As a lawyer, you’ll want to attract new leads and increase your online reputation in order to successfully gain clients within your local community. One of the best ways to maintain this constant flow of customers is to have a strategy to manage directory listings as a law firm. This will allow you to have a strong, successful plan in place to capture the attention of your audience and find new clients.
However, understanding how you can go about creating a directory listing and improving your online presence isn’t easy, especially for busy lawyers and firm partners who have their hands full with other activities. This is why having a guide for directory listings management for law firms is so key. We’ll help you understand what directory listings are and how you can use them to help you attract new clients.
What are Directory Listings?
A directory listing is a business listing that is found online that includes important information about your business. That includes things like your name, address, and phone number. These listings can be found on platforms like Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Yelp, Bing, and more. Virtually any type of social media platform or browsing engine will have directory listing capabilities. Capturing your business name and ensuring that you are able to own that listing is an important part of digital marketing.
Common Elements of Directory Listings
Not every directory listing will be the same, but there are a few common elements that you can expect to have in your listing. The most common types of information that will need to be included to create a full listing include:
- Name
- Address
- Phone Number
- Website URL
- Photos
- Videos
- Details About the Business (like a short description, awards/recognition, areas of service offered, etc.)
Benefits of Directory Listings
Having a directory listing for your law firm is about more than making sure that potential customers can find your phone number. It’s also all about improving your business and bringing about helpful benefits for your law firm.
Increased Visibility
Directories are most often found at the top of organic search results and relied on by clients to find a lawyer in their area. If a client has to dig around to find your law firm, odds are they won’t bother looking. Your directory listing is going to appear high on search engines and will fill in the maps that appear for local searches. By having a directory listing, you appear first on search results pages, which helps you get ahead of competitors.
Local Search
Directories are based on locations. When you search for a type of business on Google or other search engines, it automatically pulls from your nearby location. That’s incredibly important for law firms that want clients from their local area. By having your online profiles and directory listings filled out, you can improve your rankings in local searches and find more clients.
Improved Credibility
Clients can trust that you’re a real and reputable firm when you have a full, complete directory listing. When your listing is filled with photos, reviews, answers to questions, and a description of services, it tells customers that you are a reputable firm that they can trust. If your listing is half-filled out and lacks critical information, a potential client might not think that your law firm has it all together.
Better Communication
Directory listings offer direct contact to your firm. A customer can find your information and reach out through a directory listing, often without leaving a browser. You can attach a chatbot to a listing so you can direct inquiries and review communications and feedback from your clients. Reviews and questions also give you chances to communicate and respond to clients in a public forum.
How Directory Listings Help You Attract More Clients
Directory listings are great tools for finding new clients and attracting the people you need in order to keep your law firm functioning. By using a directory listing as a lead generation source, you can find new clients with relatively little ongoing marketing effort.
Improves Your Online Presence
People are already looking for your services online when they come across your directory listing. Someone who is searching for a law firm is going to find your online directory when they Google or search for someone who offers services in their area. This allows you to capture an audience that is already primed and ready to work with you.
When you have a stronger online presence, you also can appear in search results outside of your directory listings. That helps you be discovered for a wider variety of searches and creates a better approach to answering client questions. You can also show up higher in search results, which helps improve your business SEO.
Strengthen Your Reputation
Directory listings are a trusted source of information. If someone is trying to find out what hours you are open, where your website is, what services you offer, or what former clients have to say about your firm, a directory listing is one of the first places they may go. A potential client is able to learn about you and is more likely to view you as a reputable source and a trustworthy law firm when you have a strong online presence.
Clients rely on law firms for some of the most critical moments in their lives. They want to know right away that they are working with a professional firm that respects them and does a great job. When your directories don’t convey important information, it may make your phone look less than professional to potential clients. On the other hand, the more robust your firm’s directory listings are, the more reliable you appear in the eyes of your clients.
Increase Brand Awareness
You gain a competitive advantage over your competitors that don’t appear in listings by having your directories captured on all platforms. You can see a significant increase in traffic by appearing within the top three results on directories. When you get that increase, you are able to improve your brand awareness and capture clients that might have gone to other law firms in the area. By capturing that first search and increasing the awareness of your brand, you are able to increase your client list.
Brand awareness is another important factor of business SEO. When you have great SEO, you appear higher in rankings and are able to outshine the competition in rankings. That will also allow you to appear more professional and successful than competitors, which can help you find more business and increase your client list.
Grow Your Local Visibility
Directory listings help increase your local visibility, so you become more easily found on Google. When someone is looking for a law firm, they are looking for someone in their local area. That leads to an increase in searches that include the words “near me” or “in my area”. When someone conducts a local search, the results that pop up will include a map with directory listings. By having your location clearly listed in your directory, you can be discovered during these searches and become a well-known name in your local area.
Your local presence is more important than having a national or globally-recognized name. The people who are your clients live in your immediate area, so you have to demonstrate that you are the best choice for local success with legal cases.
Get Discovered More Easily
Directory listings help your business get recommended in voice search as well as traditional online search. With the rise of search assistants like Siri and Alexa, along with hands-free search options with Bluetooth, there is an increase in voice searches rather than traditionally typed-out queries. Search results for voice searches tend to be snapshot answers with important information rather than long descriptions. Having your directories filled out can help people get your phone number, hours, or other important information from a voice search.
Customers tend to want to look for the easiest solution. While they want a great lawyer who will be a good fit for them, they also don’t want to spend hours researching. They want the power of local search to do the hard work for them. Your directory listings help you achieve this goal.
Attend a Surefire Local Marketing Platform Demo
Trying to manage all of your directory listings on your own is difficult, and you often can’t see the results. That’s where Surefire Local comes in. Surefire Local is a business intelligence marketing software at a fraction of the cost of other tools or agencies that helps you manage the most important online marketing activities within one platform. You can use Surefire Local to manage all your directories in a single location, respond to reviews, update information, and answer questions. To learn more about Surefire Local and how it can help you, contact us and schedule a platform demo.