When it comes to brick-and-mortar storefronts, local businesses often struggle to compete with neighboring big brands. Statistics show that, even for a well-known local store that's established a strong relationship with its customers and built a community through the years, having such a neighbor can be detrimental. But what about a newly opened business? Does it have any chance of competing with popular brands? My experience has led me to believe there's only one way a locally owned business can overcome big competition: it needs to take advantage of local SEO.
Recently, in collaboration with Accuranker, I conducted a survey that touches upon the difficulties local businesses face when trying to become visible in Google’s local results. We analyzed more than 300,000 local SERPs across multiple industries (beauty, medical services, auto services, legal, shopping, etc.) to get a clear understanding of what the chances are for a local site to seem attractive to Google.
One of the more curious insights our research revealed is that the legal services niche is among the most competitive. Sure, this finding isn't rocket science. In fact, I bet on some level you were aware of this (or at least you had a gut feeling). However, this issue is much more complex than it seems. The legal services niche far surpasses other niches in terms of competition and prices.
Does this mean that the legal services niche falls under radically different rules and requires unique SEO tactics? This is exactly the question I set out to answer, and you’re most welcome to follow me on my little investigation!
Gathering the data for this article
After reading this article, you’ll understand the biggest challenges that any legal website faces when trying to become visible in the SERPs. The data here will help ensure that your future strategies are based on informed decisions. Moreover, you’ll be able to streamline your creative process and find non-standard approaches that will cement your success in the legal industry.
To conduct proper research on what SEO strategies local businesses employ in the legal services niche, I took the following steps:
- I made a list of keywords unrelated to any brand (which could hardly be classified as local).
- I identified the most competitive places in the US for this industry in order to analyze how legal sites build a presence in this extremely aggressive environment
The first step was simply to do keyword research, which involved a bit more manual work than usual — I tried my best to filter out branded keywords and ones that weren’t relevant to local searches.
With the help of Statista I was able to get a list of the states in America that have the highest employment rates in the legal niche:
This graph shows US states with the highest number of employees in legal occupations in the United States as of May 2014. Source: statista.com
You can see that California, New York, and Florida have the highest number of employees in this industry, hence these locations are the most "densely populated" by law firms and lawyers, and, as a result, the competition in these states should be higher than in other states. After I made a list of the most competitive locations, I was ready to move on to the next step — analyzing the domains that appear in SERPs for the keywords I had previously selected.
Now let's see what my findings revealed.
The top 5 SEO challenges for the legal niche
The extreme competitiveness of the legal services niche might be explained by the fact that this market generates more than $248 billion USD in revenue (according to a recent report provided by Statista) with only a relatively small number of searches.
To give you a better understanding of the size of the legal services industry in the US, let’s compare it with a bigger market: for instance, if we look at ecommerce, we can clearly see that the revenues generated by the two niches in question are nearly the same (ecommerce sales surpass $256 billion USD), despite the fact that ecommerce traffic share figures are four times greater than in legal services. It’s safe to say that the legal niche has turned out to be a ridiculously competitive market, because it's an outrageously profitable one. I’m also certain that the success of any SEO activity depends on a deep understanding of how the industry and its major players work.
In the next section, you’ll learn about the main challenges that legal businesses face.
#1. Online legal business are dominating local SERPs
Statistics from an IbisWorld report confirm that the online legal services niche was able to generate $4 billion USD in 2015. Moreover, in recent years this niche has been steadily expanding due to the fact that consumers are interested in getting legal services online. That’s why it doesn’t come as a surprise that a company named Rocket Lawyer generates more than 30,000 searches monthly (according to Google Keyword Planner) by helping users deal with their legal issues online. This number of searches proves that online legal services are gradually becoming popular, and people don’t want to spend their time scheduling an appointment with a lawyer anymore.
Now you’re probably wondering how this trend is affecting local SEO, right?
