Today we are going to start the process of claiming what is arguably the most important directory listing you can claim: Google My Business.
Your Google My Business profile can be a powerful tool to help with protecting your referrals. Remember back on Day 1 we talked about dominating page 1 of Google for searches for your law firm name and lawyer names. We showed this image that highlighted what that looked like.
If you have claimed your Google My Business Profile, you can add images, posts, get reviews, phone number, website, office hours, and it can all be visible right from the search on the right side of the screen. In fact, there is enough information there that many prospective client may call you right from the Google My Business profile and not even visit your website.
Today we will focus on kicking off the process to claim your listing. Sometimes, Google will require a postcard to be sent to your office to confirm your address to have it fully claimed. Therefore, we will give that time to arrive and come back to your Google My Business profile toward the end of the challenge to work on optimizing it.
If you have already claimed your Google My Business Profile, meaning you can go to https://www.google.com/business sign in with your login and access and edit your My Business Listing, then you can skip today’s challenge and we will see you tomorrow for Day 7.
Claiming Your Google My Business Profile
- Make sure you are logged into Google with the email address you want to use. If you are using a generic email address that you
setup on Day 3 and you haven’t yet set it up in Google, it will request you to sign in. - Once you are logged in to Google with the correct email address visit https://business.google.com/create
- Search for your firm via the name and maybe address
- If you Google My Business has been claimed already, it will show you the message below, including a few characters from the email address that was used to claim the listing and you can either ask around the office or a former agency for the login information, or use the Request Access feature (which can take about a week)
- If it has not been claimed it will ask you to verify the address. Edit it to be the exact address from your NAP and More spreadsheet
- It will then ask you to confirm the pin placement on the maps. This is usually correct, but move the pin if the address doesn’t match the exact location of your law firm
- Enter the top level business category that most closely matches your law firm. For many firms it will just be “Law Firm” but Google does offer some more granular practice area categories like Personal Injury Attorney or Family Law Attorney. If you just practice one key area you can select that as your primary category.
- Enter your phone number and website.
- Now it is time to verify your listing. If you can receive a call at your main office line direct to a phone that can be picked up, use the CALL option. Sometimes law firms are unable to do this because they have an automated voice system that answers the phone and walks the caller through a menu. In that case you can select the Postcard By Mail option. Enter your contact name and hit the Mail button.
That’s it. You have either claimed your law firm’s profile with the Call option and entering the code Google provided you or you are waiting on the postcard.
If you were able to claim your profile, you can go in and edit a lot of the other details based on your NAP and More tab we created earlier. However, we will come back and talk about ways to optimize your Google My Business profile later toward the end of the challenge.
If you have more than one location, you will want to use the same login to claim and manage your different listings.
With Google My Business in progress, tomorrow we will turn our attention to your Facebook business listing.
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