Immigration law is a hot-button issue right now. You’d think that the average immigration law firm would be burdened with more clients and cases than they could manage, but if anything, the opposite is true.

Some people may blame slow business on there being too many lawyers coming out of law school. Others may assume that they just don’t have the right clients in the area.

The truth is often much simpler than that, and it often has to do with marketing and advertising.

Are you ready to get your firm the business it needs? Read on to learn some of the simple, but impactful, mistakes you could be making when you market your firm.

7 Marketing Mistakes Your Immigration Law Firm is Making 

Immigration law is an important subset of law practices, and people need to know that you’re ready and willing to help them.

When you have the right marketing strategy in order, you could do things you never thought possible. If you’re making any of these mistakes, it’s time to get on the right track and get your firm the business and strategy you need to succeed. 

1. You Don’t Have a Plan

You have a website that’s up to date with all of your current information. It’s possible that you may even have a Facebook page or a few other social profiles for your firm.

Having certain things you’d use to market yourself isn’t the same thing as having a defined marketing strategy. If you want to grow your firm, you need to sit down and come up with a marketing plan you can follow. 

When you’re thinking of your marketing plan, also take time to think about who will execute it. If there’s too much happening internally for someone at the firm to handle it, consider contacting a marketing company that can do the work for you.

2. You Don’t Know Your Target Market

If we were to ask you who your target market is, how would you answer? 

This may come as a surprise, but “anyone in need of an immigration lawyer” isn’t a good answer. In order to have a successful immigration law firm, you need to have a clearly defined target market and client.

Take time to really think about your ideal client and what motivates them. Think about how old they are, how much money they make, and why they’d want to use your services. 

3. You Don’t Maintain Relationships 

The judge has given their ruling and another case has closed. What happens to the relationship with your client after the work is done?

So many businesses rely on word of mouth advertising, and it isn’t any different for lawyers. If your relationship with the client ends once the case is over, you’re missing out on a lot of potential new business.

Find ways to stay in touch with clients after you’re done working with them. You never know if they have a friend, coworker, or family member that could use your help.

Email marketing could be a simple way to keep the lines of communication open between you and previous clients. A short email with law tips and your contact info could be what you need to stay on people’s minds. 

You can also use email marketing to check up on clients a few months after their case is over. Write something short and sweet that lets them know you’re thinking of them and want to make sure that they have everything they need.

4. You Rely Too Much On Written Content 

A lot of marketing and advertising professionals will tell you that content is king in their realm. In the past content typically meant written words, but now content could be any and all mediums you use to communicate with people. 

There’s nothing wrong with writing a few blog posts and social posts, but if you only rely on the written word you could be missing out on some much-needed clients.

English can be a difficult language to learn, and some people consider reading and writing in it to be much harder than speaking it. If you produce videos for your website and social profiles you could reach a lot more people. 

5. You Don’t Stand Out From Competitors 

If your firm’s big marketing message is that you offer immigration law services, you need to take some time to define what makes you different from other law firms.

Simply saying that you provide certain services isn’t enough to get new clients. They can find plenty of other firms that offer the same service, that’s why you need to find your differentiator and make it a part of your marketing message.

Do you have a bi-lingual front desk staff that can help first-time clients? Does your firm specialize in family reunification cases? Are you in a convenient location or easy to get to by public transit? 

Take time to think about why someone should go for you over a competitor and make that a focal point of your marketing message. 

6. You Speak in Legalese 

It’s no secret that immigration law can be complicated. You may be very familiar with complicated legal language and terms, but your clients won’t be.

Using complicated legal language in your ads can easily distance yourself from your clients. Make sure you’re using language people can understand and take extra time to explain some of the more complicated parts of the legal process.

Remember, legal terms are for judges and lawyers to understand. Your job is to help your client that lacks a legal background. 

7. You Don’t Take Reviews Seriously

Word of mouth is still an important way for businesses to find new customers and clients, and review websites have become the new “word of mouth” for the 21st century. 

You may not take much stock in online reviews written about your firm, but potential new clients will. You need to make sure that you can be found on popular review platforms, and that you have nice reviews.

Don’t be afraid to ask clients for reviews, especially if you just won a particularly tough case for them. Also be sure to address negative reviews in a calm and rational manner. 

Do You Need Marketing Help?

After reading this article you may have realized that your immigration law firm is in desperate need of some marketing work. You may not know where to begin, but we do.

We’re ready to help create a marketing plan that can suit your unique needs. Be sure to contact us today so we can get started! And while you’re here, read how we’ve helped our other clients on our testimonials page. 

Your reputation alone, online and with peers, just won’t cut it.  There are many ways you can throw mud at the wall for marketing your firm, however there are only a few ways that truly work in the online world.

Having a solid marketing plan if your first step to set yourself apart from the others and demonstrate to potential clients you are their best choice.

Following I outline five Lawyer Marketing Ideas that will help you build that practice this year.

1. Invest in Good SAO

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) results in ranking your business or website high in the search engines for keyword searches.

For example, someone who was just in a car accident would have several questions regarding their case and might search for an attorney using the keyword phrase [car accident attorney].

If you are not in the top 3 spots, you won’t get a phone call.

Search Authority Optimization (SAO) is our flavor of SEO.  Many people in the SEO world play a cat and mouse game of chasing the algorithm. Or rather, attempt to reverse-engineer it.  This is Google’s best kept secret, with some of the smartest engineers on the planet. This chase-and-play game is for the short-term players field.

SAO on the other hand employs traditional marketing techniques – answers buyers’ objections – in the process.  This is true marketing at its finest, creating quality content that’ll resonate with a target audience.

While the process is evaluated on links, exposure, authority, trust and engagement, at the end of the day, the more your business is exposed on the internet, the better you’ll rank.

Some of the best exposure comes in the form of press releases, videos and guest blog posts. Join your local chamber of commerce, distribute a press release to Fox, ABC and NBC, and watch your link count and rankings improve.

2. Have a Functional Converting Website

This is much easier to say than employ.  Let’s look at a website from two perspectives.

1. Usability & Conversion
2. Functional Structure

Usability & Conversion

Far too often do I see law firm websites that are simply a digital brochure and break many marketing rules, such as the most basic rule.  The 5 W’s….who, what, when, where, why.

When a prospect lands on a webpage, these questions should be answered in visual and written form, above the fold, to have answered in 10 seconds or less.

A fancy picture of cowboys on horses for a Texas attorney is poor.  An image should say “We’re a Personal Injury Law Firm in Dallas”.

