Why Your Law Firm Is Not Showing Up on Google (And What to Do About It)
Ever wondered why potential clients in your city see your competitors first on Google before your firm? The reason: local SEO for law firms. And no, it’s not about how good you are as a firm, but how visible you are. Read this blog to find out how you can optimize your firm’s profile for local search and make clients actually see you.
Why Google Visibility Matters More Than Ever for Law Firms
Nowadays, Google is the first place people go to for legal help. And the first few results often get the most attention, while those that come after go unnoticed. This makes local search visibility not just an optional advantage for your law firm; it makes it a requirement. If you want to get clients, you must become more visible.
There are many reasons that can cause your firm’s visibility on Google to be ranked lower. Below are a few of the main reasons and how to fix them.
Reason 1: Your Google Business Profile Is Incomplete or Neglected
One of the most important local SEO assets is the Google Business Profile. It’s also the easiest to set up. Firms can easily overlook their profile by not claiming the business on Google or by leaving the information on the profile incomplete. An unoptimized Google Business Profile leaves certain crucial fields blank and inaccurate: name, address, phone numbers, practice area categories, business hours, firm description with local keywords, company photos, and reviews.
What may look like a simple oversight, however, can lead to big consequences. Google uses the completeness and activity of a business profile as a ranking signal. This means that Google automatically tags your firm as inactive or irrelevant when you fail to complete your profile.
Reason 2: Your Website Is Not Optimized for Local Search
Your firm’s website can look professional; however, it can still be invisible to Google. This can be the case when you build your website without local SEO in mind.
Utilizing local terms and keywords to help your target audience find your website organically through SEO is key. At Mapless Marketing, we continually see websites with no specific service area pages and slow website loading speeds, causing these firms to organically rank lower than their competitors. No matter how good a website looks, if these issues are not fixed, having a website can be more harmful than beneficial.
Reason 3: You Do Not Have Enough Reviews (Or the Right Ones)
Most businesses don’t realize how many clients reach out to them solely based on their Google reviews. For law firms, Google reviews are indeed a powerful tool to raise local ranking. Yet they are severely underused.
We get it: getting reviews is not as easy as it sounds. It can feel very awkward to ask, and the process is not always systematized. Clients, no matter how satisfied they are, also do not always think to leave a review without being asked. In this case, your law firm should try to make a habit of asking clients for a review. Share with clients that if you were able to help them, you are able to help others going through the same situations, and reviews truly make a difference.
At the end of the day, running a successful law firm has a lot of asks, and getting reviews may not be top of mind. Nevertheless, focusing on reviews now will not only boost local SEO rankings later but also directly impact LSA performance.
However, increasing your firm’s visibility does not mean getting enough reviews alone. You must make sure to get the right ones. Keep in mind that Google takes into consideration the review volume, recency, and rating when deciding which firms to surface in local search results. This means that even with a higher number of reviews than most firms, Google can display a competitor (with more recent reviews and a higher rating) before your firm.
At Mapless Marketing, we suggest reaching out to your most satisfied clients first when asking for reviews. These are the reviews that will make the biggest difference, not only for future clients but also for the way Google ranks reviews for organic placement of your business.
Reason 4: Your Local Citations Are Inconsistent or Missing
You get local citations when websites, like legal or general directories and industry-specific listings, mention your firm’s name, address, and phone number. These citations help Google verify that a business is legitimate and has an accurate online presence.
When Google cross-references these citations and finds inconsistencies in the information provided, it loses its confidence in the firm’s credibility and gives it a lower search ranking. Simple, avoidable errors, like mismatched phone numbers, old addresses, and misspelled firm names in Avvo, Justia, FindLaw, Martindale-Hubbell, and the like, can make your firm harder to find. This drives your score for SEO further down than you think.
Reason 5: You Have No Local Content Strategy
Pushing out content regularly is good practice for a law firm. But if the content is too general, then it does only half the job. Know that Google rewards websites that localize their content and keep it relevant to their target audience.
Do away with generic practice area pages already used by local competitors and specify what your firm offers in particular. Pay attention to local legal questions, FAQs, community-specific issues, and location-based search terms in your content to narrow the competition and stand out in your target market. Your local content strategy, however, need not be complicated and time-consuming. It only needs to be consistent and localized for it to drive your firm’s visibility for years.
How Local SEO Fixes All of This
To address each of the above reasons why people cannot find your firm on Google, you only need a single solution: a well-executed local SEO strategy.
With Mapless Marketing, you get a local SEO strategy based on the current state of your local presence. Once we identify the biggest gaps in your presence, we optimize each of the above SEO assets one-by-one. How?
- By optimizing your Google Business Profile to maximize your visibility.
- Updating your website by specifying your location and practice areas.
- Cleaning up your citations across relevant directories.
- Developing a systematic review generation process that your firm can sustain.
- Building out a local content plan that highlights your firm’s practice and service areas.
Because local SEO is a long-term investment, we will do these not in a single day or week. We will take these steps continuously to build authority over time.
Where LSAs Fit In: Getting Seen While SEO Builds
Just a disclaimer: local SEO takes time, and significant ranking improvements typically show up in three to six months. Of course, this will not cut it for firms with an urgent need for leads.
This is why our two-part strategy complements local SEO with Local Services Ads (LSAs). While LSAs provide immediate growth through top-of-Google visibility and pay-per-lead results, local SEO builds long-term authority in the background. Together, they form a complete local marketing strategy.
Your firm not showing up on Google can be worrisome, but know we can easily fix this. By understanding what your firm is missing and building a map towards fixing it, your firm can maximize its local presence and stay on top of search results in no time.
Is your law firm hard to find on Google? Book your free Marketing Map Session and we will audit your local presence, identify exactly why you are not ranking, and map out a clear plan to fix it.