Knowing that New York, Miami, and Los Angeles are among the most competitive locations for the legal niche, I decided to find out which sites are the most visible in local search results there. I took into account more than 500 different keywords related to legal services and compiled a list of the domains that most appeared most frequently for those keywords. And here are the top three domains that remain visible in local search results in all three cities:
- Findlaw.com
- Avvo.com
- Lawyers.com
After making this list, I double-checked these websites to make sure that all of them belong to the online legal services niche. I also decided to dig deeper and manually checked the top twenty domains that were most visible across all the locations I analyzed, in order to understand what kind of legal services they provide. I found out that 55.6 percent of the sites I analyzed belong to the online legal services niche. That means that local businesses now have to compete not only with global businesses, but also with online legal businesses that, by default, have better positions in SERPs, as the main goal of their business is to increase their online presence by getting more organic traffic from Google.
#2. Google doesn’t give priority to local legal businesses in organic search results
Apart from the strong presence of online businesses in local organic SERPs, I was struck with the steady visibility of the top twenty websites that appear in local search results in New York, Los Angeles and Miami. The shocking truth I discovered about Google local SERPs is that less than 20 percent of sites were unique across all the studied locations. This means that search results are occupied by global and online businesses in 80 percent of cases. Furthermore, the top three most visible domains remain the same in all three cities, and they are as follows:
- Findlaw.com,
- Avvo.com, and
- Lawyers.com.
I also discovered that all three of these websites belong to the online legal services niche, and, despite SEO visibility, have a good number of backlinks. I am of the opinion that local businesses have no chance of competing with them whatsoever.
As I studied the 20 percent of websites that are unique, two curious cases of locally based businesses caught my eye — Injurylawyers.com and Cellinoandbarnes.com. Let’s take a closer look at these two websites.
From Injurylawyers.com’s “Contact” page, I learned that it operates mostly in Florida. However, I don’t think that the reason it ranks so highly in local search results in Miami is because of its physical presence there. Even at a quick glance, it becomes clear that Injurylawayers.com is ranking so high in local results because of its website’s overall performance. As you can see from the screenshot below, its website has a good number of referring domains, as well as a decent amount of organic traffic:
Source: ahrefs.com
Another site that caught my attention — Cellinoandbarnes.com — has a branch based in New York. The history of this legal company begins over 50 years ago, and without any doubt Cellino and Barnes is a well-known and trusted brand. Plus, Google recognizes it as a brand. The very fact that its brand name is being searched for more than 6,000 times a month speaks volumes about the trustworthiness of this legal company:
All these facts show that Cellinoandbarnes.com’s visibility in New York SERPs is because of the domain’s general performance in Google US organic search results:
Source: spyfu.com
My quick research proves that, in practice, Google doesn’t give priority to NY-based legal companies and still mostly relies on general ranking factors. And it seems obvious now that any online business can easily outperform an offline SMB legal company by increasing the number of backlinks, brand mentions, and site visits it receives.
#3. The local pack is still a saving grace for local businesses
One year ago, Google implemented a major change that dramatically minimized local businesses’ chances of becoming visible in local packs: Google replaced the 7-pack in SERPs with a 3-pack. And I was quite interested to figure out what kinds of businesses now hold these three positions in the legal niche, and whether these results are local.
Despite the fact that local organic SERPs are fully occupied by big online businesses, the local pack still is the best way to remain present in Google for locally based legal companies. My research revealed that 67 percent of sites that appear in local packs for legal services are hyper-local and local. To arrive at this percentage, I analyzed the domains that appear in local packs in New York, Miami, and Los Angeles in terms of their SEO performance in Google US (to do this, I used Serpstat’s Batch analysis tool).
