How to Get Online Reviews for Your Law Firm or Business

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Why Reviews are Important

Positive reviews are a very important part of your reputation as a business. In addition, they strengthen your SEO efforts and provide the following benefits:

  • Set you apart from your competitors
  • Prove credibility to prospective clients
  • Send a strong signal of authority to Google
  • Help increase website conversions, rankings, and overall online presence

How to Obtain Online Reviews

PaperStreet recommends reaching out to your clients via email after a case has finished. Your email should prompt them for feedback and ask them to submit an online review about their experience working with your law firm (see email templates below). This email should include a link or set of links where they can submit a review. In your last physical meeting with the client mention that you would like for them to leave you an online review. Your email then serves as a follow up to your conversation.

Create a “Submit Your Review” Page

To help the review process run smoothly, we recommend adding a page directly on your website listing the main places where clients can leave a review. See this screenshot for an example of a “Submit a Review” page we created for a client. You can then send your clients this URL via email, making it easy for them to follow through.
We normally keep this page hidden on your website so it cannot be accessed via the menu and won’t show up in search results. Only those with the direct URL of the review page will be able to access it.

Where to Submit Your Reviews

Where to get reviews will vary depending on your industry and specific business. However, below is a list of the main listings we recommend. For attorneys, some websites have the option to submit a review for the firm as well as specific attorneys. To start off, focus on accumulating Google reviews and move on to Facebook and then the rest on the list.

  • Google
  • Facebook
  • YellowPages
  • Avvo
  • Martindale/Lawyers.com
  • BBB
  • Yelp*

*Be careful with Yelp reviews. It is against their guidelines to solicit reviews so it is best to gather them naturally.

The Best Time to Collect Reviews

You should start getting reviews as soon as your listings are completed. It is important to gain reviews gradually and not get too many at once. Receiving reviews in bulk might trigger Google to assume you did not receive them naturally. As a result Google may begin to filter them out.

What to Do After You Have Reviews

Step 1: Create a Testimonials Page

Once you have a collection of positive reviews you can set up a testimonial page on your website to showcase them. The page can include reviews from various websites, video testimonials, and/or quotes from e-mails that clients have sent. A testimonials page is helpful to potential clients.

Step 2: Set up Rich Snippet Code for Google Reviews

After you receive five positive reviews on your Google listing(s) we recommend setting up code on your website to allow your reviews to stand out in Google search. It allows the five stars rating to show up in search results for the subpages of your website. This is an example of what it looks like in Google search. This update provides added exposure and better click-through rates on organic listings. The content from each review will need to be added and displayed on your website in order for the update to work correctly.

Things to Avoid When Collecting Online Reviews

We do not recommend the following tactics when collecting online reviews for your law firm:

  • Do not write reviews for your own firm. This is a spammy technique and should be avoided.
  • Do not pay for reviews or get reviews from people who have never used your service or hired your company. Although your friends and family may be willing to write a positive review, it is best to collect reviews from actual clients and customers to avoid any red flags and spam filters.
  • Do not encourage clients to leave the same exact review on multiple platforms. This could also be seen as manipulative and spammy not only from the specific website, but also from a potential client’s perspective. If a client is willing to write a completely unique review on multiple platforms this may be okay, but it is also not something people are usually willing to do. Stick with requesting a review on one website per person.
  • Do not encourage reviews all on the same day or within a short period of time. Gathering reviews should be a natural process and a gradual increase in reviews is the ideal solution.

Still have questions? Find the answers in our most common online review FAQs.

Email Templates You Can Use

We have created three e-mail templates you can use to request reviews from past clients. You can download our templates here.

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