Boost Your Local Profile by this Weekend

It’s been said, “all business is local.” This certainly holds true for mobile search where local results are at the core of the user experience. Even on desktop computers, many web users get the results they’re looking for without ever visiting your website.

This can muddle your analytics but it can also open up new marketing channels that are easy to manage and completely free. All it takes is a little paperwork. Gather the following materials below and get started. You’ll be done before the weekend.

You will need:

• Your firm’s name, address, phone, primary email, website URL and business hours
• Your firm’s category: personal injury, bankruptcy, criminal defense, etc.
• Your attorney headshot
• A photo of your business’s front door or sign (if you have one)

Remember that this is a cumulative exercise. Each individual listing must match in order to contribute to your presence. So as you update your profiles, be absolutely consistent in how you format individual names, business names, initials or nicknames. This also applies to your law firm’s category. If you’re listing yourself as a personal injury attorney in one profile, don’t change your category to bankruptcy in another. Each deviation effectively creates a new record or business that does not feed into your online footprint.

To claim your place in SERPs

To show up locally on search engine results pages (SERPs), get your business listing completed on the relevant sites. It really just takes a little time on each site. To get you started, here are the reservation pages for the top search engines’ business listings:

• https://www.bingplaces.com/
• https://www.google.com/business/
• https://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/local-listings
  (scroll down to “Try Local Basic Listing for Free”)

To claim your business on Yelp

Yelp is the champion of online business reviews and owning your listing is an absolute necessity for managing your brand. Fortunately, getting a grip on your Yelp profile is simple. Just click on biz.yelp.com to claim your business, then work to complete your profile. Don’t forget to create a link to your profile from your own site.

To claim your business on Facebook

If your firm isn’t already on Facebook, it’s beyond time to get going. Not only is Facebook the dominant social platform on the web, their business listings are indexed in Google SERPs and their reviews are factored into the Google 5-Star score. Law firms both new and established would do well to review the variety of opportunities for them on Facebook.

While you’re at it…

Since you’ve already gathered the materials and content, go ahead and update your other online listings before you move on. LinkedIn and FindLaw, for example, both contribute to your presence and must match the work you’ve done on Google, Yelp and Facebook.

These little bits of tidying up can go a long way; so get cracking on this quick project now. Your next client may already be searching for you.