Legal Search Marketing

Archive for the ‘Local Search Marketing’ Category

It’s important to make sure your law firm’s location is included on your home page and all over your site. I have noticed a lot of attorney sites lately where they don’t indicate anywhere on the homepage what city or state they are in.  If I can’t find it, Google probably can’t either.  If I am a potential client looking to see if  your in my area and I can’t tell, I’m leaving.

If your a national firm that has many locations then it’s different but if your like most firms and are in one state, then your probably trying to get ranked for keywords related to your practice areas AND your location.   Most people will search  by city and keyword. So if I am looking for a Tax Lawyer in Chicago, Im probably going to type in Chicago Tax Lawyer vs. just Tax Lawyer.  So it can help if you have your location keywords on the page.

Also it’s a good idea to make sure anyone who come’s to your site, knows right away where your located. If someone has to hunt past the home page, they might just wind up leaving. So make it clear to potential clients where you are located and what your phone # is.

Its also key for your Google and other Local Business listings that your address is on  your web site, this can influence your local rankings.

Today, the Official Google Blog announced that the Local Business Center is becoming Google Places. Why? According to John Hanke, Google’s VP Google Maps, Earth and Local, “Millions of people use Google every day to find places in the real world, and we want to better connect Place Pages — the way that businesses are being found today — with the tool that enables business owners to manage their presence on Google.”

Google launched Place Pages for Google Maps last September. Since then, four million businesses have claimed their Place Page on Google through the Local Business Center, which enables them to verify and supplement their business information to include hours of operation, photos, videos, coupons, product offerings and more.

Google Places will continue to offer these same tools, but it is also introducing several new features:

• Service areas: If you travel to serve customers, you can now show which geographic areas you serve. And if you run a business without a storefront or office location, you can now make your address private.
• A new way to advertise: For just $25 per month, businesses in select cities can make their listings stand out on Google.com and Google Maps with Tags. As of today, Google has rolled out Tags to Austin, Atlanta, Houston, San Jose, and Washington, D.C. In the coming weeks, it will be introducing Tags in Boulder, Chicago, San Diego, San Francisco, and Seattle.
• Business photo shoots: In addition to uploading their own photos, businesses in select cities can now request a free photo shoot of the interior of their business which Google will use to supplement existing photos of businesses on Place Pages. Google has been experimenting with this over the past few months, and now have created a site for businesses to learn more and express their interest in participating.
• Customized QR codes: From the dashboard page of Google Places, businesses in the U.S. can download a QR code that’s unique to their business, directly from their dashboard page. QR codes can be placed on business cards or other marketing materials, and customers can scan them with certain smartphones to be taken directly to the mobile version of the Place Page for that business.
• Favorite Places: Google is doing a second round of its Favorite Places program, and are mailing window decals to 50,000 businesses around the U.S. These decals include a QR code that can be scanned with a smartphone to directly view the mobile Place Page for the business to learn more about their offerings.

Over the past few months we’ve also added the ability for business owners to post real-time updates to their Place Page. You might want to promote a sale, a special event or anything else that you want customers to know right now, and this feature lets you communicate that directly to your customers. You can also provide extra incentive by adding coupons, including ones specially formatted for mobile phones.

To keep track of how your business listing is performing on Google, we offer a personalized dashboard within Google Places that includes data about how many times people have found your business on Google, what keywords they used to find it and even what areas people traveled from to visit your business. With the dashboard, you can see how your use of any of these new features affects interest in your business and make more informed decisions about how to be found on Google and interact with your customers.

Comscore released results showing the growth of the Local search market. Its important that your lawfirm is listed with  the Google Local and Yahoo Local programs, its another way that users are looking for businesses online.

"Two out of five local searchers (41 percent) were looking for information on a local service in their home area, including car rental office, dry cleaner or lawyer."

ComScore Networks, a leader in measuring the digital age, today released the results of an analysis revealing the size and growth of the U.S. local search market.

Local search is defined as searches conducted by consumers on the local or directory (Yellow Pages) sections of leading search sites, and other searches identified as having local intent.

According to the study, 63 percent of U.S. Internet users (or approximately 109 million people) performed a local search online in July, a 43-percent increase versus July of 2005. Google Sites (30 percent) and Yahoo! Sites (29 percent) garnered the largest share of local searches in July. Microsoft Sites captured 12 percent of local searches, followed by the Time Warner Network with 7 percent.