In today’s world, many people find the goods or services they are looking for online. This means that the first impression a potential claimant gets of your firm may not be your firm’s site, but rather the search results. The paid ads, Google Business Listing, and/or any reviews may be seen before a claimant even reaches your firm’s site. Because of this, you may want to Google your firm periodically to understand what a potential claimant may see. From there, you can then tailor your online marketing accordingly.
What To Do When You Google Your Firm
When you Google your firm’s name, try searching for your firm in a private browser, such as incognito for Google Chrome. Your cookies will not be tracked, so any past searches may not influence the search results you see. As you do this, there are a couple things you should look for.
Paid Advertisements: First, you should see if there are any paid ads for your firm (if you are running PPC campaigns). You should make sure they look the way you would like them to. If you are bidding on your own firm name, you want to make sure your ads are appearing!
Google Business Listing: Next, you should check your Google Business Listing for your firm. Go through each detail, making sure all the information is filled out and up to date. If you’re missing your phone number, address, website, or any other crucial information then make sure to add it in. You should also comb through the reviews. If there any reviews that paint your firm in a negative manner (https://www.egenerationmarketing.com/blog/how-to-deal-with-bad-reviews), evaluate whether or not they require a response. If you don’t have any reviews, then try reaching out to past and current clients to see if they will add one.
Rankings: Check out where you land on the search engine results page (SERP). Depending on where your firm is ranking, you can adjust your SEO strategy accordingly. If you’re lower than you’d like on a SERP, then see what those ahead of you are doing differently. Try updating your old content or adding new content for different keywords.
Things to Keep in Mind
If you do choose to Google your firm, there are a couple things to keep in mind. First, your local search results can be a little skewed. Google may pull listings that are more localized to where you are. Plus, different keywords will pull up different results, so your firm may rank well for one keyword and not as high for others. Searching “personal injury attorney” can yield different results than “personal injury lawyer”.
In addition, search engine marketing can be a slow process, and results take time. The amazing blog you just posted may not rank yet. Or the updates you made on your FAQ page may not be indexed yet. It can take a couple months before any optimizations you made begin to positively affect your site. Don’t be discouraged if you do not see results right away.