The best directories for law firms—sites like Enjuris.com—should be an important part of your marketing strategy. You might wonder why you need to go further than simply listing your practice in places like Yelp, Google My Business, Bing and other standard directory listings. The answer is that industry-specific directories produce important benefits, ranging from better SEO to visibility with people who are actively searching for your services.
Whether it’s reaching a search engine algorithm or a person, these 4 reasons are why it’s worth the time to make sure you’re listed in credible legal directories.
Reason #1: Backlinks still matter
Getting a lot of referral links to your website is a strategy that’s as old as the Internet itself. Though, it’s gotten a bit of a bad rap over the years and not without cause.
Black-hat SEO consultants figured out how to game the system by getting their clients all kinds of links on sites that were spam or in some way less than reputable. Search engines saw a lot of referral links as a sign of quality, rewarded the websites who had them and gave those websites higher positions in the organic search results.
Google’s engineers are smart and the algorithms have long since caught up with the black-hat tactics. The world’s biggest search engine started de-indexing spam directories as far back as 2012. That means a website with a link there is no longer getting credit for it.
But if you’re being told that means backlinks no matter, your consultant either isn’t up on current events or they’re tacitly admitting that their black-hat backlinks don’t matter. The reality is that directory listings with quality sites like the ones mentioned above still matter—in fact, they’re even more valuable than before, now that the search engines have recognized their value.
Reason #2: Real people use directories
In the digital marketing world we can talk so much about the hidden SEO benefits that it can be easy to overlook the basics—there are real human beings looking for services that browse these directories looking for an attorney.
Clearly, you want to be listed. And you want your firm’s listing to be complete. That means a nice image for the company page and good profile shots for the individual attorneys. It also means a nice listing of your firm’s accomplishments, from cases won to articles published to offices held.
Reason #3: Breaking into the local 3-pack
When people search for a “personal injury lawyer near me,” you want your firm to be 1 of the 3 listings that comes up as highlighted by Google. Listings with reputable directory sites help make that happen. It’s also imperative that the listings be accurate and exactly the same.
Reason #4: Reviews
Encourage your happy clients to write reviews and rate your services at the directories that allow for it. This information is crawled by search engines and is a powerful signal to them in determining which ones to reward with the local 3-pack position.
Doing directory listings can be tedious. Your information has to be accurate and identical across the board. It can take time for the rewards to come to fruition. However, in the long run, it will be well worth it.
