriptions, which can act as mini landing pages for your business. In these descriptions you can tell your potential customers exactly what you do and the type of person or business you help. You can also set out your USPs and tell people why they should choose you. All of these forms of copy are important elements in converting visitors into customers. For each service description you’ll have 300 characters to work with, so make them count.
Google has a handy tool built in called Google Profile Performance metrics. With this tool, you’ll be able to measure how people found your listing on both Google search and maps, as well as the specific actions they took once they arrived there. With this data, you can evaluate how well your content is working and build on that which has proven effective. What’s important here, and a mistake that a lot of law firms make, is to get distracted by the vanity metrics and not pay close attention to the data that matters. Here, you’ll want to focus on actionable metrics like direct phone calls, clicks, or direction requests.
As you can see, there is quite a lot to consider when it comes to the Google Business Profile for a law firm. It’s important to remember that your GBP listing can be a powerful tool to not only provide information for potential customers but also to influence your search and AI platform visibility.
By following the above Google Business Profile tips, you can set your law firm listing up for success and position yourself to build a distinct advantage over your competitors.
These 12 GBP tactics are a blend of both simple actions to take and others that might seem a little out of your depth. If you would like to move beyond the GBP basics or if you find you’re stuck on one of the tips above, our experienced team can assist in helping you build a profile that will make a significant impact.
In today’s competitive legal market, a strong SEO strategy isn’t optional. Rather, it’s an essential part of expanding your practice.
If you’re ready to improve your law practice’s online presence, you need a digital marketing team that understands the nuances of SEO for law firms and its respective niches. Connectica proudly specializes in law firm SEO, offering proven search engine optimization strategies in combination with effective Google Business Profile optimization. Our team can help you increase visibility, drive qualified traffic, and generate more leads that turn into real-time clients.
And, if you’d like to know how your profile fares against your competitors, you can take advantage of a free SEO report for your business. If you’d like to see the impactful work we have done, you can view our SEO case studies to see our services in action.
Your next client is searching; make sure they find you first. Call Connectica today at 877-816-2259 to speak with a friendly member of our digital marketing team.
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