Google Reviews for lawyers is a vital component in getting more new cases for your firm from search engines.
Google reviews are an indicator of other people's real experiences of receiving legal services from you. They're valuable pieces of social proof that affirm the claims you make about your own practice in your law firm marketing. And they impact both your rankings in local search results and your ability to convert potential clients into actual clients.
But many lawyers struggle with getting reviews, even if they provide great service to their clients.
Here’s what you need to know about the impact of reviews and how to get more of them.
What Makes Google Reviews So Important for Lawyers?
Reviews on your Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) do three important things for your legal practice:
- They give your law firm credibility
- They help new clients decide if they want to work with you
- They help people find your firm online
Reviews let you showcase the fact that your law firm delivers consistent results for clients. Gaining reviews lets you stand out from the competition and earn more qualified leads on the strength of your reputation. A business with a 5-star review score gets 25% more clicks to its website than businesses that maintain a 3-star average.
And your reviews lend themselves to repurposing across the marketing channels you use.
Your reviews are testimonials that you can reuse on your website and on social media. Redistributing these testimonials shows potential clients what people just like them have to say about you.
And having reviews impacts whether or not a potential client will find your firm when they search on Google.
How Lawyer Reviews Impact Your Local SEO
Ranking in Google Maps is a top goal for any lawyer’s local SEO campaign.
The more you can show up as an option for potential clients, the better. And where you show up matters, too. 42% of website traffic goes to results in Google’s map pack when that feature appears in search.
That means that firms in the map pack have a much higher success rate than anyone else on the first page of results.
Reviews play a part in these ranks thanks to the way that Google’s map ranking algorithm works.
Google considers three important factors to show up in the map feature:
- Relevance
- Prominence
- Distance
And part of the prominence factor has to do with your reviews.
Google sees firms with more reviews as being more prominent than those with a smaller number.
Someone searching for a keyword in your practice area satisfies the relevance part of the equation. That person searching near your firm’s location satisfies the distance criteria. Then, all other things being equal, Google’s algorithm weighs your law firm's prominence against that of other firms.
The firm with more reviews usually wins out when that happens.
Rankings.io’s original research backs this fact up. We found that a higher number of reviews on a firm's profile correlates with higher positioning in the map pack. We also found that it's not just the number of reviews that counts.
Review regularity is important, too.
Google Business Profiles that see a steady stream of reviews rank higher than those that have a large but old backlog. Getting each client to review your firm at the conclusion of their case is the key here. Google sees that consistent pipeline as proof that you actively work cases and provide a high-quality client experience.
Encouraging Reviews From Your Clients
Most clients aren’t going to leave reviews without you prompting them.
People don't realize how important it is to leave a good review. You have to tell them how much reviews matter to you. Encourage your clients to leave a review and explain how it helps you serve more people like them.
1. Set Up a System for Asking Clients for Reviews
Make getting reviews from happy clients a standard operating procedure at your firm.
Every attorney at your firm should ask for a review when they wrap up a case for a satisfied client. The easiest way to do this is to make asking for reviews part of your offboarding process.
Some lawyers ask as soon as they finalize the case documents. Others send this information in a letter a few weeks later if more appropriate.
Note:
Clients should only leave one review even if your firm is multi-location. The review should also be for the location where they received help. Google sometimes sees reviews for multiple places as a reason to flag your reviews as suspicious.
2. Guide Your Clients Through the Review Process
Don't just ask your clients for reviews. You never know what you'll get with open-ended requests like that. You have to explain to your clients what a good review looks like.
A review with just a star rating and no commentary holds less value than one with text, for starters.
A client who leaves a 5-star rating with no comments doesn't realize this is unhelpful. They’ll think that they’ve given you the best praise possible without your guidance.
Explain to clients why writing a review is valuable and what kinds of information they could mention.