I was also curious what share of online presence the local legal businesses that appeared in the local pack had, along with the breakdown by states. To mark sites as local, I checked their traffic with the help of the Serpstat's Batch Analysis Tool. (I'd like to note that I find Serpstat’s figures most relevant for such purposes, as they parse raw data from Google US. You can easily spot which sites are global and which are local.) And here’s what I found:
- Miami – 60% of legal websites appear in the local pack
- Los Angeles – 35% of legal websites appear in the local pack
- New York – 15% of legal websites appear in the local pack
This was quite an insight, since I assumed that California would be the most competitive location for the legal niche, because — as you may recall from the beginning of this post — it's the state most densely populated by law firms. Also, it’s surprising to find New York only at third place in this list. Yet, as you can see, Miami has the greatest number of local sites that are present in local pack. Therefore, I believe that being featured in local search results in New York requires a lot more resources than it does to achieve the same visibility in Miami. And this is something that every SEO expert should be aware of.
#4. You can’t stand out without a site — even in local pack results
It’s a well-known fact that Google’s local pack provides businesses with the opportunity to appear at the top of Google SERPs even without a website. According to my previous research, which I conducted in collaboration with the AccuRanker team, the local pack works much better for less competitive niches. What I tried to clarify here is whether you can stand out in a local pack without a website in such an unconventional and competitive niche as legal services. Unfortunately, no, you cannot.
To prove this, I analyzed 986 local SERPs in order to figure out if legal brands can appear with or without a website. My findings showed that 86 percent of legal businesses that pop up in local packs have a website. This means that even if your business is visible in local packs without a website, in a majority of cases, it’ll be considered by potential clients as less trustworthy, since users usually expect to see a link to a particular domain.
Without a link to a professional-looking website, your business will seem less credible — not only to potential clients, but also to Google. Nevertheless, it’s not unusual for large, global companies to be trusted more than small, local ones. Therefore, small companies need to instill confidence in their potential clients by having a website.
#5. There’s no correlation between a legal website’s ranking number one in a local pack and its number of reviews
I’m certain that every business owner understands the importance of customer reviews. It’s a no-brainer that a level of trust is instantly established when a potential client sees that a local business has reviews. And it definitely increases the likelihood of said client to convert. Also, the very presence of Google native reviews is thought to be among the Top 50 local search ranking factors.
However, this study of legal services has already revealed that there are quite a few peculiar ranking factors that business owners need to keep in mind in order to succeed in this niche. That’s why I was curious to know whether there’s any correlation between a site’s number of customer reviews and its ranking #1 in a local pack.
With the help of the AccuRanker team I was able to get the sum of reviews that show beside each result in local pack. Afterwards, I analyzed more than 2,000 local SERPs in New York, Los Angeles, and Miami. And here’s what I found:
There’s no correlation between ranking in the first position in a local pack and your number of reviews.
For instance, in New York local pack results, the companies that appear in the third position have 824 total reviews. Those that appear in the first – 732. Moreover, I noticed a good number of cases in which a company that had a solid number of reviews was ranked in the third position, while a business that hadn’t even been reviewed yet was ranked in the first.
Another striking insight I gained: most legal sites never show their potential visitors more than 2 reviews. Based on this data, I can say that this represents an overall industry trend of a lack of native Google reviews. That’s why Google ranks businesses that haven’t been reviewed so highly. Even if you have a significant number of customer reviews, it won’t help your business rank higher in local pack results.
One final note
Without any doubt, the legal niche presents a lot of unique local SEO challenges that other industries hardly ever face. The high penetration of online legal services into the existing legal market is changing the current business landscape — in particular, it's drastically affecting local results. Online legal businesses are stealing an outrageous amount of web traffic from local companies, without giving them even a slim chance of ranking as well in local SERPs.
Fortunately, local legal businesses still have priority in local packs, but the highly competitive environment is forcing them to improve their online presence by creating a website. Since a majority of the companies that appear in local packs have sites, your potential clients’ expectations are ratcheting up. In fact, this trend may reinforce searchers' opinions that businesses without a website are untrustworthy. Furthermore, it seems that Google also prefers to show users local legal businesses that have a site, rather than those that don’t. The only good news is that your number of reviews doesn’t really influence your rankings in local packs.