Prospective clients all go through a buying cycle when looking for your services.  A car accident victim has questions, a personal injury suit would like to know implications, a client who just got a DUI may want to know their options….

By having content that answers the buyer’s questions and taking a prospective client on a journey through the website is much more critical than how it looks.

Website Functionality

Building a website is like building a house…which requires a project manager, electrician, plumber, carpenter and real estate agent to sell it.

A website requires a programmer, graphic designer, project manager and marketer. Sure, I can program and manage projects, but my skills are marketing.  Understanding human psychology along with the English language is an art in it-self.  

A website should load in 2 seconds or less.  It should have a well-designed navigation.  Elements like map embedding and schema are crucial.    From header tags, title tags & naming conventions, best practices should always be followed.  And I’d guess 80% of websites have many holes in them.

Check your website with Google’s Pagespeed Insightsand Pingdom’s Speed Test.

3.Provide On-Going Valuable Content

You’ll hear ‘content is king’ in the world of internet marketing.  I wanted to shrivel in a ball and throw the towel in the first time I heard this.

Marketing is about providing value to an audience that’ll consume the message.  In other words, answering buyer objections before they come up.  And make sure that content is easy to get to.

This is a piece of website usability.  Consider the law services you provide.  Brain Injury or Car Accident personal injury attorney?  Well someone who was just in a car accident might want to know the implications to the law, the average time of court cases in your state.  Point is, you can come up with a dozen questions or more that prospective clients ask.

Good content can mean different things, but how it’s consumed is also important.  Your writing style, can a reader skim the piece and know what’s about.  Do you have video to support your greatest claims?  Do you have a frequently asked questions section for each of your services, on their own page on the website?

Include Video to Build Trust

Images can help really enhance your branding, but video can really seal the deal and earn new clients.

Video is simply engaging. When you create a video for your firm, a video can simply be a narration of a blog post, a question in your FAQ or a testimonial.  Distribution should be your website or your blog and all social media channels, and hosted on your YouTube channel.  

Albert Mehrabianconducted one of my favorite studies ever – verbal and nonverbal communication.  We’ve heard that 93% of all communication is non-verbal…this is where that comes from.

Video provides the element of emotion that written words simply can not.  A prospect gets to see you, hear you, feel your voice.  This goes a long way in conversion. 

4.Reviews & Testimonials

Reviews are merely the digital form of word-of-mouth.  Sharing your client’s experience have tremendous value for prospective clients.

But it’s not as easy as giving a good service.  You need a review implementation systemin place.  

A client review is where a client leaves their opinion about you or your firm on a 3rd party site like Google, Yelp & Facebook.  While there are dozens of other places to leave reviews, such as AVVO, those first three are paramount.

Ideally you want your firm to acquire 2 to 4 reviews per month.

A testimonial is best served as a video, which can be housed on your YouTube channel and showcased on your website.

Search engines do use reviews in their algorithm, but more importantly, are possibly the greatest single factor in determinizing a prospect’s conversion to make the phone call.  

Always reach out to past clients and as them to leave you a review, and DO NOT use a review gateway on your website.  This is a BIG NO.

5.Invest in PPC Advertising

Organically marketing your practice is critical, period.  Without a brand and message, you will not convert new prospects.  But SAO takes time.  Video can be expensive.

Paid advertising on the internet is like gambling in Las Vegas.  Most people are losing money while the hotels are getting rich.  The same applies for advertising on Google and Facebook.  It’s a tough game to navigate.

However, the benefit of instant qualified traffic is like nothing else.  When you can dial in a profitable campaign, yielding a greater return than your investment, you know every dollar spent is going to net you a profit.  It’s beautiful.

Additionally, studies show that a user’s propensity to click your listing increases when you have both an organic and paid listing.  Plus you take up 100% more of the search engine results page real estate – sucking this from your competitors.  

Conclusion

The right marketing mix is paramount to win at the game of internet marketing for lawyers.  By starting at the basics of marketing, you can easily stand out from your competitors.  These five marketing tips will not only get your more qualified traffic, but great conversion.

Take a gander at our initial plan for you.  Sure, it’s free, because we want to show you how we can help you before taking your dough. Give us a chance to earn that business of yours, we have the reviews and success stories to demonstrate.  Just complete this easy form and we’ll get to our research and share your thoughts with us below!

Or just get your Instant SEO Report now!

CONTACT: 
Contact Person:  Scott Gallagher
Company Name: Crystal Lake Yellow Jackets
Voice Phone Number:  8478074393
Email Address: scottg@wonmarketing.com

Youth Hockey Team Brings Black & Yellow Luck to the Blues

May 23, 2019 – St. Louis, MO – A Black & Yellow Crystal Lake Youth hockey team was hosted and treated by the last place St. Louis Blues on January 19, 2019 against the Ottawa Senators. Since then, the Blues went on an 11 game winning streak, clinched a playoff spot, and now have their sights set on their first Stanley Cup, facing another Black & Yellow team.

The Yellow Jackets Bantam team from Crystal Lake, Illinois was competing in a tournament in St. Louis and was invited by the St. Louis Blues to their hockey game against the Ottawa Senators on Saturday January 19.  The Yellow Jackets proudly displayed their team colors, black and yellow, while holding the eight flags during the national anthems.

“The game wasn’t very exciting, the Blues won 1-0” states team manager, Kaycee Wellington “but after this game, the Blues went to win 11 straight”.  The St. Louis Blues were dead last in early January, and with hard work and passion from the team and their rookie manager, the Blues became in the best team in the NHL during the latter half of the season.

The irony of the visit are the jerseys of the Crystal Lake team.  Coming from Blackhawk territory, the team proudly supported the Blues…wearing team jerseys that strongly resemble the Boston Bruins.

“Perhaps we’re their good luck team” shares Wellington.

Native of St. Louis team dad, Chris Rohan, and long-time Blues fan exclaimed “It was such a privilege to visit the Blues with my family and watching my son hold the St. Louis Blues flag during the anthem”

With even a little more irony, the game prior in January, the Blues lost against the same black and yellow team they’re going to take the cup from, the Bruins.  Maybe the Crystal Lake Yellow Jackets need to be on the ice for the opening anthem of the Stanley Cup finals.

The Crystal Lake Bantam Yellow Jackets is a Northwest Hockey League team from Crystal Lake, Illinois.

In today’s technological world, don’t make the mistake of solely relying on your reputation as a law firm for a steady flow of business. 

Unfortunately, the world today just doesn’t work like that. Even the most highly reputable businesses need to keep up with their online marketing.

As a law firm, online marketing is important in maintaining a steady stream of clients and bringing in new business. After all, no business wants to stagnate. 

