Google Places is a gift to High Street Law Firms

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Google Places is a gift to high street law firms

Google places and 'local search' will become a vital law marketing tool and right now it is a very smart way to market your law firm. If you have limited time to spend on your marketing and you have a local business then internet marketing experts will tell you that Google Places is where you should focus your efforts. As lawyers usually fall into that category it has to be an ideal marriage.

If you haven't heard about Google Places or you don't yet know what it does then it may help to think of it as Google Maps for businesses. Law marketing is time consuming and if you don't know how Google Maps works then skip it for now and read the rest of this article.

Google is focusing its strategy on Google Maps and all things local. That's good news for businesses that operate at a local level so it is something you need to know about if you are interested in raising your firms' profile. Your firm may already be listed on Google Maps but are you making the most of the listing?

This is how it works: When a potential client conducts a local search on Google (and that is what an estimated 75% of potential clients will do!) they will be served a page of web listings. But it is different to a non local listings page. Try it for yourself and check to see if your competitors have already worked it out.

The local search results page will have a map at the top right, above the usual Pay Per Click adverts (Google knows that PPC is becoming saturated especially for law marketing ). The map has little flags on it to identify where the local law firms are based which makes it easy for potential clients to plan their route.

But more than this, when your potential clients scroll down the page the map floats down and follows, so even if you got a mention on the page by using expensive SEO techniques, if your law firm is not listed on Google Maps you could still be less of a client magnet than those lawyers whose office has a Google Places listing.

Google Maps is a gift to law marketing because when the flag is clicked there is much more information available so you can expand with photos, profiles, client recommendations and so forth. These are the things that you may already have on your website, but Google will never give your website a higher ranking than its latest strategic weapon, and right now that is Google Places.

Try it for yourself and then think of a local service you need to use. Try searching for it in Google, (e.g. accountants Basingstoke) and see whether you would open the natural search result or be attracted to the Google Places maps and flags.

And if that isn't enough, Google has delivered a killer blow to natural SEO efforts by trumping the natural results with a high priority, all singing, all dancing, red flag waving, list of Google Places entries at the top of the page. So even if you get your law firm to the top of the natural search results it will be almost impossible to stand out more than the Google Places entries when a local search is conducted for 'solicitor' and your natural SEO law marketing efforts will become harder to justity in terms of return on investment.

So if you can't beat them join them! It's free and will make your life a whole lot easier and probably be less time consuming and less expensive than trying to rank high in natural search results as a local business. Of course, it won't last for that long. It will become saturated at some point and Google will deal us a new hand, but in the meantime it's the only game in town. Literally!

Find out about law marketing techniques at Google Places.