A statistic reveals that approximately 87% of consumers use Google Search to discover local services. Apart from this, 76% of people who search for queries related to “near me”, visit businesses on the same day. So, if you run a law firm, you can’t ignore these stats. You simply can’t ignore your presence in local search and focus on creating a Google business profile (GBP) for law firms.
Creating and maintaining an impactful Google business profile for law firms is something that attorneys can’t avoid – it’s, in fact, the must-do task. When you own a Google business profile that is optimized, it ensures the appearance of your law office is visible in the Local Pack and Maps results, especially when nearby clients look for urgent legal help.
It increases the credibility of your local law firm through clarifying your practice areas, client reviews, and maximizing direct contact within clicks. In this guide, we will walk you through how any law firm sets up, monitors, or optimizes its Google business profile. Let’s explore detailed information now.
What is Google Business Profile Optimization for Law Offices?
Previously known as Google My Business (GMB), Google Business Profile serves as a tool that is available free of cost. It helps you manage how your profile appears on Google Maps and Google Search. It helps your prospective clients recognize necessary details about your law firm, including office hours, local phone number, directions, Google reviews, services, and more.
When it comes to optimization of Google business profile for law firms, it’s directly related to improving the online presence of a law firm on Google Maps and Search. To optimize your profile well, you need to manage business information, client reviews, and add professional photos and additional services with higher accuracy. A well-optimized website helps your local business stand out in local searches with the following important benefits.
- Rank well
- Build trust through client reviews and verified information.
- Increase consultation requests, website visits, and phone enquiries directly to search result pages.
What are the Benefits of Google Business Profile for Law Offices?
Optimizing your GBP perfectly has a higher influence in terms of how potential clients perceive your law firm and engage with it. We explain some other benefits of Google business profile for law offices.
| Benefits | Description |
| 1. Improved Local Visibility | It reflects your law firms are visible in Local Pack and Google Maps, which make it convenient for more clients to discover you easily. |
| 2. Direct Client Engagement | Clients connect easily through several features like messaging, click-to-call, appointment booking, and more. |
| 3. Develop Trust with Client Reviews | Positive client reviews improve credibility and thus assist new clients to make informed decisions. |
| 4. Showcase Expertise and Services | It reflects practice areas like corporate law, family law, criminal defence, and more to entice the right clients. |
| 5. Improve Decision Making | Clients find the possibility to decide fast whether to get in touch with your firm with reviews and accurate details. |
- Improved Local Visibility
When users search for search terms “lawyer near me”, Google often focuses on businesses with powerful GBP profiles. When you optimize your business listing, it improves your chance of getting featured in the local pack. The top search results appear with a map.
- Direct Client Engagement
Clients now no longer require browsing many websites. With GBP, they will be able to send a message, call your office, request directions from the business listings, and more.
- Develop Trust with Client Reviews
When it comes to Google reviews, these serve as word-of-mouth. A steady stream of positive reviews works effectively to reassure potential clients of your trust.
- Showcase Expertise and Services
Law offices need to list several practice areas, such as personal injury law, immigration law, and more. So, clients looking for specific services discover the perfect attorney quickly.
- Improve Decision Making
Whether it’s updated hours, transparent information, or client testimonials, they simplify the entire process of decision-making for clients in urgent requirements of any legal assistance.
How to Set Up a Google Business Profile for Law Offices?
Before you create a new Google business profile for your legal firm, you need to check whether your business listing already exists. A large number of businesses have unclaimed profiles on Google Maps, according to publicly available data.
To search easily, you need to use your firm’s name either on Google Maps or Google Search. In case you discover your existing list, you need to claim it easily by tapping the option “Own this business.”?
If you don’t have any existing listing, you can consider the following important points to set up your Google business profile;
- Sign Up and Select the Right Business Category
You need to go to the Google Business Profile website. After this, you need to sign in with a Google account linked to your firm.
Go to the Google Business Profile site and sign in using your firm’s Google account. Click “Manage Now” and enter your firm’s name.
Choose a primary business category that best represents your legal services (e.g., “Law Firm,” “Family Law Attorney,” or “Criminal Defense Lawyer”).
You can add secondary categories later to highlight other specialties.
- Lawyer
- Law firm
- Personal injury attorney
- Family law attorney
- Estate planning attorney
- Criminal justice attorney
- Divorce lawyer
- Civil law attorney
The above are a few examples you can consider to include. Therefore, you need to look through all important options and select the right one that better matches your practices as a business owner. The selection of the most appropriate category helps your firm appear on the local searches. It’s advisable to add a secondary category later to explain more of your legal services in case your practice has more than one of your specialties.