Find 7 of the best law firm marketing tips in this blog to keep your practice up-to-date and relevant. 

Manage Your Law Firm Marketing Like a Pro  

A solid law firm marketing plan is what sets your business apart from the rest, while simultaneously generating new leads.  

Along with this, your online marketing strategy allows you to hone in on your target audience and build a rapport which resonates with your clients.

The benefits of all of the above? Your business remains relevant, real, and 100% reliable within your practice niche. 

Here are 7 expert tips to dominate your law firm marketing.

1. Make SEO a Priority 

Search engine optimization (SEO) is an invaluable tool in today’s era of online marketing. Without it, your website is lost in the never-ending abyss of the internet. 

SEO is the practice of using goal-orientated strategies to boost the site ranking and appearance of your website on search engine results pages. 

However, SEO can get complicated to those who don’t specialize in the intricacies of this field. It’s best to hire an SEO professional who is well-versed in SEO copywriting, keyword research, SEO plugins, backlinking, and more.

2. Create a Detailed Website

As a law firm, you may offer specialized services in a number of different fields. It’s super important that your website clearly explains this – even if you’re a hyper-specialized law firm.

Create a website that is as detailed as possible, without being completely overwhelming. Make sure to use separate web pages for each of your specialized services. 

For example, if you specialize in family law, it’s important to create detailed web pages of individualized services such as estate planning, divorce services, etc.

Make sure that each specialty is clearly marked and navigable with drop-down menus and a clickable call-to-action on each web page.

3. Define Your Brand 

Even if you are a multi-service law firm with services ranging from business law to family law, you still need to define your business branding.

Your law firm’s branding is entirely separate from the services you offer and ties in with your mission statement and vision of your practice. Basically, your branding is most potent and defining tools you have to separate yourself from your competition.

Some of the best law firm branding uses a combination of high-quality images and witty puns and taglines. This branding is also unique in a way that entices people to find out more. 

4. Create Valuable Online Content

This is an important aspect of your law firm’s SEO strategy and affects the overall ranking and relevance of your website.

Without valuable, genuinely interesting and usable content, your website will not rank well on Google. Ultimately, this type of content is what brings people to your website time and time again. 

Creating valuable content for your website also increases your chances of ranking for less popular keywords and bringing in more traffic. 

Some of the common forms of valuable content for a website include a FAQs section, a regularly updated blog, or newsletter section.

Blogging for your website is an invaluable tool which generates relevant keywords which, in turn, attracts relevant traffic to your site.  

5. Use Video Interaction

Honestly, if your website does not feature any video, then what decade are you living in? It’s time to catch up with the times – video is very powerful. 

While high-quality images can enhance your brand, video is what really seals to deal for many potential clients visiting your website for the first time. 

Video interaction is engaging. It can help you to build a natural rapport with your clients and build up their trust. It’s a great way to showcase your personality and connect with a new client on a more ”human” level. 

6. Sell Yourself with Reviews

Website reviews cannot be overstated enough – they really are a make or break for the success of your online presence. 

Client testimonials are a brilliant way to build up your reputation as well as the trust of new or returning clientele.

It’s simple too: all you need to do is reach out to previous clients and ask them to leave a quick review on Google, LinkedIn, or Yoast. Publish this review on your testimonial page with the consent of the client. 

Client reviews show that those who have used your services were impressed enough to take the time to rave about it. If that doesn’t say something, then what else does? 

7. Budget for Pay-Per-Click Advertising

Organic online marketing is the backbone of building your online presence, but a little helping hand never hurt anybody. Enter pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.

If you want to give your website a small boost to the top of Google’s search engine results page, PPC can do this for you. 

Yes, PPC may seem like ”cheating” when it comes to marketing your business, but in today’s competitive world, it’s more commonplace than not.

Google Adwords is a good platform for law firms to boost their online presence. If you’re unsure of how this platform works, hiring the services of an Adwords professional will take your website places!

Get the Rankings You’re After with WON Marketing

If you’re in need of an online boost in terms of law firm marketing, we are the experts to turn to! 

We specialize in raising the online rankings of a range of law specialties, including family law, personal injury, immigration, and criminal law. 

Reach your audience and a range of potential new clients with targeted advertising for your niche. Get in touch with WON Marketing today for the business boost you need. 

Establishing your profiles’ authority is critical. Follow Google’s Best Practices Guide, which can be found by googling “Google Best Practice Guide”.

You will need to claim your listings, as chances are your business is already listed.  While there’s a long list of places to profile your business, you really need to claim at least Google, Bing, Yahoo and Superpages before moving onto the next step.

Follow the bullet points below to create profiles that have authority.

• Verify and Claim your Listings at http://www.getlisted.org
  • Claim at least Google, Bing, Yahoo and Superpages
• Complete all info thoroughly, including clear, long, excellent description (Basic and Enhanced Information)
• Establish NAP format
• Use email matching domain to register account
• Establish photo shoots with Google when possible. Always upload at least 5 pictures or more.
• Use images and video, (walk-through, testimonials) as much as possible!
• Establish Service area
• Utilize QR Codes when possible
• Real Address, No UPS or PO Boxes
• Consider implications of Walk-in versus Service Based

Stay Away from:

• Violating Google’s Terms and Conditions
• Using 800 Numbers
• Using Phone Number Tracking
• O. / UPS Boxes
• Multiple Place Pages / location
• Duplicate Phone on Multiple Place Pages

2.   Reviews

Implement a Review Acquisition System.  We do this for all of our clients.

As previously discussed, it’s a violation to solicit reviews. Our Review Acquisition System does not solicit reviews, we simply implement the systems and procedures in the business to have a lending hear for quality compliments.  In turn, we make it simple to digitally capture that compliment, making it a review.

For a copy of the LMS Review Acquisition Strategy we implement with our clients, follow this URL or use your smart phone to scan the QR code.

http://bit.ly/review_acquisition

• Professional Service offices should create a ‘Thank You’ post card when a thank you mentioned in the office, including instructions to leave a review on Zagat.
• Properly train employees to have a lending ear for positive feedback from customers, patients and clients.
• Encourage positive customers to leave a review online.
• Use the hReview HTML Rich Snippet Markup on Website for reviews.
  • Link Reviewers’ name to their online social profile, preferably LinkedIn.
• Do not solicit reviews. Only ask to leave a digital review if a verbal unsolicited testimonial is provided.

