How law firms can get into the top three on Google Maps
Google is open about how it picks the firms on its map. What it looks at, and the steps a law firm can take on its own, from the profile basics to checking your ranking across town.
Search for an injury lawyer near you, and there’s a good chance you’ll see a map with three firms on it, sitting above the regular results. If your firm isn’t on that map, the people searching near you are looking at three other firms first.
Nobody can promise you one of those spots. Google decides, and it says you can’t pay for a better local ranking. It does tell you how it decides, though, and most of the work it rewards is something a firm can do on its own.
What Google looks at
Google says its local results come down mainly to three things: relevance, distance and prominence (Google’s local ranking tips). Relevance is how well your Business Profile matches what someone searched for. Distance is how far your office is from the person searching. Prominence is how well known you are, and Google says that’s based partly on how many websites link to you and how many reviews you have.
You can’t do much about distance. Your office is where it is, and that’s why your ranking changes depending on where the person searching is standing. That leaves relevance and prominence, and you can work on both.
Good reviews and a good map ranking don’t always go together. In the free website reviews we did for Georgia law firms this fall, 7 of the 12 firms weren’t in the top 20 on Google Maps for their main search. Six of those seven had a 4.9 or 5.0 rating. A high rating helps, but on its own it won’t put you on the map.
Get the profile right first
Start by verifying your profile if you haven’t. Google says verifying makes your business more likely to show up in results. Then go through the basics with Google’s guidelines for business profiles open, because a few easy mistakes break them.
Your business name should be your real name, the one on your sign, your website and your letterhead. Google doesn’t allow extra words in the name, like a service or a location. You can’t add “Car Accident Lawyer” or your city to the end of it unless those words are part of your firm’s real name.
Your main category should be as specific as Google’s list allows while still describing your main practice. Google’s test is that the category should finish the sentence “This business is a…”, not “This business has a…”. For an injury firm, “Personal injury attorney” passes that test and says more than the plain “Attorney”. In one of our website reviews this fall, a firm’s main category was “Attorney”, and all of the top 20 firms on the map for its main search used “Personal injury attorney”. Use as few categories as you can.
Your phone number should be a local number that rings at that office and that you control, which is what Google’s guidelines ask for. Your website link should go to a page about that office. If you have several offices, that usually means each profile links to the page for its own city. Keep your hours current, add real photos of your office and your team, and check that the address and phone on your website match the profile word for word.
Lawyers can also have profiles of their own. Google’s guidelines allow one for each lawyer clients can reach at the office during its hours, under the lawyer’s own name. They also say not to make extra profiles to cover different practice areas.
Reviews: ask every client, and answer them
For four of those seven firms, the three firms on the map had several times as many Google reviews as they did. That fits what Google says: more reviews and better ratings can help your local ranking.
The easiest way to get more is to ask, every time a case wraps up. Google lets you share a link or a QR code from your profile that takes a client to the review form (Google’s tips for getting reviews). Make asking part of how you close a file, so it doesn’t depend on someone remembering.
Google’s rules on reviews are strict. You can’t offer anything in return for a review, not even a discount. You can’t ask only the clients you think are happy, or discourage anyone from leaving a bad one. Reviews from staff, family or anyone with a business tie to the firm break Google’s conflict-of-interest rule (Google’s review policy).
Answer your reviews, the good ones and the bad ones. Google’s advice is to keep replies short, polite and personal, and to leave private details out. For a bad review, it suggests owning any mistake, apologizing where it fits and offering to sort it out in private. A law firm has extra reasons to be careful here, so check your state bar’s rules before you reply to reviews or ask for them.
Pages for each practice area and city
A local search shows more than the map. The regular results sit under it, and that’s where your website competes. A page built for one kind of case in one city has a better shot there than a single page that tries to cover everything. In another website review, one “Personal Injury” page covered car wrecks, truck wrecks and every other injury, with no city in its title. Several of the firms ahead of it had a page for one case type in one city.
Write each city page for that city. If you can swap in another city’s name and the page still reads the same, it won’t help the person searching there. Only make pages for the cities you take cases from.
We did this for Dante Law, a Florida injury firm. We rewrote its 24 main practice pages, added 62 sub-topic pages in clusters and launched 15 city pages. The firm made its first appearances on the map in the same two months as the city pages and its profile work. The case study now lists it at #1 to 3 on Google Maps. I can’t tell you which of those pieces moved the map.
There’s a plan for deciding which pages to build in A simple content plan for your website.
Check your ranking from more than one spot
Since distance counts, there’s no single ranking. You might be first on the map for someone near your office and nowhere for someone across town. A check from your own desk only tells you what people near your office see.
Search the way a client would: on a phone, with the case type and the city in the phrase, like “car accident lawyer” and your city’s name. Do it from a few parts of your area, or ask people on your team who live in different places to search and send you a screenshot. Write down the date and where you showed up each time. Once a month is plenty to see whether the work is moving you.
Where I’d start
If you only have an afternoon, start verifying the profile, fix the name and category if they break Google’s rules, and reply to the reviews you haven’t answered. Then set up the review link so every client gets asked. Pages take longer, so add the practice and city pages you’re missing over the next few months, and check your ranking from a few spots once a month while you do.
If you’re a law firm, check your state bar’s advertising rules before you change your profile, ask for reviews or publish new pages. The rules differ from state to state.
If you’d rather have us do this, or you’d like a second look first, start with a free website review. It’s one page, in plain words, on what’s costing you calls on your website and your Google listing.