- Include Business Details
Now, in this step, you need to add your business details. It’s important to take into account that Google needs accurate and complete business details when it comes to verification process of your listing.
What information should your Business Details include?
Make sure your business details include the following important things;
- Law Firm Name
It’s advisable to use your official business name since it becomes visible on your legal documents and website. The most important thing you need to avoid is keyword stuffing since it violates the guidelines of Google.
- Address
The next information your business details should include is the physical address of your office. Make sure you enter exactly the same business address that appears on your website. Any law firm that serves clients remotely can choose the service area instead of the business area.
- Contact Details
It’s a good idea to use a local number rather than a toll-free number. Besides, you can also use a call-tracking number to boost the trust and ranking potential of your firm.
- Website URL
You should never forget to link to the URL of your law firm’s website. You can use the URL either on the home page or any landing page of your practice.
- Hours
Make sure you mention the exact and accurate business hours that help your potential clients discover you when you are open.
You need to keep in mind that these GBP fields impact your local search performance directly. Therefore, you need to take your time and provide accurate and detailed information.
- Define your Service Areas
If you provide your legal services in many areas but don’t own an office in multiple locations, you need to define your service area rather than listing your physical address. It helps Google understand where you operate your practices. It ensures your GBP appears in relevant local searches.
In this case, you need specific neighborhoods or cities where you provide your legal services. It ensures your profile ranks for local-specific and relevant searches properly. You can include the following important specific areas;
- Real Estate Law
- Family Law
- Corporate Law
- Immigration Law
- Criminal Defence
List of Keywords to Use
| Keywords | Intent |
| Lawyer near me | Urgent need, general |
| Attorney near me | Urgent need, general |
| Divorce lawyer near me | Family law |
| Personal injury lawyer near me | Injury claims |
| Criminal attorney defense near me | Criminal cases |
| Immigration lawyer near me | Immigration help |
| Estate planning lawyer near me | Trusts, Wills, etc. |
- Local Citations and Backlinks
Once you make your profile live, it’s time to boost your credibility with the help of local backlinks and citations. Citation means the details of your law firm appear on many reputable directories related to your domains, including Yelp, Justia, Avvo, and others. Building a strong online reputation for your law firm goes hand in hand with citation and backlink strategies. These directories should include the following important details;
- Address
- Name of your firm
- Phone number
Apart from the criterion, backlinks are also highly important to build credibility. You can earn backlinks from bar associations, authoritative websites, legal publications, and more to improve the search rankings of your profile.
The most important thing you need to keep in mind is consistency in NAP details across multiple platforms. These help Google validate your legitimacy properly, which boosts visibility in local search outcomes. Some of the popular platforms are as follows;
- Local bar association sites
- FindLaw
- Justia
- Avvo
How to Optimize Google Business Profile for Lawyers?
Once you set up your law firm’s profile successfully, you need to optimize it properly to boost visibility in local searches while getting more client acquisition. Always remember, a perfectly optimized GBP helps most law firms rank higher while ensuring searches get the right details to contact you. Let’s explore the ways to optimize your Google business profile for law firms.
- Update your Business Details
The most important thing you need to do is to update your business details on GBP while ensuring consistency on your online listings and website. You can update it with the changes to anything.
Be it a firm’s name, address, or phone number (NAP), any inaccuracies across different platforms harm your local rankings. Make sure you implement the following important practices;
- It’s advisable to use the official name of your law firm and avoid using extra and relevant keywords. The reason is it violates the guidelines of Google and also causes penalties.
- You need to update the latest contact numbers.
- Make sure you include the exact URL of your firm’s website, which links either to your dedicated or homepage landing page optimized for conversions.
- The next important thing you can do is to ensure the accuracy of your business hours and include special holiday hours. It gives Google and your clients exact information about your availability.
- Select your Secondary Category
When it comes to the primary category, it’s highly important and should be able to describe your practices. You need to add secondary categories that can refine your listing further, which ensures your appearance in local search results as well.
For instance, if you use the primary category as “Criminal Justice Attorney”, you might also select Trial Attorney as a secondary category. It’s highly important to select a secondary category that is relevant to the legal services that your law practice offers.