3.   Social Media

Create and participate in social media channels

1. Create a Business Page or Fan Page
   1. Facebook (Get Vanity URL after 25 likes)
   2. Google+ Local

• LinkedIn

1. Follow Best Practices
   1. Photos
   2. Descriptions

• Links

1. Product / Services
2. SEO Optimization

• Engage with Audience
  1. Add value
  2. Use LinkedIn for B2B Sales

• Online Reputation Management Strategy

4.   Citations

Citations are web references.  Consider your business, your industry, your locality.  There are a variety of websites that participate in those communities.  Where have you frequenting public locations for new business?  Such as the Chamber of Commerce. You can have citation on many types of sites, but your BEST citation if your own website.

Make sure you follow consistent formatting for your NAP.

Acquire citations from as many of the following sources.

Public Sources

• Annual Reports, SEC Information
• Federal, State and City Gov’ts
• Business Magazines
• Newspapers
• Postal Service Information

Data Providers & Review Sites

• Superpages
• infoUSA
• Theme Sites
• Yelp
• Citysearch
• InsiderPages
• Google
• Yahoo Local
• Angie’s List
• Judy’s Book

Outside the Box

• ATM or Kiosk at your location? List in directories
• National Register of Historic Places
• Free Wifi Directories (if you have wifi in your office)
• RedBox Directory
• Sponsorships / Charity Events
• Speaking Engagements
• Host a Weather Station

5.   Video

Local Businesses can create and distribute at least four types of video.  Video is very easy to create, even with an iPhone.  Here are four simple types of video that can be created for most business types.

1. Office / Warehouse Walkthrough
2. Testimonial Video

• Operational (for product / service)

1. Commercial (advertisement for product / service)

• Distribution to YouTube is critical. Optimize video title and description.  Clear concise title that is keyword rich.  Include link in description.
• Promote through Social Channels once distributed and optimized.

6.   Local PR

Create and distribute an effective press release. Hire a local writer from the local news paper.  Distribute the local press release to at least ten local publications, including:

• Local Newspaper
• Regional Newspaper
• Local FREE Publications (pick one up a Chiropractor’s office)
• Local Chamber of Commerce
• Local College – Approach business admin

Try to have at least one new press release that is news worthy for your business once every quarter.

7.   Website On-The-Page SEO

This is only a partial list of the factors and represents the most important items to complete on your website.  You can give these instructions to your web developer. Remember, this really only helps the search engines fully understand what your website is all about and giving it credibility.  This will not improve conversion on your website.

1. Validate your HTML code so it is “spider” compliant. http://validator.w3.org/
2. Text link navigation at the bottom of the page. Use your keywords as anchor text.
3. The Title Tag should be compelling and keyword focused.
4. Your description tag needs to work hand-in-hand with the Title to get the searcher to “click” on the listing.
5. Every page should have a unique (60% of the words completely original) Title & Description.
6. H1 tag should be used and should be very compelling
7. Add ALT tags to your main graphics and do not attempt to fool the Search Engines here.
8. Place your keyword phrase in the following areas:
   1. Title Tag
   2. Meta Description

• H1 tag to begin the content

1. First paragraph of content
2. Appearing in Bold or Italic in the first three paragraphs of content (if possible, not that big of a deal)
3. Appearing in the filename (or directory name)

• Used in anchor text to either an internal page or relevant external site.

9. Fix bad links and create XML Sitemap and submit to Google.

8.   Company Blog

This is a critical piece for any Internet Marketing Strategy for a business.  Almost every piece of marketing communication can be hosted on a blog including all types of media.  Try to get a new blog post once a week.  Here are some tips on for your blog.

• Use WordPress Self Hosted. It’s free, hosting is cheap.
• Use SEO Plugins (Yoast is my favorite)
• Blog Weekly
• Internal Links to your Website on blog posts
• Opt-in Conversion Optimization (Welcome Gate / PopUp / Scipt). Consider an email auto responder once they opt-in.
• Create compelling content prospects can relate to

9.   External Links

Link Building is critical for Organic SEO Rankings in the SERPs.  Find sources to link to the following pages, including your root domain.  Remember, links are not citations.  You can have a link from another blog to your website, or an industry forum.  There is a lengthy strategy behind links, but for the purpose of ranking a business, building links is your last major activity you should be working on.  If everything else is done properly, links will come organically…which is essence is ironic since links are the premise for original organic ranking.

Location Based Pages

• Local newspaper (PR Campaigns)
• Chamber or Networking Groups
• V’s
• Local Directories / Phonebooks

Theme Related Pages

• Directories / Data Providers
• Social Networking Groups and Sites
• High Authority Exposure

10.        Systems for Measurement and Correction

Create the systems for measurement in your business, and measure at least the following items for your online marketing campaign.

Bob Parsons, CEO of GoDaddy said “Everything that is measured, improves”.

Here are some resources and tips on what to measure.

1. Claimed Listings (you can use getlisted.org or download this worksheet we use at http://bit.ly/asset_inventory)
2. Keyword Rankings (We use a company called Bright Local to automate our rankings)

• KW Strategy (evaluate your KW strategy regularly and post list to review regularly)

1. Competitive Research

Citation Acquisition Strategy (we use the following worksheet as a basis to monitor our citation strategy http://bit.ly/asset_inventory )

Many attorneys spin their tires grasping the newest shinny object.  Here you’ll read are the most effective marketing techniques we’ve seen with the hundreds of firms we’ve worked with.

1. Choose a Specific Niche
2. Over time, build your list of clients for referrals
3. Effective Website
4. Search Engine Optimization
5. Paid Online Advertising
6. Online Engagement
7. Local Community Engagement

Choose a Specific Niche

Rather than being a general practitioner, you can automatically set yourself apart by choosing one type of law to focus on.

You could focus on tax and trademark issues. When a potential client is looking for an attorney, they already have a specific challenge at hand. They are likely to both find and trust a lawyer who focuses on that type of law, rather than one that spreads their attention between several specialties.

Build your List of Clients for Referrals

A common marketing mistake for attorneys is trying to do too much all at one time.  This doesn’t work well.

It’s like throwing some mud at the wall hoping some will stick.

New attorneys typically go through an entire list of potential clients and referrers in their community. But most of these people are not likely to need legal services at that moment. This could just prove to be a waste of time.

Building up a list of prospective clients and referrers. Some of that will happen during the course of regular business operations. This could lead to a bigger referral list and a healthier option to your business over time.

Effective Website

Driving Qualified Traffic + Conversion = New Clients

Far too often business websites miss the mark.  The primary objective is missed, which is encourage visitors to pick up the phone to make an appointment.  The next consideration is to provide content that answers buyer’s objections.  That’s it.

By properly conyeing your elevator pitch to your target audience upon landing on the page will improve your conversion.  Easy navigation to find the relevant content is crucial.

