A Quick Guide To Yelp For Lawyers
Updated: May 11, 2022
Claiming And Managing Your Reviews: A Law Firm Marketing Guide
Yelp is one of the most popular review platforms for lawyers. Since reviews can affect trust and reputation, they can indirectly affect Lawyer SEO and Law Firm Marketing. After all, if you have low average ratings, people are likely going to avoid your website and social media, affecting traffic and rankings.
That said, let's talk about the basic steps to managing your law firm's Yelp listing:
3 Important Steps To Optimize Your Law Firm's Yelp Profile
You can do a few things to boost your Yelp visibility and ranking. If you're a little new to Yelp, these steps should be the first you need to take:
Step 1: Claim Your Account
Many lawyers have yet to claim their profile, which might lead to erroneous or un-updated information being inserted into your default business profile.
Search engines will use keywords and phrases on your profile, as well as other details like NAPs (name, address, phone number), links, images, etc. The more detailed your information is, the better.
Remember: People don't just go to review platforms to read user reviews. They also want information about your law firm, which can be crucial when considering their choices in law firms.
Step 2: Choose The Right Categories
You can include your law firm in up to three categories (practice areas) on Yelp.
Remember: If you leave this field blank, Yelp will try to guess which categories you'll be listed in, and they're not always successful.
It's also crucial not to include your law firm in areas of law in which you have no interest simply to gain more exposure or traffic. So, if you're looking for more Personal Injury clients, make sure you specify the area of law and avoid categories that you don't need exposure for.
Step 3: Manage Your Yelp Profile
Auditing your performance is the best approach to see if your efforts are paying off. For example, you can check how often your profile has been seen and what actions people have taken on it.
Remember: Auditing informs the next steps you need to take to optimize your Yelp profile. You need to make sure you find out what you're doing right, what you're doing wrong, and what you need to change.
Tips On Managing Your Law Firm Yelp Reviews
Of course, reviews are a crucial part of your Yelp profile. So, make sure you know how you manage them to make sure you're getting the most out of your law firm marketing efforts on Yelp.
Tip #1: Report Incorrect Reviews And Spam
A verified business owner can dispute a review and ask for it to be removed from their rating on Yelp. Likewise, you can submit a review and ask Yelp to manually remove it from your rating average when you log into your Yelp business account.
If you're successful and the review is removed, it will remain in the "Not Recommended Reviews" section of your account, but it won't be immediately visible and won't count against your 5-star average.
If a negative review violates Yelp's content criteria, was written by someone who did not work for you, or you can establish it was written by a competitor, you may be able to have it removed within a few days of your request.
Tip #2: Responding To Negative Reviews
People want to hire lawyers who can solve problems rather than engage in an online shoving match. Users take notice when you respond in a sincere manner specific to the reviewer's concern.
Remember: This shows that you actually care about your clients and are willing to make some adjustments to satisfy them.
The general rules for responding to negative reviews are as follows:
Respond nicely, apologize, and take responsibility. Even if you don't think you're in the right, you need to be emphatic to the reviewer's concern.
Take the discussion to more private spaces. Ask the client to send you an email where you can settle the matter privately.
Nicely ask the client to change ratings after you've addressed their concerns. Again, an updated review shows that you've given effort to resolving a dissatisfied client's concerns.
How Can LawyerLeadMachine Assist Your Law Firm SEO?
Lawyer SEO requires dedicated on-page and off-page tactics to boost traffic and conversions. Social proof, CTAs, law firm content marketing, and landing pages are some of the few essential drivers of client conversions.
LLM is a legal marketing agency that provides attorney marketing services and can help with lawyer SEO marketing, local SEO for attorneys, and other lawyer digital marketing strategies to help you boost your law firm.
To get started on your SEO strategy, review options to work with us here.
