I have written before about how important your Google Business Profile (GBP) is to your online, digital marketing. A well optimized GBP serves as your digital business card in Google Search and gives a big bump to the SEO of your content and being found in search.

But I wanted to talk about how your GBP can help you to improve your authority in your market, so that you can differentiate yourself from your competition and be the one your prospective clients reach out to for help.

If you don’t have a GBP, then search for your business on Google. You will most likely have to go through a verification process next. Once all of that is done, you are ready to build out your profile. Here are five steps you need to take.

Step 1: Optimize Your Profile Information

The first thing you need to do is make sure that your profile is thorough and accurate. Missing or incomplete information can really harm you and mislead the public. Verify all of the basics, including your firm name, address, phone number, and, office hours.

• • Highlight Specializations: You also have the ability to state clearly your areas of expertise, whether it’s bankruptcy, family law, criminal defense, corporate law, or another specialty. You don’t want your GBP to give people the impression you are a generalist. Niche down. This will help in attracting avatar leads.
  • Professional Photos & Videos: Spice up your profile with some multimedia. Upload high-quality images of your office, your staff, and even yourself. Photos and videos help humanize your profile and make you more approachable.

Step 2: Collect and Manage Reviews

• • Encourage Reviews: Your GBP is a hub for your Google reviews and a great place to showplace them! You want to be able to provide some social proof in your profile. You want to show visitors that others have retained you and been well pleased with the result.
  • Respond to Reviews: If people click through to your reviews, you want to show that you engage with people. Whether positive or negative, responding to reviews demonstrates that you value feedback and are actively engaged with your clients. Address concerns raised in negative reviews professionally and constructively.

Step 3: Utilize Posts to Share Knowledge

In many ways, your GBP is a little mini web site for your firm, and you should treat it as such. Just like you add content to your web site regularly (you do that, right?), you can do the same with your GBP. This can be done through Google Posts, a feature that allows you to share content directly on your profile. Be sure to include:

• • Educational Content: Share brief insights into common legal issues, updates on the law, or advice columns. You could also feature excerpts from your web site content with a link to the full article.
  • Success Stories: Without violating client confidentiality, share generalized stories of how you’ve successfully helped clients. You have case results highlighted on your web site, don’t you? Then why not add that to your GBP as well to call attention to them.
  • Community Engagement: Is your firm doing anything in the community? Are you or any of your team out there doing good? Then why not post about your involvement in local events or charities? This gives you, your team, and your firm, a human side that should help visitors connect with you.

Step 4: Make Use of Q&A

Another great feature of this platform is one I have been using for over a year now. You can actually answer Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) on your profile. People can submit questions, and you can answer them. invite people to do so!

But more importantly, don’t wait for it to happen. There is nothing that says that you can’t submit questions yourself and then answer them! Populate this section with frequently asked questions about your services and then provide detailed answers.

Step 5: Analyze and Adapt

Like everything else in your law firm’s marketing, this is not set it and forget it. You need to keep an eye on what’s going on there. See which posts get the most attention and which services attract the most inquiries. This is valuable intel into what your pool of potential clients is interested in.

Use these insights to refine your approach, whether it’s adjusting your post topics or improving your photo/video gallery.

My thanks to Marilyn Jenkens, a digital marketing expert and founder of the Law Marketing Zone for the inspiration for this article.

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