Don’t evaluate your website on aesthetics.  Measure performance.

Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for attorneys is a farce.  Truth is you NEVER want to optimize yourself for the search engines.  Never.

You want to properly market yourself to your target audience and in turn the search engines reward you with ranking.  Sure, it’s still SEO, but SEO should consider the clients first.

SEO takes time, however after several months of hard work you are rewarded with top 3 listings for keyword searches without ever having to pay Google.

Paid Online Advertising

Paid online advertising is often referred to as PPC.

We like to think of PPC as the same as visiting the Las Vegas strip.

There are dozens of massive hotels making huge profits with 1000’s of customers losing money and a small handful of customers making a profit.

PPC is no different.  Google and Facebook are historic companies, with the majority of their revenue from online advertising.

Like SEO, it needs to be done right or you’ll lose your shirt.

Online Engagement

It is said the best form of marketing is word of mouth.

The best marketers know where to find the hero clients and leverage their stories.  Having a Review Acquisition Program in place for your firm will help with this.

By engaging online with your reviews and followers, you are creating an element of trust, which can be seen digitally.

Local Community Engagement

We can’t forget old school!  Let’s face it, your firm serves the community, so why not get out there and serve them on their turf.

Whether it’s the local chamber of commerce or your village counsel, participate in community event.

They just don’t seem to have enough time to work on their law firm’s growth because they are too busy working in their law firm’s daily duties.

In essence, you are constantly putting out fires.

Another problem is they have never been properly trained on how to “get more done” in less time.

It’s true – we all wish we could accomplish more in less time. I’ve often been told I get more done in less time than anyone they have ever seen.

So, what’s the secret?

Now, I’m not perfect with how I use my time, but over the years, I’ve learned five useful tips that I’m going to share with you.

1. Have you noticed that you get a lot more done the day before the start of a vacation? Why is that? You have a firm deadline. So, the lesson here is: set realistic deadlines that you regularly monitor.
2. Have you ever worked out how much your time is worth? It’s a sobering exercise.Divide the amount that you typically earn in a year down to an hourly rate, and you’ll probably be shocked. It could be $50 an hour, $100 an hour or even more.

   Now, do you act in a way that acknowledges the true value of your time?

   If you can delegate something you are doing for less than your hourly rate, then delegate it. Remember, good is usually good enough. It doesn’t have to be perfect.

3. Avoid trying to multitask. It’s generally seen as a positive thing, but multitasking is really “switch-tasking” – going back and forth between several tasks. Only computers can truly do multiple processes at once with full focus.
4. Prioritization is another key to being productive. No two tasks have equal importance, and often we gravitate toward the easier tasks or the ones we find the most appealing.Instead, get the more difficult or more important tasks out of the way first, and you’ll feel good about the accomplishment.
5. Finally, arrange your meetings earlier in the day to be more productive, and always define a time limit. This principle applies even when taking unexpected calls.When someone says, “Do you have a minute?”, be firm in letting them know how much time you can spend with them.

The No. 1 thing you can do is to FOCUS!

Focus is the key.

Get rid of distractions, time vampires and focus on working on your law practice (Not in it).

You cannot grow your law firm if you don’t have a handle on your marketing costs and ROI.

John Wannamaker, a pioneer in marketing, once said, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted. The trouble is, I don’t know which half.”

This quote was true to a point back in the 1800s when Wannamaker made it.

Not so true today!

Online marketing can be tracked meticulously by using technology and Google analytics. The real problem is when people call into your office.

The typical law firm doesn’t even ask the new caller how he or she heard about their law firm.

Those who do ask are often given misguided information from the caller, especially if the lawyer has a robust marketing presence in his or her market.

So, how do you overcome this disinformation?

You ask this one simple question…

“What were you looking at when you dialed our number?”

This short, simple question can give you and your law firm valuable information on what prompted the action to pick up the phone and call your office.

You must track your marketing dollars to ensure you are not wasting your money.

Basically, there are really three takeaways from this one tip:

1. Track your marketing.
2. Online marketing is much easier to track than offline.
3. Ask the right questions when doing your intake.

Hope this has been helpful. Feel free to “reply” to this email if you’d like to let me know your thoughts.

What is a Review?

A review is a personal evaluation of a movie, publication, game, music , book; a piece of hardware like a car, home appliance, or computer; or an event, such as a live music concert, a play, and finally we’re here to talk about reviews for businesses, such as Restaurants, dry cleaners, apartment management companies, mechanics, doctors, day spas, limousine services, law firms, and other brick and mortar businesses who lose and gain customers daily based on their past and current customers’ opinions.

There are 1000s of local business review sites and directories, but as a business owner, you should first pay attention to the truly important ones already showing up in Google, Yahoo!, and Bing for your keywords. You can list your business on the sites I’m going to talk about later where past and current customers can review for free, although some have paid versions in order to “expand your page” like  MerchantCircle and CitySearch, it’s not always necessary because they will take reviews all day (more content for them).

Review Benefits

There are many reasons that benefit a local business in terms of reviews. While considering online marketing principles, reviews accomplish three things.  Ranking, conversion, and service area. There are many misconceptions about how reviews influence ranking, many don’t consider the importance of conversion and finally reviews solve a very common problem among many types of businesses.

Directly from one of Google’s own pages when discussing complex code for micro data formatting to convey ratings they have the following text “This section describes how you can mark up your rating information to use images (for example, an image of four stars) to convey ranking information. “

This is yet theonly public information from Google that explicitly says reviews influence rank, but this is enough proof for me.

Getting customer reviews is an important step in improving your rankings in the Google Local Business Results. Ask for a review anytime someone compliments your services. Implementing a customer review policy in your company could dramatically improve your rankings.

Ranking

There are several factors that can be measured for particular review by a search engine. For example, quantity of reviews, quality of reviews, review acquisition, location or review, review acquisition patterns among sources, data of sources and of course source politics.  We are going to be taking a look at all of these factors and what influence they might have on your ranking.

Conversion

When a prospect lands on a particular places page, we already know that reviews are a high influence towards the consumer’s perception of the business. We’re going to be considering why only a small number reviews are shown and discussed the social review ranking within these places profiles and how each of these reviews influences the consumers conversion towards a call to action on that business.

We’re going to be considering which review sites have high influence within Google places and how to influence the activity in a positive manner for each of those sites. By driving a high quality review system into a local business insurers that properties like Google places only shows reviews that provide the highest conversion to a call to action. While some businesses are focusing on Internet marketing efforts of driving traffic, few go to the length of improving their conversion ratio and therefore there is a massive opportunity to drive a call to action for your clients. Make sure you make this an important part of your strategy for your clients to ensure a high quality service provided to them and to help keep your clients for long-term.

