Outperforming your local competition via Google Business Profile optimization requires integrating “under the hood” tweaks on two fronts: human perception and behavior, on the one hand, and algorithmic selection processes, on the other. Simply put, your law firm has to signal its relevance and value in a way that is intelligible to search engine bots, while also taking into account the “user experience” (UX) element that comes into play when someone using a search engine actually encounters your GBP in their results pages. Both steps are essential to ensuring that you first appear in relevant searches, and then successfully convert those search results appearances into phone calls from prospective clients. Although there will always be minor adjustments any law firm can make, focusing on three proven areas that signal value to both search bots and clients can significantly streamline a potentially complicated undertaking.
Optimizing Visual Content
If your approach to digital marketing strategy is sophisticated enough for you to be looking to optimize the performance of your Google Business Profile, then you likely already have a content strategy in some form. Most content strategies are (rightly) built around written content. Google Business Profiles do use verbal (i.e., textual) signals, in a variety of ways (including in your service descriptions, client reviews, and business updates), so some of the strategies you may already be using for SEO elsewhere will translate well to Google Business Profile enhancements.
Why Photos?
However, Google’s rankings increasingly consider visual content, understood as primarily non-verbal images, in determining page rankings. Images of and posted by businesses are especially likely to net a “featured” spot near the top of a list of search results. These image previews are valuable not only because Google tends to place them high in the SERPs, but because the visual elements they introduce onto what is otherwise a page dominated by text makes them especially likely to draw clicks.
Why Now?
Partly the slow (but accelerating) shift toward prioritization of images is simply Google taking advantage of advancements in technology. Google is, as always, playing the specifics of the company’s signature search algorithms very close to the vest, but performance suggests that the tools reading images uploaded to Google Business Profiles are operating on at least some of the same underlying principles as Google’s Cloud Vision. This tool facilitates image scanning and categorizing; we see the inferences Google draws about the products or services a business provides in the images foregrounded by search algorithms and the keywords next to which they are featured.
Visual Content Optimization Tips
Like any technological development, this one comes with both opportunities and caveats. Incorporating visual media into your Google Business Profile can be a way to keep your profile “fresh” and active, without finding 15 separate similar-but-different ways of describing a day at the office. The metadata in your photo uploads can also help with local SEO by underscoring your law firm’s physical location. At the same time, visual content scanning can sometimes get your law firm’s services wrong.
“Wrong” readings of visual content are always possible, but service-based businesses tend to be especially vulnerable to the problem because most office settings and office buildings are going to meet a lot of the same criteria; they are recognizably office photos or business exterior photos, but they don’t provide much in the way of concrete detail about the service being offered. It is much harder to capture a photo (outside a courtroom) that meaningfully distinguishes “lawyering” from “accounting,” for instance, than it is to take photos of bath products that clearly distinguish them from baked goods. For these reasons, you will want to monitor (or have a professional monitor) how and in what searches your GBP images are appearing.
Managing Reviews on Your Google Business Profile
Let’s start with the first question everybody asks about reviews on Google My Business: How do I avoid negative reviews?
The short answer is: You don’t. The slightly longer answer is that you don’t because the only way to make 100% certain you receive no negative reviews is to make sure no one can leave reviews at all. You do not want that outcome; being invisible is definitely worse than one or two less-than-glowing comments.
Instead of trying to ensure nobody leaves a “bad” review, you want to make sure that as many people as possible leave reviews overall. Assuming your clients are satisfied more often than they are not, getting the maximum possible number of reviews will be your most reliable method of making sure a few two-star reviews do not become the public narrative of your law firm. The main ways to increase the number of reviews you get from past clients are:
* Placing reminders
* Removing friction
If your clients typically sign up for your law firm newsletter, embedding a “Have you worked with us lately?” prompt with a button so that newsletter recipients can click and fill the review box provided by Google is one of the cheapest and easiest techniques for combining a nudge to leave a review with a tool that gets the friction of having to type another address into the URL bar out of the way. Google also provides a free tool for creating a review QR code that will take clients directly to the review portal when scanned.
Responding to Reviews
Although you have limited control over how many reviews your Google Business Profile gets, and none at all over what they say, you have significant control over how your law firm responds to each piece of feedback (both good and bad). Timely responses that directly engage the substance of new reviews help demonstrate to Google that your business is active, attentive, and committed to providing a positive experience. You are probably already aware that many prospective clients will look at your law firm’s star rating before deciding whether to make a call, but it can be easy for lawyers to overlook the significance of response rate to individuals in search of legal services; people like to see that someone is “at the wheel,” so to speak.
