There's an attorney here in Chicago who spends money on television advertising.
However, when you search on this attorney's name in Google, you get the above review summary from the firm's Google My Business page.
That same search also turns up other review sites that contain reviews like:
Some lawyers might not find this surprising. After all, it's an adversarial process. If you're not making someone unhappy, you're probably not doing it right.
However, these appear to be reviews from clients.
Of course, I can't tell (and neither can the public) whether these are real, let alone, warranted.
Nonetheless, when people see this attorney's expensive television ad, pull out their smartphone and search this attorney's name, they're going to see a whole bunch of relatively detailed negative reviews.
Further, at least on Google, the firm is completely silent. They haven't responded to a single review.
Deciding whether and how to respond to negative online reviews can be tricky. But it's difficult to argue that reviews don't play some role in influencing a prospective client's impression.
A lot of lawyers spend a lot of time and money trying to get attention from potential clients. This is particularly true in the context of lawyer SEO. In other words, many lawyers spend a lot of time and money trying to rank #1 in Google.
Unfortunately, lawyers often fail to consider what people actually see when they search.
Notice that the firm with the best local pack position has 1 Google review while the firms in the #2 and #3 spots have 52 and 11 reviews, respectively.
Which firms do you think command the most attention in this SERP?
If your search competitors have found a way to earn online reviews and you rely on search for new business, you really need to make earning online reviews a priority.
In fact, you should probably spend more effort on earning positive reviews than on trying to rank in these SERPs.
If negative online reviews, or absent reviews in a competitive search result, cause someone who found you through advertising, to remove you from their consideration set, those reviews are hurting your return on ad spend (ROAS).
I can't tell you how many times I hear lawyers say, "I rank number one but I'm not getting any calls."
While there are many factors that can contribute to this situation, many times, high search visibility with low inquiry rates can be attributed to a poor or non-existent online reputation.
You simply can't control the fact that, in the digital age, more and more legal services consumers expect to be able to find information about you online.
One of things that they expect to find is what your clients have to say about you.
Therefore, it just makes sense to get your web presence right before you spend a lot of money driving potential clients with large advertising spends.
This Thursday, Allison Shields and I will be discussing issues related to online reputation management at the ABA Techshow. If you're attending, we hope you stop by. Feel free to bring your questions.
Over the years, law firm prospects have sent us reports from just about all of our competitors. Unfortunately, even today, some law firm marketing agencies still mislead their clients via "reporting." One particularly egregious example comes in the form of ranking reports. Which prompted this LinkedIn post. To my surprise, I received a lot of […]
John Wanamaker supposedly said "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half." In an an effort to figure out "what half is working," attribution was born. Coupled with a transition from traditional, offline ads to digital media, attribution became the holy grail for analyzing advertising spends. But […]
I recently asked ChatGPT, "What are some of the top personal injury law firms in Chicago?? Actually, first I ask "who are some of the top personal injury lawyers in Chicago?" ChatGPT couldn't handle that one, so I modified the prompt. ChatGPT listed five very well-known firms downtown. Can you guess the other four? That's […]
If you're like me, you have some degree of AI, ChatGBT, Bard, exhaustion. Now don't get me wrong, this is stuff is remarkable and is changing, well, a lot. But before you hook up the ChatGPT API to your WordPress API and crank out 10,000 pages, here are a few things to think about. Let's […]
If you know me, you know my opinions about links and SEO advice from Google. If you don't, here's the TL;DR: Meh, links! Meaning, all things being equal, links still remain a competitive difference maker for ranking. Take Google's SEO advice with several grains of salt. Google has no economic incentive to help your site […]
The best marketing advice I can give you is to be authentic. Of course, you don't find that very helpful in terms of meeting your growth goals. So, you might decide to game the system. As I'm writing this, one of the more popular ways to gain the system is to pay for engagement. This […]
The following post was written by ChatGPT. ChatGPT, developed by OpenAI, is a state-of-the-art language model that can generate human-like text based on a given prompt or context. This technology has the potential to revolutionize the way that businesses, including law firms, market themselves to potential clients. One way that a law firm could use […]
How long does SEO take? When can I expect to see results? What results should I expect to see? These are all reasonable questions that we field from lawyers every day. And, like many legal answers, the answer is: It depends. Yes, I know that's not the answer you wanted. But it's the most honest […]
And how much time should they spend doing it? I recently had the privilege of chatting with Tyson, Jim, and Conrad for an upcoming episode of The Maximum Lawyer Podcast. If you're not familiar with The Maximum Lawyer community, you should definitely check it out. Jim asked a really great question about who should do […]