Service Area

Most service-based businesses face a significant problem when marketing themselves on the Internet. For a variety of reasons, different businesses in different geographical areas clearly different service areas. Service area is defined by the area in which the business will provide its services or the geographical reach in which customers will travel in order to do business with that company.

Reviews are a very important part of establishing trust towards establishing your service area in the eyes of online websites like Google places. Let’s face it, a business’ service area essentially is where their customers reside. Whether it’s a business that travels to a consumer’s home or business or the company that tracks clientele to its storefront, its service area defined by a web of its customers. We know the search engines know exactly location of where these reviews are being left based on GPS, IP address information, cellular triangulation or user input. When users leave reviews that are trusted more than less authoritative reviewers, those particular reviews provide further trust to a search engines on establishing a web of your reviews.

Local Search Review Profiles

Reviewers, Trust and Authority

A reviewer can either be a guest or a registered user, typically on a review site. We already know that reviews can be left on any website, but trust is assigned to that particular website and review. We are going to be taking a look at a list of sites that we know of high trusted authorities within the major search engines. Within these sites is a community of registered users. When a registered user leaves a review, that user could have a review that offers tremendous value or could be a bogus review from a competitor. Both the search engine and the review sites and an algorithm are in place to rank reviews

Review Profile Usage Patters

The usage patterns of a particular user within a review site can potentially have many factors that are measured. For example, a reviewer might consistently have reviews that are three stars or less, but we know published by yelp that 85% of all reviews across their site and the web of three stars or more. Therefore the user that consistently has lower score reviews, will be assigned less trust for their reviews because they do not follow the norm of the general population.

Another example is the reviewer that has multiple profiles on multiple sites and leaves multiple negative reviews for one business when this goes against their typical review submission pattern. This would raise a red flag for search engine of less trust within that particular review.

There are likely dozens and dozens of scenarios that we can come up with where consumers try and harm a local business in the search engines but because of filters and an algorithm in place, the review sites and search engines are getting much better at being  able to sniff out these people. In other words don’t fret from a few negative reviews and focus on pushing your happy customers to leave reviews. When I say pushing, I mean giving them the right tools so they can go ahead and say all those nice things that they are to have been saying.

Establish Profile Authority & Social Review Ranking

Establishing profile Authority can be a little bit of a challenge because you are attempting to influence the customers of your client. You need to work with your client to ensure that they are doing everything they can to help influence acquisitions in a positive manner and in turn focusing on those profiles that have high authority.

It is common sense that a search engine’s goal is to provide the best user experience for their own users. It makes sense that the best user experience would be to have the most democratic unbiased information for consumers to make decisions about that business. So, this is what the filters and the algorithms are consistently trying to accomplish. As much as we can try and learn everything we can about all of those factors and give the search engines exactly what we think they want, it is obvious to focus on our clients customers rather than the search engines provide the best user experience.

Profile Authority is established by users who have a common typical review pattern. There are certain norms and thresholds that dictate what a common typical review pattern is, but the easiest way to ensure that your customers are reviewers with high authority are reviewers that essentially engage in a community and a natural organic form. The best way to ensure that are reviewers are natural and organic, is for us to provide the education and the tools to leave these reviews on sites that have high influence and to ensure that these reviewers are consistently engaging in their community and reviewing multiple other businesses in their area.

Drive Education to Build Profile Authority

You have many options available to you on how to drive the appropriate education to your customers’ customers.

We are going to take a look at a review acquisition strategy. There is a document that is included in The Accelerated Program for Local Online Marketers course and is intended to help educate our customers’ on the process to leave reviews. This is an excellent piece to drive education to your customers to encourage them to encourage their customers to continually leave reviews. I will cover this further in another video.

As you might know, e-mail marketing is a critical strategy for local business to market themselves in my opinion. You can drive short education pieces through e-mail marketing to your customers’ customers.  This will give you an opportunity to potentially earn the right to providing you know marketing as a service.

With all SEO campaigns now, we install a WordPress blog for our clients. This is another great place to continually drive content about reviews to educate our customers community.

Creating and sending content to be published by local networking groups and theme related sites is a great way to drive education and acquire a citation on your client’s behalf.

Obviously, social media campaign with links that drive to content sources that add value to the end-user is a strategy that works well when you have qualified followers or friends.

We can discuss different strategies that you can provide education to the end-user about the value of reviews for both of them and their vendor. The point here is that we have to drive this education to the end-users or our system reviews might fail.

Testimonials and Check-Ins

Testimonials, reviews and check ins are channels of communication from the customer to the business. In essence, this is exactly what business is, communication from a business to a customer and vice versa.

You have a lot of choices on how to market your clients online, but I assure you if you focus your efforts on the one item that is most important to every single business then you will get success for your client. In other words, focus on the customer. Pretty simple, huh?

Testimonials are intermediated word-of-mouth marketing, and they do work when credible. In fact they work very well indeed if you work hard to get the right kind of testimonial. They can provide the much-needed social proofthat tips a wavering prospect into a paying customer.

A researcher named Mehrabian was particularly interested in how certain listeners received  their information about a speaker’s general attitude in situations where the facial expression, tone, and words are sending conflicting signals.

The results are impressive.

• 55% from the visual component
• 38% from the auditory component
• 7% from language

This means that the words we choose influence human behavior with only a weight of 7%, our tonality represents 38% and our physiology represents 55%!

If this is true, then I want video testimonials of people saying great things about my company!

Social Check-Ins

Many social networking services, such as Foursquare, Facebook, Yelp and Gowalla allow users to “check in” to a physical place and share their location with their friends.

Users can check in to a specific location by text messaging or by using a mobile app on a smartphone–the application will use the phone’s GPS to find the current location.

Many apps have a “Places” button where a user can see a list of nearby places into which the user can check in. If a location is not on the nearby places list, the user can add the location directly from the phone. Once a user has checked in, they have the option of sharing their location with friends in services such as Twitter or Facebook.

Check-in and Location Based Marketing

Check-ins, badges, Mayors, stamps on passports, rewards, and other new concepts from the past are popping up everywhere on the Internet as the latest trend in location based services are applied to marketing purposes.   It’s a blast from the past, isn’t it?  This is just a loyalty program.  No different than my coffee punch card, but on steroids.  Now I get the 8^thcup for free, and all my friends know about it. What about flying?  I check-in at the counter.  If I give them my information, I get rewards with ‘air miles’ now when I check in.  I do something, exchange some value and then get rewarded if we exchange information. Same model here folks, maybe this will tell us something about how these check-ins might work for a business.

