Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Should your law firm be concerned with online reviews?

Online reviews are everywhere; you've likely seen them for restaurants, for instance, but have you seen any for law firms? Your clients are more and more likely to read reviews about your law firm, and even post them: a 2012 Local Consumer Review Survey found that 72% of surveyed consumers  trusted online reviews as much as they did personal recommendations. Even more important, 52% said that positive online reviews made them more likely to use a local business. So why wouldn't this also affect their choice for a law firm? Logic points to a growing tendency to use noline reviews for service companies like law firms, accounting and financial firms, and insurance, to name a few.

So what can your law firm do to improve its online reviews? There are firms out there who propose to do this work for you; SEO firms, and even some firms who specialize in this.  They will produce the reviews for you, and attempt to counteract negative reviews.  While this sounds like a great idea, what it WILL do is create a review history for your firm that will look and reek like fake reviews. What's better than fake reviews? No reviews at all. Fake reviews make your firm look like it's cheating, and people who have even a smidgen of online experience will detect that a mile away. Try to avoid this if you can, as these companies, like fly-by-night SEO companies that do more harm to your domain property than good, will NOT give your company a better reputation.

The best way to get your firm good reviews is to actively solicit them from your clients. At the end of every client matter, send an email asking them what they thought of the work that was done for them. You can even send them a link to Google Plus, Yahoo Local, or a number of other influential business reviewing sites where they can tell me what a great job you did (perhaps find out if they are happy with your work before sending them the link!)

If you have an intern, admin person, or a marketing person with some on their hands, you can have them take your clients' comments and enter them into the review area themselves; while this is not as good as the clients doing it themselves, you'll certainly have a lot more control over the content this way.  If you DO hire someone to add your reviews, at least give them REAL REVIEWS from actual clients to use. The results will be significantly more realistic and professional that way.

Here are some links to get you started:

Google Local: https://www.google.com/local
Yahoo Local: http://local.yahoo.com/
Bing Local: http://www.bing.com/local/
Complete list of review sites: http://www.business-edge.com/solutions/list_of_online_review_sites.asp


Matt DeLucia is president of Business Edge Internet Design, a website design agency with locations in New York City and Connecticut with over 100 law firm clients and hundreds of sites built over 17 years. Call 212-931-8538 or contact us here.

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