Still, if a local legal business is interested in attracting clients via the Internet, it shouldn’t hesitate to look for alternative ways of generating traffic in both organic and paid search channels.
Alexandria, this article hits home for me in so many ways.
We run the marketing efforts for a local family law firm in the heart of Orange County, CA so we have lived these struggles and have been successful on each front.
These legal websites that you touch upon are very similar to what Zillow for Real Estate agents. The quantity and quality of the clients we have received from such sites are poor at best and are annoying in the SERPS.
The only way to push through the noise of Avvo, Findlaw, Lawyers.com, or even the local courthouse is to deliver consistent quality content. Customers (especially in the legal world) want to research beyond reviews, understand who they are doing business with and MOST IMPORTANTLY, why they do it.
Many attorneys are not willing to put in the time to push such content.
SMM is another ball game for these types of services industry companies. The struggle for legal services is that they attempt to post articles that offer little social currency and thus their social interactions are little to none.
The way that I have been able to find success in this market is to focus on side niches that touch upon the same content and offer social currency. For Family Law, articles that highlight quality parenting ideas would give the social currency and interaction needed while still bringing potential business.
Shout out to Brian Dean who inspired the idea after reading one of his articles that highlighted how a pest control company used the side niche of home gardening to gain social interaction in one of the most difficult of service industries.
Hey, KeithFern!
Thanks so much for sharing such a detailed feedback! I've learned several interesting things after reading your comment.
Yes, indeed, quality content can be very helpful and you're very resourceful to implement such a nice strategy! I hear you, SMM can be especially challenging for the legal niche and leveraging audiences from complementary niches can give you a vital boost in your promotional efforts
I am sure that your story will come in handy for many who are out there searching for the right tactic. Maybe, you can turn your experience into a post as well
Perhaps I shall :)
...and thank you for the kind words. I am glad that I could spread some light on the subject.
Stay tuned for a future post.
Cheers,
Keith
Alexandra, Great to follow the discussion. For a long time it was challenging to really see the significance of the right backlink profiles. It is also a real expertise to know when content is noise and when it drives this needed resource. I find indications that lead me to suspect that sites already producing Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) for mobile buyers are gaining is this regard. How do you see AMP pages impacting local SEO?
I've been analyzing the numbers, and I'm wondering about other sources for traffic for a legal website, besides Google.
I conducted some research, and noted that there were numerous articles promoting social media channels. However, it's obvious that SMM traffic is extremely difficult to convert; therefore, my question is, has someone been successful enough to effectively generate and convert organic traffic from SMM channels in a legal niche?
Alexandra, I undoubtedly agree with you, In my previous company I got a chance to work for several client in legal niche and found website like Findlaw, Avvo and Lawyers.com are dominating the organic SERP in Google, what we did is obtained paid listing from these authority websites.
We also used backlink tools to find links pointing to our competitor websites other than these authority websites then filtered them and taken only links which are highly relevant which helped us in ranking organically as well as locally. We used Barnacle SEO as after pigeon update Barnacle SEO is one ranking factor in Google that what we assumed.
Sachin, thank you for your comment, and for sharing useful information about how to get a link from those authoritative online websites. Actually, I thought about Barnacle SEO when I was working with a couple of sites from SEO/digital marketing niches, because for some keywords, there's no way to rank on the first page of Google even in a long-term perspective. I was thinking of finding the ways to update the old content with a link to a particular site, in order to remain present in Google.
Alex,
Love the study. As a marketing manager for an LA-area law firm, I've been dealing with the uphill organic battle for a while. One thing I've noticed is that nearly all of the lawyers and firms out here are simply not doing it right -- they have no backlink profiles, while their web marketing company puts up a shiny site and relies on PPC traffic to generate leads. In fact, there are only a handful of firms in all of LA that dominate the organic SERPS -- Neil Shouse is the prime example. Look up any California Criminal/DUI keyword and he's there -- above FindLaw/Avvo/etc. -- and even makes the knowledge graph on occasion. His site is one of the very few that push loads of absurdly good content out there and it pays off for him.
