Now that we have some specific legal and local directories claimed and optimized, it is time to turn our attention to what Google is serving up to your prospective referrals when they search for your law firm name or your name.
Today will just be a fact-finding mission.
Then we will use today’s work over the next few days to claim or optimize the directories you discover.
You will need to have your spreadsheet ready and will use the Directory Tracker tab to capture the information from today’s challenge.
To see approximately what Google is serving up to people when your name is searched, I recommend using a private or incognito browser session. If you use Chrome, select File, then New Incognito Window. Each major browser has this type of functionality.
Do the following for your law firm name and each key partner or person at your firm whose name would be used in a referral situation. If you have multiple offices, you may want to put the city or town name next to your name to see the different information that shows up based on the part of town someone is searching.
- From Google.com search for the name of the firm or person
- Look down the list or search returns that are provided and look for what seem to be directory listings
- Take each directory listing that you have not claimed but shows up on the first page and then add that directory listing and the URL where it takes you to the Tracker spreadsheet. I recommend noting the page it showed up in Google too, which in this exercise will be 1, 2, or 3.
- At the bottom of the page below the Google logo, hit the number 2 and repeat steps 2 and 3
- Go to the third page and repeat steps 2 and 3
Repeat those 5 steps for your firm name and each person in your firm you want to optimize. Also each location if you have multiple offices.
You should have a list of about 15 to 20 directories for each name you searched.
That’s it for today. We will work through this list over the next few days.
