Is Your Law Firm Maximizing Its Google Places / Local Business Listing?
Google Places, formerly called Local Business Listings, gives your firm a free method of targeting its place in location searches while also displaying your law firm’s basic contact information. Because 20 percent of all Google searches include a location, the maximizing of your Google Places listing can be very important.
The Google Places listings allow your website to found on local search results on both Google Search and Google Maps. While other search engines offer a similar service, the Google Places service is free. A consultant can be very useful in helping you to develop and maintain your placement as well as help you avoid unscrupulous vendors who try to charge exorbitant fees to implement free services. See Google’s policies and guidelines for placement policies and information.
One of the most important criteria for high placement is that your law firm’s location must be located near the searcher’s query. Even though you cannot control whether your law firm is near the center of the city for which the user is searching, there are some techniques you can control and use to improve your Google Places listings, such as:
- If you have not done so, sign up for your Google Places listing. If you do not submit your listing, incorrect information may be pulled from another source;
- Develop “category” keywords that match the phrases you anticipate potential clients will type. Do not “stuff” (place excessive) keywords. You can get penalized for stuffing;
- Obtain links (referred to as citations) from local sources. Unlike incoming SEO links, citations do not need to be relative (e.g., law firms, legal associations.) Citations indicate that your client is, indeed, a local firm. Citations are similar to receiving endorsements;
- Obtain links in directories such as HG.org, Superpages, infoUSA, YellowPages, Localeze, Yelp, InsiderPages, Niche Industry Sites (BBB, Vertical Directories), Acxiom, Yahoo, Citysearch and the Chamber of Commerce. You will have to pay for some of them. Search engine placement is not inexpensive in 2010. See our Legal Directories post for information on whether legal directories are effective for other purposes;
- Obtain numerous client reviews;
- Include photos and videos to make your ad stand out and to increase your conversion rate;
- Insure that a local address and phone number are listed on the website. Avoid using an 800 or other toll free number. Google seeks to find “local” businesses” and a toll free number does not indicate that the business is local; and
- Monitor your visitor statistics so you will know where your traffic is coming from and where you need to place additional effort.
Do not enter your law firm website numerous times in numerous categories. This can cause penalties.
Also, do not expect your listing to show up for all of your practice area search phrases. The search engines only allow one placement and typically display the websites that most closely meet the user’s search criteria. You simply have to carefully define your target practice areas and location and work to have your listing show up as prominently as possible.
It takes work and monitoring, but we have had great success following the above steps. While it does not take long to implement many of today’s Web tools, the time to analyze, stay current on and maintain a variety of components can add up to weeks per month. Contact your webmaster or feel free to contact us if you would like assistance in placing and/or maintaining your Google Places listing.
A word of caution, one large legal vendor’s salespeople tell people that they “own” positioning in Google and can influence Google Places listings. No vendor automatically owns positioning in Google.
Keep in mind that one disadvantage of Google Places is that only seven to ten listings are typically shown on a page. Also, because a Google Places listing only displays limited information, only approximately two percent of visitors (according to our analytic data) click on Google Places listings. If the searcher does click on a Google Places listing, it is likely that the searcher was already seeking a particular law firm or lawyer or that they recognized the law firm from previous searches or other advertising.
Approximately seventy percent of prospective legal clients click on the Google organic listings and slightly more than 20% click on pay-per-click (PPC) ads. Obviously, a site that ranks well in the organic rankings is going to draw considerably more traffic the Google Places listings or pay-per-click ads. This is unlikely to change.
Search engines make their revenue on PPC ads, not local business listings. Because organic listings achieve the goal of every search engine – delivering the most relevant results for the searcher’s query – the prominence of organic listings is unlikely to change.
We hope this was helpful. If you have further questions about Google Places / Local Business Listings or about our programs, please contact us at marketing@consultwebs.com or 1-800-872-6590.
Ryan says:
October 6, 2011 at 11:16pmHey, great post guys. I came here for 2 things.
1) LocalEze should already distribute to Axciom, InfoUSA, and Navteq (for GPS databases and maps). Thus, if someone does use them (they’re expensive), then they needn’t double submit to those other services.
2)I was curious on whether or not you had any data on what was more valuable to a local lawyer. Say you had a New York personal injury attorney. Do you think that their site overall would rank better due to the extended-category backlinks of a Premium HG.org profile, or would the local directory listings from a LocalEze submission play a larger role in validating their website in Google’s mind?
Keep in mind, I’m talking about their site, not the Google Places page.
We already know there’s a connection between the natural SERPs and the Places rankings, and we also know that Google is looking for relevant local businesses in the organic SERPs outside of the 7 and 10 boxes…
I guess my question is how much are they connected? Would extended listings in HG.org provide more of a boost, or would all the local directory citations in a LocalEze submission count for more? Any thoughts would be appreciated.
doug holmes says:
September 27, 2010 at 7:15pmvery good opportunity!