Response Rate vs. Response Time
If you are trying to use your law firm’s Google Business Profile to increase local search traffic (you should) and generate leads (great idea!), you may find it helpful to think of response rate as a signal to Google that your law firm is engaged and on top of things; you want to respond, ideally, to 100% of the reviews, good or bad, left on your business profile. Response time is similarly positioned to demonstrate active monitoring and attention to “customer service”; no one who contacts your law firm is going to be left hanging.
Response Content
By the same token, response content is incredibly important for anyone scrolling through your profile to be able to see, especially in response to any negative reviews. Aim for a response time within the first few hours of receiving a new review on your Google Business Profile, and never more than 36 hours from the timestamp on the review submission. In each response, address any complaints courteously; asking the reviewer to reach out to your office directly to discuss their concerns is often a solid strategy, but make sure that you can extend this invitation without implicitly confirming information that could compromise the reviewer’s privacy. For complimentary reviews, your task is easier: A polite rejoinder to the effect that it has been a pleasure to work with the reviewer is usually sufficient.
Recognizing Progress in Google Reviews
Because reviews are a frustrating area for many business owners (including solo law firms and managing partners), and because it can be difficult to mark a clear inflection point in your reviews’ contributions to overall Google Business Profile enhancements until the improvements themselves begin to show up in the form of higher SERPs, you may find it helpful to gauge your incremental progress by a few “yardsticks” that can make it easier to track progress in the months (yes, months) before the SERPs begin to swing your way. Here are some signs that you are on the right track:
* You law firm is garnering 3-4 new reviews monthly
* You hit 15-20 new reviews within six months
* The average star rating on your Google Business Profile is at least 4.5
These numbers are not exact; notice, for instance, that the recommended average number of reviews per month and the benchmark number for new reviews added over a six-month period are not quite identical.
This is partly because, while some aspects of digital marketing are indeed highly precise, in review numbers “close counts.” It is also because, with total numbers vs. monthly averages you are seeing distinct aspects of your Google Business Profile strategy at work. Total number of reviews does matter, but so does the rate at which new reviews have been left. Generally speaking, newer reviews are accorded greater weight than older ones, so if your law firm gathers 10 new reviews in the first month after implementing your profile enhancement strategy but only earns 10 more reviews in the following five months, by the sixth month the “boost” new reviews can give your Google Business Profile will likely be falling off. Working with a trusted professional can help you match your most recent trends against the longer arc of your review trajectory to develop a more comprehensive picture.
Get Your Nap In
If you have worked with an SEO specialist for any length of time, you have probably heard them speak more than once about the importance of NAP. For those who need a refresher, NAP stands for Name, Address, and Phone Number, and the NAP category corresponds not just to information prospective clients might reasonably want to see displayed prominently when they visit a law firm website, but also to tags used in structured data markup. NAP tags are commonly used with the LocalBusiness schema. You will absolutely want to make sure that your law firm’s business name, the address of the office where you meet with clients, and the phone number at which prospective clients can reach your staff are listed in your Google Business Profile, but you will also want to make sure that the same information is consistent across all of the locations where it appears, both on GBP and elsewhere. In addition to confirming that your law firm website and your GBP match, you should also regularly confirm that your social media accounts reflect the same information.
Match, Don’t Mix
Your law firm website will obviously offer significantly more content than a Google Business Profile is designed to share. In a few key areas, however, you will want to make sure that your website and your GBP align. One of these areas is in the NAP information (and the structured data markup that flags that information for search engine crawlers). Another is in your service listings. Service listings on Google Business Profiles are necessarily quite brief, so it is essential that your law firm host a dedicated page on your website for each service your firm offers, and whose title tags and core keywords match with your services as listed on your GBP (even though your website page will contain additional content beyond the brief descriptions allowed by the GBP format).
Maintenance
Growth through Google Business Profiles is incremental, so you will need to invest efforts over time to see their benefits accumulate. On a day-to-day level, your GBP maintenance will probably consist primarily of responding to reviews and uploading new photos every couple of weeks. On a regular rotation, however (I recommend at least once per quarter, more often if there are major updates in either your law firm or the local context in which it operates), you should make time for a more thorough review to confirm that:
* The service descriptions on the GBP still contain the same title and core keywords as those on the website.
