How to Get More Accident Clients for Free!
Contents
Google My Business Listings for Personal Injury Lawyers
If you haven’t already set up your Google My Business listing profile for your personal injury office(s), you need to do so immediately. Google My Business, now called Google Business Profile, is the online Yellow Pages, and it’s free! (Google also sells advertising in this section, but you can still have a free listing, and they work!)
If you already have set up your Google Business listing, read below to find out how to optimize your Google My Business listing to appear at the top and stand out from competing personal injury lawyers.
You do not even need a website for your law office to have a Google My Business listing. If you have not yet set up a Google My Business listing, first check to see if Google has already listed your business and then claim it. Google may already know about your law practice and have you listed, possibly with incorrect information. If you do not see a listing for your business, then set one up here.
Google will verify your law office address either by calling the phone at your address or mailing a code to your address which you will enter in your profile. If you choose to have Google mail your code, be on the lookout for an envelope in a few days which looks like this
Attorney Ethics Rules
Attorney ethics rules usually require that you have an actual physical office location at the address you are using for your Google My Business listing. Using a PO Box at a private company offering a street address for your Google My Business listing will likely be a violation of ethics rules.
To avoid ethics issues, we rent space in a street-level office. This gives us the added benefit of having our sign in front and space to meet with clients. You can see our office location in the Google My Business photos below.
How to Optimize Your Google My Business Listing
The free Google My Business listings can be search optimized, just like websites. To make sure your Google My Business listing can be seen at the top, do the following:
- Your NAP (Name, Address & Phone) of your law office should be listed exactly the same way across all online directories
- Make sure that all your information in the listing is correct
- Enter as much information about your law office as Google asks for
- Upload photos of the outside and inside of your law office; staff; happy clients; and award logo images
- Upload videos
- Add articles
- Make sure you get reviews on Google
This screenshot shows the photos on one of our Google My Business listings. The photo on the right prominently shows our brand on a sign in front of the office. The photos on the left side show our brand on a tent in front of our office during a street fair; my partner interacting with people at the street fair; Million-Dollar Trial Lawyers™ logo; head shots of my partner and myself; and people wearing our branded T-shirts on the street.
Take a look at these articles for more information about how to optimize your Google My Business listing:
- How to Optimize Your Google My Business Listing – MOZ
- The Easy Guide to Optimizing Your Google My Business Listing – Wordsteam
Attorney Websites
The most important aspects of an attorney’s website are the following:
It must be a mobile responsive design. This allows your website to be viewed properly on any type of device, whether it is a desktop, tablet, or smartphone.
Your website should have a secure Internet connection, such as https://milliondollartriallawyers.com. Look in the URL bar of your browser for https:// instead of http://. In Chrome, you will also see a green lock with the word Secure in green.
Your website should have content useful to your visitors. Ideally, it’s best to avoid the typical content seen on most lawyer websites, such as “People can be seriously injured in a car accident. Did you know that 50,000 people are seriously injured every year in car accidents?” This type of content will not convince someone to call you.
A website with just a couple of pages will not rank well in Google. The content on your website must be unique to your website.
Once the Visitor Finds Your Website, What Will Get Them to Call You?
There are only two ways that potential clients will evaluate you:
- How successful you look
- What other people say about you
The three ways to transmit that message online:
- Brand
- An impressive-looking website
- Logos and badges
- Reviews
Instead of Dewey, Getem & Howe, give your website the look of a brand. In the movie Founder, Ray Kroc understood the power of using the brand McDonald’s over other names and using the Golden Arches to differentiate the restaurant from others. For lawyers, a powerful method to both brand and differentiate your law firm from your competition is with a vanity phone number. We boldly brand 1-800-HURT-911 across the top of our website for New York accident lawyers. For more information about using a vanity phone number for personal injury lawyer advertising, see personalinjuryadvertising.com.
Your website should look impressive. It should look like you spent money on it. The best way to do that is to use a custom website designer. People evaluate other people by how rich they look. That’s because they just don’t know how else to evaluate other people, and if you look successful, they will hire you.
Display logos and badges from organizations you belong to and have received awards from, such as Million Dollar Trial Lawyers, Multi-Million Dollar Trial Lawyers, and Billion Dollar Trial Lawyers from MillionDollarTrialLawyers.com. You should display the logos and badges so they are visible on every page. This can be done by displaying them in a column or footer of your website.
Reviews are crucial both for your Google My Business listing and your website. Because reviews are so important, Google will use them to rank your Google My Business listing. When potential clients visit your website, they should be able to see what other clients have said about you.
