What a Legal Profile Can Do for You

To establish an effective marketing plan, you and your firm needs to have a professional profile on a legal directory. Some law firms make the mistake of overlooking or undervaluing attorney profiles on legal directories as a tool to reach potential clients. Other firms simply aren’t selective with legal directories, wasting valuable time and money on profiles that have no return on investment. 

Setting up an attorney profile with a well-established legal directory can bring you many important benefits. Here are just a few.

Increase Credibility

First things first: your law firm’s website is not a substitute for having an attorney profile in a legal directory — you need both. While your law firm’s website and attorney profile will contain some overlapping information, what sets them apart is how the legal consumer views these different online sources. Consumers view legal directories as an “objective” source of information, as they’re a third party site where potential clients can read reviews and find information about your firm. Your law firm website, on the other hand, is viewed by the consumer as being more “biased”; however, it’s the ideal place to provide in-depth information about your firm and give the consumer a sense of what it may be like to work with you.  

Creating a legal profile on an authoritative legal directory also tells potential clients that your brand is the real deal. The fact that you have a profile on an established directory inherently increases your brand authority and trustworthiness. Nowadays, when a potential client sets out to hire a lawyer, one of the first things they do is look online for information about services provided, as well as scores, ratings, and reviews from former clients.

Directories that highlight peer and client reviews will boost your credibility, as potential clients will be encouraged by your firm’s rankings and positive reviews. This in turn increases your online visibility. 

Boost Website Traffic

Having a legal profile helps potential clients more easily find your law firm and learn more about you. According to our Understanding the Legal Consumer report, nearly all legal consumers read third party ratings and reviews, a whopping 86% of respondents use online resources when handling their legal matter, and 70% dive into online content before deciding to engage with an attorney

Just by having an online profile in an established legal directory, your law firm website will benefit from:

• Authoritative backlinks which increase traffic to your website 
• An increase in rankings for major search engines like Google or Bing
• Receiving and showcasing reviews, which also helps boost your ranking

Increase Leads

Having a profile on a legal directory puts you in front of consumers when they’re researching their legal issues. Use your profile to highlight your firm’s areas of practice or expertise along with client ratings and reviews. Most legal directories allow users to filter by location, client rating, and other criteria. It’s important to have a well-optimized legal profile and solicit reviews from former clients to make your profile stand out. This is where legal consumers learn more about you before reaching out directly. 

Gain SERP Visibility

People look things up all the time—Google processes roughly 40,000 search queries each second. It’s therefore important that you do what you can to increase your law firm’s visibility on search engine results pages.

Having an attorney profile helps immensely. 

In addition to increasing traffic to your website, having an attorney profile on a legal directory will help with search engine optimization (SEO). Attorney profiles, reviews, and backlinks to your law firm on established directories will tell major search engines such as Google that your business website is relevant and provides real value to site visitors. Having a profile that you claim and optimize can even help give you a better appearance and ranking within the site’s directory itself. This is the case with Avvo, Lawyers.com, and other legal sites that give you the flexibility to add and adjust key information about you and your law firm.

Tip: Use citations

A local citation is any online mention of the name of your business, address, and phone number. When it comes to local SEO, citations are a critical ranking factor. Search engine algorithms track information accuracy, providing correct information about your law firm’s name, phone number, email, web address, and physical location. You can help your Google rankings and boost your business’s online visibility by keeping that information up to date. Incorrect information on legal directories will create issues with both potential clients and search engine rankings, so be sure to enter the right information.

Martindale-Avvo’s Legal Directories

To create a profile on a top legal directory, look no further. Martindale-Avvo’s ProVantage provides a profile on the top directories: Avvo, Martindale, Lawyers.com, and Nolo. You simply create a personal attorney profile that outlines your law firm, highlights your experience, and provides contact information for legal consumers searching for a lawyer in your area. Our network of websites receives millions of monthly views from potential clients; plus we feature reviews from both clients and legal professionals, and offer multiple ways to engage with visitors, helping to improve your credibility and visibility.