The Importance of Online Reviews for Lawyers
If there's a profession that knows the value of a good review, it's a lawyer. After all, word-of-mouth recommendations have almost always been a surefire way of attracting new leads and clients. It makes sense - if a client someone knows and trusts has a good experience with a lawyer, it makes them more willing to take a chance on that person too, right? This same idea works with another, perhaps more effective way of sharing customer reviews: posting them online. In this blog post, we will discuss the importance of online reviews for lawyers, and why you should be making them a priority.
Potential Clients Often Start Their Search Online
First and foremost, potential clients are increasingly - and overwhelmingly - looking to the internet to find out about local businesses. For example, one study by BrightLocal found that 98% of consumers read online reviews for local businesses within the past year. That's just about everyone! There's almost no way that you could get that kind of reach by strictly relying on word-of-mouth recommendations, even if you have the best reputation in your area. Therefore, since people are looking for them anyway, you should make sure they can find the information they need. You don’t want to lose out to a competitor just because they’re providing this information and you’re not.
People Trust Online Reviews as Much as Personal Recommendations
Another reason why online reviews are so important is because they're trusted by a lot of people. In fact, the same study by BrightLocal found that almost half of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations these days. It seems that the average person doesn't need to actually know the reviewer for their opinion to hold some weight, so don't underestimate the impact of a good online review.
Positive Reviews Can Help You Rank Higher in Search Results
Finally, it's a good idea to start collecting those online reviews if you want to improve your ranking on the search engine results pages (SERPs). Google and other search engines often use online reviews as a factor in their ranking algorithms, so the more reviews you can get and the more positive they are, the higher you should appear on the SERPs.
Why should you care about your ranking? Well, the closer to the top your law firm's site appears on the SERPs, the more likely potential clients will find you before your competition. Think about it: when you conduct a search, are you more likely to click on the first few relevant results or scroll to the ones near the bottom of the page (or on any of the subsequent pages for that matter)? If you've been ranking lower than your rivals all this time, then you may be missing out on clients and opportunities simply because your name appears after other, similar law firms.
Final Thoughts
To sum it up, online reviews are more important than ever for lawyers who want to attract new clients and grow their business. If you're not already actively collecting them, then you should make it a priority.
Online reviews can help increase your rankings, but it’s not the only way. Contact Legal Verb today to see how our SEO-optimized content can help!