Volume and Velocity

But let’s slow down for a moment,  there is a big difference between some of the old check-ins the new ones.  We know that checking out at a supermarket or checking-in in an airplane typically means an exchange in value.  They paid someone.  Take Foursquare check-ins….the rewards, on the other hand, are offered to individuals that just showed up.  I’m not quite sure yet on this.  Rewarding someone for showing up makes little sense.  Arguably the reward gets them in the door, and they need to be in the door to buy.

The real value of Check-ins should reward more than just physical presence. But shouldn’t the real question be is how you get the customer to the door from the beginning.

Local Search Reviews, Rich Snippets and Ratings

Sometimes I have to do something in this business that isn’t so much fun.  HTML is one of those.  Coding in fact is it.  Like accounting, I wish I never have to deal with it but you do.

I’m no coder.  But I have to have some knowledge of it, at least from a practical standpoint.

Rich Snippets are a fancy way of saying “I want a review to be on my website and I want Google to count it as a review”.

Or I frequently hear that people have a hard time getting a great customer to leave a review.  I think of one student of mine, another Scott, who struggled with this because, his client base, as a handy man, were generally much older and hated the computer.  They loved him, loved his work and wanted to help him grow, even though they agreed to leave a review, no one did.  This is a solution for Scott to get handwritten testimonials, scan the images, attached the images to his website along with some special code so the search engines count those reviews.  When done properly, these reviews have significant impact.

Rich Snippets for Local Search

Reviews and testimonials don’t have to be on a review site. They can be on your own website.

When review information is marked up in the body of a web page, a search engine can identify it and use it to understand and present the information on your places pages. For example, it can be used to create rich snippets to be displayed on a search results page, or on a Place Page. Review information such as ratings and descriptions can help users to better identify pages with good content.

Beyond improving the presentation of your pages in search results, rich snippetsalso help users find your website when it references a local place. By using structured markupHTML to describe a business or organization mentioned on your page, you not only improve the Web by making it easier to recognize references to specific places but also help the search engines  surface your site in local search results.

Use structured markupto help search engines identify the places mentioned on your site. If your site contains reviewsor other information about businesses and organizations, then the structured markup helps precisely correlate your pages with the place mentioned.

With structured markup, such as Microdata or RDF, you can label each piece of text to make it clear that it represents a certain type of data like a business name, an address, or a review rating. This is done by adding HTML tags that help computers understand the data. These tags don’t affect the appearance of your pages, but Google and any other services that look at the HTML can use the tags for a more precise understanding of the items referenced on the page.

Review Ratings

Most ratings systems use a 5-point scale

By default, Google assumes that your site uses a 5-point scale, where 5 is the best possible rating and 1 is the worst.

Many reviews sites show ratings on a different scale-for example a rating that ranges from 1-10 points or from 0-100%.

Buyers who complete a Google Checkout transaction will receive an email asking them to review their experience.   This doesn’t apply for most business, but interesting they are promoting solicitation of reviews, where Yelp is hard against soliciting reviews.  I don’t promote review solicitation, unless the customer has already verbally expressed a positive experience, in which time you can ask to have those words ‘digitized’.

Buyers reviews include a star rating on a scale of one-to-five as well as an optional comment field to discuss delivery time, their customer service experience, and overall satisfaction.

With the introduction of the open social graph at F8 by Facebook, I suspect soon we’ll see and open business graph, and using Facebook’s comment fields, it’s likely and possible we’ll see the rating system imposed on their status fields.

Your overall rating score is the average number of stars awarded by all buyers who have posted ratings for you.

Response

If you’re unhappy with a buyer’s comments, search engines encourage you to contact the buyerdirectly to resolve any disputes or issues that may have led to a low rating.  This is discussed under the topic “Online Reputation Management’.

You may also respond to a review by clicking Respond publiclybelow the buyer’s review, which will append your comments on the Review Detail. You can use this field to explain a situation that may have led to the low rating. For example, if the business was closed due to bad weather, you could respond publicly with the note with that reason.  The buyer will then have one more opportunity to respond to your statement. These comments will appear beneath your response.

Crawling & Coding

As mentioned, with structured markup you can label each piece of text to make it clear that it represents a certain type of data. This is done by adding HTML tags that help computers understand the data.

You can mark up either individual reviews or aggregate review information—for example, the average rating for a local business or the total number of user reviews submitted.

Review Properties

Google recognizes the following Review properties, derived from the hReviewmicroformat. In general, you can use the same property name for microdata, microformats, and RDFa; where the microdata/RDFa and microformats property names differ.

Here is the HTML code marked up with microdata:

<div>

<div itemscope itemtype=”http://data-vocabulary.org/Review”>

<span itemprop=”itemreviewed”>NAPAREX</span>

Reviewed by <span itemprop=”reviewer”>Ronco</span> on

<time itemprop=”dtreviewed” datetime=”2009-01-06″>Jan 6</time>.

<span itemprop=”summary”>We Recommend Naparex!</span>

<span itemprop=”description”>I work for an international telecommunictons company and NAPAREX has proven time and time again to make sure all of our shipping needs are taken care of.  In the face paced industry that we in, it is imperative that our shipments get to their destination on time and NAAPREX has always stuck to their delivery dates.</span>

Rating: <span itemprop=”rating”>5</span>

</div>

</div>

There is something I want you to notice here. According to the recommendations, we’re not linking to the user’s profiles.

Add the following code to the markup that links their name to their professional profile.

<a href=http://ca.linkedin.com/pub/franco-raso/6/423/13b>Ronco</a>so it

looks like this now

<div>

<div itemscope itemtype=”http://data-vocabulary.org/Review”>

<span itemprop=”itemreviewed”>NAPAREX</span>

Reviewed by <span itemprop=”reviewer”><a href=http://ca.linkedin.com/pub/franco-raso/6/423/13b>Ronco</a> </span> on

<time itemprop=”dtreviewed” datetime=”2009-01-06″>Jan 6</time>.

<span itemprop=”summary”>We Recommend Naparex!</span>

<span itemprop=”description”>I work for an international telecommunictons company and NAPAREX has proven time and time again to make sure all of our shipping needs are taken care of.  In the face paced industry that we in, it is imperative that our shipments get to their destination on time and NAAPREX has always stuck to their delivery dates.</span>

Rating: <span itemprop=”rating”>5</span>

</div>

</div>

Once you link to their profile, if the customer is willing, this is the BIG kahuna for trust.  Ask them to spread the word of their testimonial on their social media profiles.  This closes the link and will assign significant trust to the review directly on the website and will show high in the SERPs.