* NAP information is complete and consistent across all channels.
* Your GBP features photos taken within the past month, and is generally posting new images in at least two weeks out of every four.
* All reviews have received responses, and all responses are posted within the first two days of the initial review.
Often you may find it helpful to outsource some or all of this review work to a law firm marketing agency; if you already have a team with whom you are working to build your digital presence elsewhere, this review can be a good opportunity for them to ensure consistency across the other channels they manage on your behalf. Because search algorithms are always changing (and the rapid spread of AI-assisted search has increased the pace of those changes), it may also be a good idea to have a conversation with marketing professionals a couple of times a year to discuss the latest changes and what your law firm can do to position itself ahead of the next wave.
One More Thing
As you work on your Google Business Profile, there is (at least) one more element you will want to keep in mind. More than any other digital surface, Google Business Profiles are evaluated on their local relevance. Lean into this focus by creating hyperlocal content on your law firm blog that picks up on local keywords used in your GBP, and by incorporating images that situate your law office and your attorneys in their physical location by both metadata and visual cues as often as possible. The key to success with search optimization of any kind is to work with the search tools and the functions they are trying to serve for users, so that your law firm easily shows up in front of exactly the people who were looking for the services your attorneys provide. Work with your marketing team to make sure that they and you share a clear picture of your clients’ core concerns and the way they approach their cases. This kind of strategy integration creates a comprehensive digital presence that exceeds the performance of any single platform.
Annette Choti, Esq., has over two decades of legal experience and is the Founder & CEO of Law Quill, a concierge legal marketing agency for law firms. Annette authored the bestselling book Click Magnet: The Ultimate Guide To Digital Marketing For Law Firms, hosts the popular Legal Marketing Lounge podcast, and founded Click Magnet Academy where she teaches professionals to leverage the powerful LinkedIn platform. As a sought after speaker for Bar Associations, Legal Associations, and Marketing Conferences, Annette provides legal marketing insight along with an entertaining twist. Annette used to do theatre and professional comedy, which is not so different from the legal field if we are all being honest. Annette can be found on LinkedIn or directly through email at Annette@LawQuill.com
The post Google Business Profile Tactics That Actually Move Rankings appeared first on Above the Law.
Outperforming your local competition via Google Business Profile optimization requires integrating “under the hood” tweaks on two fronts: human perception and behavior, on the one hand, and algorithmic selection processes, on the other. Simply put, your law firm has to signal its relevance and value in a way that is intelligible to search engine bots, while also taking into account the “user experience” (UX) element that comes into play when someone using a search engine actually encounters your GBP in their results pages. Both steps are essential to ensuring that you first appear in relevant searches, and then successfully convert those search results appearances into phone calls from prospective clients. Although there will always be minor adjustments any law firm can make, focusing on three proven areas that signal value to both search bots and clients can significantly streamline a potentially complicated undertaking.
If your approach to digital marketing strategy is sophisticated enough for you to be looking to optimize the performance of your Google Business Profile, then you likely already have a content strategy in some form. Most content strategies are (rightly) built around written content. Google Business Profiles do use verbal (i.e., textual) signals, in a variety of ways (including in your service descriptions, client reviews, and business updates), so some of the strategies you may already be using for SEO elsewhere will translate well to Google Business Profile enhancements.
However, Google’s rankings increasingly consider visual content, understood as primarily non-verbal images, in determining page rankings. Images of and posted by businesses are especially likely to net a “featured” spot near the top of a list of search results. These image previews are valuable not only because Google tends to place them high in the SERPs, but because the visual elements they introduce onto what is otherwise a page dominated by text makes them especially likely to draw clicks.
Partly the slow (but accelerating) shift toward prioritization of images is simply Google taking advantage of advancements in technology. Google is, as always, playing the specifics of the company’s signature search algorithms very close to the vest, but performance suggests that the tools reading images uploaded to Google Business Profiles are operating on at least some of the same underlying principles as Google’s Cloud Vision. This tool facilitates image scanning and categorizing; we see the inferences Google draws about the products or services a business provides in the images foregrounded by search algorithms and the keywords next to which they are featured.
