Ratings Sites Are Exploding

“Ratings sites are exploding,” says Avvo’s Mark Britton in a piece by Attorney at Work’s Joan Feldman.

In a recent article named Rise to the Top: Five Super Marketing Tips for Lawyers, Feldman offers some good advice to lawyers on how to navigate the directory waters.

She says:

“Go get some reviews. We all check the web for reviews of products, restaurants, hotels and all kinds of other things.

‘Ratings sites are exploding,’ says Avvo’s Mark Britton. “Everybody’s doing it … thinking that lawyers will escape this is ridiculous.”

Why? Lawyers are important to commerce, he explains, and the more important you are to commerce, the more likely you are to be rated.

Britton further points out that Google Local is transforming into Google’s answer to Yelp, complete with ‘Google reviews.’

Now, when people search for a lawyer, your Local Google directory listing will link to public reviews of your practice. (Go on and look.) This isn’t a ‘fad’ you want to wait out.

What to do? First make sure you’ve set up your Google+ and Local listing.

Then, he says:

• Set up Google Alerts to keep on top of what people are saying about you.
• Engage with reviewers. Say “thank you,” and learn to handle bad reviews.
• Pick one or two review platforms or websites to send clients and prospects to, and then make it easy for clients to leave a good review. As part of your matter-closing process, ask clients to write a recommendation, and lead them to the links. Put the direct links and instructions in your closing letter, emails and on your website.

‘It’s not unseemly, it’s real,’ says Britton.

Of course, be sure that in the process of using such sites, you are conforming to your jurisdiction’s marketing ethics rules.

Todd Curlett, Senior Business Development Consultant at FindLaw, adds that it’s wise to make sure your listings in the top legal and business directories across the web are accurate and complete, too, because Google is ‘scraping’ all of these directories for information.

At minimum, check your listings on Avvo, Best Lawyers, FindLaw, Justia, Lawyers.com, Legal Match, LexisNexis Martindale Hubbell and Nolo.”