Local Review Acquisition Strategies

Sometimes you just to do something in life that isn’t that much work but has a major impact. This is my review acquisition strategy.

Testimonials and reviews are very important for a variety of different reasons. This is a system that is intended to be implemented into any small business to continually encourage reviews. Motivational systems can also be added to the system to further motivate employees and partners that help encourage reviews. I have no problem giving hundred dollar bonus on a monthly basis to employees who get the most reviews, even for our customers.

I have developed a review acquisition strategy that you can drop into your client’s business to help acquire several reviews from reviewers that have high authority.

This is a document that our agency gives to every one of our search marketing customers. Our goal is to give them the education that they need and the management tools in order to continually encourage reviews on their business. They should not solicit reviews ever, but recognize when a customer says something nice about their business that they encourage the customer to make the effort to digitize their complements and leave a review online.

This education is accomplished with this document. In a document provides education on an

• overview of reviews
• what are reviews
• the value of receiving reviews in the online marketing game
• different review sites
• implications to the search engines
• good versus bad reviews and finally
• customer e-mail template for encouraging customer reviews.

The challenge here is that you are relying on your customer to encourage activity inside of their business that demonstrates results that you are measured on. You obviously cannot force your customer to do anything and they are paying you for results. This is where you have to over deliver.

The education in this document provides supportive evidence that reviews are extremely important for their business without the implications of ranking in the search engines. In other words, if the search engines didn’t exist this document would still exist.

We provide a little bit of education on conversion and how reviews with a positive rating have increased customer spend by over 20%, provided by a leading web research organization, Comscore.

We also provide some education that your customers will get ahead of the game by establishing trust towards their service area.

Sometimes customers get a little bit scared or concerned about negative reviews online.  The fact is that no matter what anybody does they are eventually going to get negative reviews. By introducing the concept of Online Reputation Management, which is another section and topic included in this course, we introduce a new service to the customer and the importance of having the systems in place to measure their online reputation.

We also discussed the importance of and sending your employees and contractors to encourage these reviews. A delivery service person may want to keep their business card with them to hand out to happy customers. The more they hand out the greater their reward.

If a customer ever tells you how much they value your service or asks what they can do for you, ask them for a testimonial. In fact, even if they don’t, ask anyway if they’ve said they like your service! Testimonials are thatvaluable.

Local Review Sites

A review site is a websitewhere reviews can be posted about businesses, products, or services. In some cases, even people.  These days, these websites are using  Web 2.0techniques to gather reviews from customers. Sometimes they may employ professional writers to author reviews on the topic of concern for the site.

Review sites are typically also portal sites and data aggregators. However, not all review sites are portal site and not all portal sites are review sites. For this reason we have to classify certain sites as review sites.

Industry Perception

Many, in fact most review sites make little attempt to control postings, or to verify the reviews. Faultfinders claim that positive reviews are sometimes written by the businesses or individuals being reviewed, while negative reviews might be written by competitors, disgruntled employees, or anyone with a grudge against the business being reviewed. In addition, studies of research methodology have shown that in forums where people are able to post opinions publicly, group polarization often occurs, and the result is very positive comments, very negative comments, and little in between, meaning that those who would have been in the middle are either silent or pulled to one extreme or the other.  This is critical to understand.  As you implement a review acquisition strategy for your customers it is imperative that you identify and focus on your clients top customers immediately to leave reviews.  This will initially establish a positive should group polarization occur in your clients profile page.   Another criticism against sites that rely on income from businesses is that they are reluctant to post negative since that undermines their business model. This leads to a conflict of interest.

The fact is that the review sites, like Google, want to filter all the garbage.  Sometimes they don’t get it right, but they are always looking to improve their algorithms. We have to assume they are getting better daily, like Google with their algorithm for search. With this assumption it makes no sense to me to game the review filters.  It’s like chasing the algorithm.  We shouldn’t be focusing on either quantity or quality of reviews, but focus on the natural organic adoption or reviews with existing customers. I feel if this is our objective we will always meet the needs set forth by the review sites.

Forget those Critics!

Most review sites admit that reviews may not be objective, and that ratings may not be statistically valid.  I know this will work itself out over time.  Most consumers are yet trained to leave reviews. Many businesses have yet adopted a acquisition strategy.  If the trends continue, like a 100% increase in reviews for Yelp in 2010, then this is likely the year that’ll curb much of this critics.  It’s for this reason that we tested profile review authority and sure enough, different profiles are assigned different levels of trust.  Just focus on quality and you’ll clear those filters.  Let’s talk more about filters now.

Review Filters

As we have been talking about all of the review sites have review filters. Here’s some information about those filters.

Reviews that reflect perfectly legitimate experiences are sometimes filtered out by the review filter’s algorithmic processes.  Don’t worry about this.  To solve this, have the reviewer leave additional, unbiased reviews for other local businesses.  Within a few weeks, that reviewers profile filter should be lifted.

Reviews are never deleted by the review filter; they are always shown on users’ profile pages but not the business that is being reviewed unless you dig deep. The review filter simply groups established users’ reviews from their user pages onto business pages. This automated process sometimes creates the perception that reviews are being deleted and re-added over time; what’s actually happening is users are becoming more-or-less established over time.

The best word of mouth is organic and unsolicited. As counter-intuitive as it may seem, Yelp discourages business owners from asking people to write reviews about their businesses. It’s tough for an algorithm to tell the difference between a business owner aggressively putting a laptop in front of a client and saying, “Give me 5 stars!” and that same business owner flipping the laptop around and manufacturing a fake 5-star review about themselves.  Follow my review acquisition process to avoid violating the T & C’s of Yelp and others, yet still have the systems to drive unsolicited, organic reviews.

Both positive and negative reviews can be affected. This is to protect Dentist A from  Dentist B’s writing of malicious 1-star reviews about his competitor.

SEO helps here too.  Identifying relevant, authoritative sites to have links going to a user’s profile will increase the trust and authority for that profile, as long as it’s relevant sites and not just link building.

Local Reviews Website List

This should not be confused as the data provider list to acquire citations.  The list is very similar, but these reviews sites are listed in order of review preference. Please be aware as these companies grow and change, some might be better, others might get worse.  Use this list priority with a grain of salt and do your due diligence to uncover other sites.

• Google
• Yelp
• City Search
• Yahoo Local
• InsiderPages
• Angie’s List
• Judy’s Book
• Superpages
• Merchant Circle
• Insider Pages