Like any technological development, this one comes with both opportunities and caveats. Incorporating visual media into your Google Business Profile can be a way to keep your profile “fresh” and active, without finding 15 separate similar-but-different ways of describing a day at the office. The metadata in your photo uploads can also help with local SEO by underscoring your law firm’s physical location. At the same time, visual content scanning can sometimes get your law firm’s services wrong.
“Wrong” readings of visual content are always possible, but service-based businesses tend to be especially vulnerable to the problem because most office settings and office buildings are going to meet a lot of the same criteria; they are recognizably office photos or business exterior photos, but they don’t provide much in the way of concrete detail about the service being offered. It is much harder to capture a photo (outside a courtroom) that meaningfully distinguishes “lawyering” from “accounting,” for instance, than it is to take photos of bath products that clearly distinguish them from baked goods. For these reasons, you will want to monitor (or have a professional monitor) how and in what searches your GBP images are appearing.
Let’s start with the first question everybody asks about reviews on Google My Business: How do I avoid negative reviews?
The short answer is: You don’t. The slightly longer answer is that you don’t because the only way to make 100% certain you receive no negative reviews is to make sure no one can leave reviews at all. You do not want that outcome; being invisible is definitely worse than one or two less-than-glowing comments.
Instead of trying to ensure nobody leaves a “bad” review, you want to make sure that as many people as possible leave reviews overall. Assuming your clients are satisfied more often than they are not, getting the maximum possible number of reviews will be your most reliable method of making sure a few two-star reviews do not become the public narrative of your law firm. The main ways to increase the number of reviews you get from past clients are:
* Placing reminders
* Removing friction
If your clients typically sign up for your law firm newsletter, embedding a “Have you worked with us lately?” prompt with a button so that newsletter recipients can click and fill the review box provided by Google is one of the cheapest and easiest techniques for combining a nudge to leave a review with a tool that gets the friction of having to type another address into the URL bar out of the way. Google also provides a free tool for creating a review QR code that will take clients directly to the review portal when scanned.
Although you have limited control over how many reviews your Google Business Profile gets, and none at all over what they say, you have significant control over how your law firm responds to each piece of feedback (both good and bad). Timely responses that directly engage the substance of new reviews help demonstrate to Google that your business is active, attentive, and committed to providing a positive experience. You are probably already aware that many prospective clients will look at your law firm’s star rating before deciding whether to make a call, but it can be easy for lawyers to overlook the significance of response rate to individuals in search of legal services; people like to see that someone is “at the wheel,” so to speak.
If you are trying to use your law firm’s Google Business Profile to increase local search traffic (you should) and generate leads (great idea!), you may find it helpful to think of response rate as a signal to Google that your law firm is engaged and on top of things; you want to respond, ideally, to 100% of the reviews, good or bad, left on your business profile. Response time is similarly positioned to demonstrate active monitoring and attention to “customer service”; no one who contacts your law firm is going to be left hanging.
By the same token, response content is incredibly important for anyone scrolling through your profile to be able to see, especially in response to any negative reviews. Aim for a response time within the first few hours of receiving a new review on your Google Business Profile, and never more than 36 hours from the timestamp on the review submission. In each response, address any complaints courteously; asking the reviewer to reach out to your office directly to discuss their concerns is often a solid strategy, but make sure that you can extend this invitation without implicitly confirming information that could compromise the reviewer’s privacy. For complimentary reviews, your task is easier: A polite rejoinder to the effect that it has been a pleasure to work with the reviewer is usually sufficient.
Because reviews are a frustrating area for many business owners (including solo law firms and managing partners), and because it can be difficult to mark a clear inflection point in your reviews’ contributions to overall Google Business Profile enhancements until the improvements themselves begin to show up in the form of higher SERPs, you may find it helpful to gauge your incremental progress by a few “yardsticks” that can make it easier to track progress in the months (yes, months) before the SERPs begin to swing your way. Here are some signs that you are on the right track:
* You law firm is garnering 3-4 new reviews monthly
* You hit 15-20 new reviews within six months
* The average star rating on your Google Business Profile is at least 4.5
These numbers are not exact; notice, for instance, that the recommended average number of reviews per month and the benchmark number for new reviews added over a six-month period are not quite identical.