You need to take into account that adding only the number of categories will not offer any advantages. It has the potential to harm the local SEO of your law firm’s efforts.
| Primary Category | Secondary Category |
| Law Firm | Criminal defense attorney, Family law attorney, Personal injury attorney, Immigration attorney |
| Legal Services | Real estate attorney, Employment attorney, Corporate attorney |
- Highlight Important Services by Utilizing Attributes
With Google, you will be able to add attributes that offer additional details about their amenities, services, and offerings. For example, you might select attributes like “wheelchair-accessible searching”, “wheelchair-accessible entrance”, and more to focus on accessibility. Besides, you can also select “LGBTQ+friendly” or “women-owned business to focus on inclusivity.
The attributes you choose for your law firm’s GBP listing enable you to appear in certain specific searches. Besides, it also helps searches identify fast what sets your law firm apart. It finally boosts conversion rates as well.
- Use Top-Quality Videos and Images
You should never forget to include quality and compelling images and videos. Unfortunately, most firms often ignore the same. They don’t know that adding professional videos and images can maximize both credibility and engagement. Firms with photos receive 42% more direction requests and 35% more website clicks. It thus helps your profile rank high. You can try to upload the following things;
- Team photos that help you personalize your law firm and thus build trust.
- Include both interior and exterior images of your office to assist clients in recognizing your business location.
- You can upload short video introductions from attorneys that describe your practice approach and areas.
You need to always favor Google profiles with high engagement and media updates. It’s a good idea to add several new images that can boost the visibility of your own business profile.
- Use Attractive Business Descriptions
You need to be aware of the fact that GBP enables you to write business descriptions of your law firm. You need to take into account that you use such space to reflect your experience, expertise, and also why your law firm is unique.
Let’s take an important example;
The most important thing you need to do is to ensure your information is professional, informative, client-focused, and more. It allows you to avoid keyword stuffing or overly promotional language.
- Encourage Clients for Reviews and Respond
When it comes to positive reviews, these are highly important for ranking factors for any law service provider and also various other types of local businesses. It’s a good idea to encourage satisfied clients to leave reviews, which makes it as convenient as possible by offering them a direct link to your review page.
Here are several important practices you can implement for managing reviews;
- You need to always respond to every important review. Don’t forget to thank clients for positive feedback and then address any concerns professionally in negative reviews.
- You should also raise relevant queries to your clients at the right time, including consultation or successful case resolution.
- You should never incentivize any reviews since these violate Google’s policies.
How to Monitor GBP Performance for Law Firms?
After better optimization of the GBP profile of your law firm, you need to continuously monitor its overall performance to ensure it remains highly competitive in local search Google analytics will definitely helps you in this. It helps you adjust your local search engine optimization strategy as per requirements. Let’s understand how.
- Analyze Local Search Rankings
When your law firm ranks high in Google search results, it reflects that your law firm is visible in Google’s local patch, especially when your potential clients look for attorneys in your location. Meanwhile, the rankings of Google tend to vary based on law firm’s location. It reflects that you can rank differently from one block to the next.
- Check AI-Driven Insights
With AI-based local SEO tools and features, you will be able to analyze trends. It helps you discover optimization opportunities automatically. For instance, AI can do the following important things;
- Check competitors’ strategies and get detailed insights into how to outperform them.
- Identify ranking fluctuations and suggest category or keyword adjustments.
- Automate review analysis to get details of common clients’ concerns, or also positive themes.
AI helps your law firm stay ahead of the competition and thus also streamlines its GBP management efforts.
- Analyze GBP Performance Metrics
By using Google, you will be able to get valuable information regarding GBP performance and engagement perfectly in the Google business profile dashboard, including important stats.
- How many local searchers come across your profile in Maps and search?
- Clients use search queries to discover your firm.
- Detailed reports generated with the help of your listing, including website visits, phone calls, direction requests, and more.
You are suggested to review important metrics on a regular basis. These help you find out what works and also where improvements are necessary to make your firm’s Google business profile listing effective to entice new clients.
- Update your GBP on a Daily Basis
You need to take into account that Google always favors up-to-date and active listings. You need to keep the GBP of your law firms competitive in the following ways;
- Update your business hours for any special occasions and holidays.
- Refresh videos and images periodically.
- Post firm news or new legal insights.
- Respond to any client inquiries or reviews quickly.
Conclusion
A better optimized GBP is a robust marketing tool for many law firms and lawyers. It helps you entice local clients, build a reputation, and build trust. Besides, it also lets you stay ahead of your competitors. You need to create, optimize, or monitor your law firm’s GBP, which ensures your legal practices rank better in Google searches. And thus, visible among your potential clients when they require any legal assistance. To manage your GBP efficiently and get better assistance, you can approach a professional local SEO company.