Some clients will have concerns that they'll have to share private information about their case. Reassure them that’s not the case and give them ideas for things they can mention, such as organization, communication, strategic approach, etc. Remind them what they considered when looking for a law firm to help with their legal issue.
3. Make It as Easy As Possible for Clients to Review You
Make it easy for clients to give you feedback. Remove all possible friction to improve the likelihood of getting reviews.
Google makes it easy for you to make it easy for clients by providing you with a link that goes right to a review form for your firm's Google Business Profile.
Here’s how you get this link:
- Go to your Google Business Profile.
- Click the link next to your number of reviews.
- Choose the "get more reviews" button.
- Copy your review link so you can use it later.
Having that link allows you to send clients to your review page through a variety of methods. Some examples include:
- Sending the request and link through text message
- Sending the request and link through an email follow-up
- Creating a QR code with the link and putting the code on a business card
Don’t just pick one option. Use whichever method will be most convenient for your clients. Making it convenient for them will get you more reviews than asking them to do something that seems like going out of their way.
4. Automate Review-Gathering with a CRM or LPMS
Sending out manual requests for reviews will eat up your time. Adding automation into the mix will make the review-gathering process easier.
The easiest way to automate requests for reviews is to use a CRM or your law practice management tool.
Draft an email for your review request to send to your satisfied clients. Add the same details you would tell them in person to guide them through the process and explain the value of a review. Then, automate your review requests with your tool.
Don’t stop with the single request, either.
Some tools let you send automated reminders to clients if they ignore the first outreach. You don’t want to overwhelm these people with review requests, but it doesn’t hurt to ask a second or third time.
5. Ask for Reviews from Past Clients
You're not limited to getting reviews from your most recent clients.
Connect with former clients, too. These people’s experiences are just as important. They will remember you and what it was like working with you if you did your job well.
Reach out to these former clients with a personalized email containing your review link to boost your total review count.
Responding to Your Reviews
Getting client reviews is key, but responding to them is just as important.
You have to respond to every review, whether they’re positive or negative. Doing so highlights that you're a responsive and caring firm.
Positive reviews are easy to respond to since you're just thanking people and acknowledging their comments.
Doing this is still valuable since your client feels even better about working with you and will be more likely to send referrals your way in the future. Potential clients will read your responses and get the sense that you care about client outcomes.
Negative reviews may be harder to deal with, but they still need a response.
There's no getting around the fact that, at some point, you'll get a less than stellar review. And responding to them is sometimes more important than responding to glowing reviews. Reading and responding to these is just good online reputation management for lawyers.
Respond to bad reviews in a reasonable and compassionate way.
Sometimes, this leads to a resolution with the complaining party. What’s more important is that it shows potential clients that you respond in a measured tone and are willing to own up to things if something happens.
Many lawyers sweat negative reviews because they don’t see them as an opportunity.
Some negative reviews will be legitimate complaints. That’s a perfect occasion for you to reflect on what went wrong and how you’d fix it in the future. These kinds of negative reviews only make your firm stronger when you react to them the right way.
Local SEO Doesn’t End with Online Reviews
There’s more that goes into ranking in local search results than building a consistent pipeline of reviews.
Having a library of reviews does not guarantee you the top spot on Google. You need a more holistic local SEO campaign to get the results you want.
That includes optimizing the rest of your Google Business profile, building relevant citations with the right information, and building local landing pages. An expert can help you with these and other key tasks for local lawyer SEO.
Grow Your Online Presence with Google
Your Google Business Profile makes you appear professional, responsive, and like a high-quality law firm. Collecting reviews reinforces all of those elements. Making a commitment to gathering reviews from satisfied clients will boost your firm’s profile performance.
But reviews alone will not open the floodgates to new clients.
Rankings.io knows what it takes to grow a law firm’s online presence through digital marketing. We have deep experience in growing firms’ caseloads through SEO services for lawyers, and we have a detailed understanding of what moves the needle in local SEO. Contact us today for more help with everything you need for a plan.