This is partly because, while some aspects of digital marketing are indeed highly precise, in review numbers “close counts.” It is also because, with total numbers vs. monthly averages you are seeing distinct aspects of your Google Business Profile strategy at work. Total number of reviews does matter, but so does the rate at which new reviews have been left. Generally speaking, newer reviews are accorded greater weight than older ones, so if your law firm gathers 10 new reviews in the first month after implementing your profile enhancement strategy but only earns 10 more reviews in the following five months, by the sixth month the “boost” new reviews can give your Google Business Profile will likely be falling off. Working with a trusted professional can help you match your most recent trends against the longer arc of your review trajectory to develop a more comprehensive picture.
If you have worked with an SEO specialist for any length of time, you have probably heard them speak more than once about the importance of NAP. For those who need a refresher, NAP stands for Name, Address, and Phone Number, and the NAP category corresponds not just to information prospective clients might reasonably want to see displayed prominently when they visit a law firm website, but also to tags used in structured data markup. NAP tags are commonly used with the LocalBusiness schema. You will absolutely want to make sure that your law firm’s business name, the address of the office where you meet with clients, and the phone number at which prospective clients can reach your staff are listed in your Google Business Profile, but you will also want to make sure that the same information is consistent across all of the locations where it appears, both on GBP and elsewhere. In addition to confirming that your law firm website and your GBP match, you should also regularly confirm that your social media accounts reflect the same information.
Your law firm website will obviously offer significantly more content than a Google Business Profile is designed to share. In a few key areas, however, you will want to make sure that your website and your GBP align. One of these areas is in the NAP information (and the structured data markup that flags that information for search engine crawlers). Another is in your service listings. Service listings on Google Business Profiles are necessarily quite brief, so it is essential that your law firm host a dedicated page on your website for each service your firm offers, and whose title tags and core keywords match with your services as listed on your GBP (even though your website page will contain additional content beyond the brief descriptions allowed by the GBP format).
Growth through Google Business Profiles is incremental, so you will need to invest efforts over time to see their benefits accumulate. On a day-to-day level, your GBP maintenance will probably consist primarily of responding to reviews and uploading new photos every couple of weeks. On a regular rotation, however (I recommend at least once per quarter, more often if there are major updates in either your law firm or the local context in which it operates), you should make time for a more thorough review to confirm that:
* The service descriptions on the GBP still contain the same title and core keywords as those on the website.
* NAP information is complete and consistent across all channels.
* Your GBP features photos taken within the past month, and is generally posting new images in at least two weeks out of every four.
* All reviews have received responses, and all responses are posted within the first two days of the initial review.
Often you may find it helpful to outsource some or all of this review work to a law firm marketing agency; if you already have a team with whom you are working to build your digital presence elsewhere, this review can be a good opportunity for them to ensure consistency across the other channels they manage on your behalf. Because search algorithms are always changing (and the rapid spread of AI-assisted search has increased the pace of those changes), it may also be a good idea to have a conversation with marketing professionals a couple of times a year to discuss the latest changes and what your law firm can do to position itself ahead of the next wave.
As you work on your Google Business Profile, there is (at least) one more element you will want to keep in mind. More than any other digital surface, Google Business Profiles are evaluated on their local relevance. Lean into this focus by creating hyperlocal content on your law firm blog that picks up on local keywords used in your GBP, and by incorporating images that situate your law office and your attorneys in their physical location by both metadata and visual cues as often as possible. The key to success with search optimization of any kind is to work with the search tools and the functions they are trying to serve for users, so that your law firm easily shows up in front of exactly the people who were looking for the services your attorneys provide. Work with your marketing team to make sure that they and you share a clear picture of your clients’ core concerns and the way they approach their cases. This kind of strategy integration creates a comprehensive digital presence that exceeds the performance of any single platform.
Annette Choti, Esq., has over two decades of legal experience and is the Founder & CEO of Law Quill, a concierge legal marketing agency for law firms. Annette authored the bestselling book Click Magnet: The Ultimate Guide To Digital Marketing For Law Firms, hosts the popular Legal Marketing Lounge podcast, and founded Click Magnet Academy where she teaches professionals to leverage the powerful LinkedIn platform. As a sought after speaker for Bar Associations, Legal Associations, and Marketing Conferences, Annette provides legal marketing insight along with an entertaining twist. Annette used to do theatre and professional comedy, which is not so different from the legal field if we are all being honest. Annette can be found on LinkedIn or directly through email at [email protected]