I've also seen upstart websites for firms that previously had no web presence skyrocket to the top of SERPs with only a minimal backlink profile -- a handful of links from guest posting. There's clearly a lot of room for firms who do it right, but most lawyers are either technophobic or too damn busy to put in the requisite work to build anything but a minimal link profile (directory listings -- ugh!).
Keep up the good work. I love reading about the difficulties in my niche -- makes me realize that I'm not alone.
-Willie
Willie,
Thank you for your comment, and for sharing your expertise! I've noticed that the issue with backlinks is a common one for a lot of niches, especially offline. I suppose PPC might be a relatively good way to acquire new clients; meanwhile, you're waiting for SEO that takes no less than 6 months to start sending the traffic to a site. In other ways, it's risky to use only one channel, like putting all of your eggs in one basket. I agree that shouselaw.com is an excellent example: They have over 1,900 referring domains in accordance with Ahrefs.
Since I don't often deal with the legal niche, I'm certain that you're more knowledgable than I am on this. It seems that the legal niche is too lazy to build their SEO presence the right way, so that's why online businesses are dominating the SERPs.
Good to see you here Alexandra :)
There are few things we need to keep in mind when you work in legal niche.
Understand the business in clear pathway, every single aspect you should know like pros & cons with their services. At the end you are going to market their website so it is very important that promotional material does not effect any negative way. Try to get the approval from your client before you market anything (good practise).
I understand social media traffic is hard to convert but right approach will make it convert. Lets say you can run the twitter paid ads by segmenting your audience, retarget your audience with special message (use your email database or custom list for retargeting). Communication is the key. Nurture them via proper email marketing.
I follow this process and get the positive results! I hope you find it useful.
Hiren,
Thank you for sharing your tips and thoughts about social media traffic. I've tried several times to run ad campaigns on social media for small businesses, and we've found that that in most cases, it's too expensive for them (especially if we select laser-targeted campaigns).
Very interesting article that makes me wonder some questions. First, can the conclusions be estrapolated in some way to other niches? Second, up to what point these challenges would be also present in other countries (that is, using other top-level doamin)?
Regards!!
Hi Antonio,
I think the answer is yes, but the devil is in the details. Without proper research and understanding a niche inside-out, it's hard to be 100% sure.
With regard to other countries - definitely not. For instance, lawyers aren't popular in Russia, and roughly 95% of the people don't seek legal help when they're going through the divorce process. Basically, the market of each country is unique due to various factors involving historical and political development.
We work with a handful of lawyers, specific to personal injury and employment law - All of whom are local to NYC. You're absolutely right, this space is unbelievably competitive (sometimes frustratingly so). Really appreciate you taking the time to put this research together - it explains why we've seen success in the "snackpack" and limited success in the SERPs. Thanks Alexandra!
Such a great post Alexandra ! I have question regarding Local Seo that's how a website ranking in the first position on google map as well as google business places with zero review.
which ranking factors in local pack google consider and how ?
Waiting for a good reply.
Excellent article Alexandra! Really appreciated the analysis. You've given me a roadmap I can follow when doing similar work in the healthcare niche. Many healthcare institutions are moving away from optimizing for educational content and focusing on more localized terms related to services that need to be administered locally. Instead of "kidney transplant," we're focusing on "where in Nebraska can you get a kidney transplant" for example, as the educational medical terms are just too hard to rank for, and not necessarily relevant to attracting more patients.
Dillip, related to your question, this is a recent statistically rigorous look at what ranking factors matter in local SEO.
And here's the annual one Moz does based on asking a lot of local SEOs working in the field what they are seeing.
Thanks for the insights Alexandra! I have found it best to not to try compete with findlaw.com, avvo.com, lawyers.com, but to join them. I can't speak to their online lawyer services, but I can speak to helping clients get on these platforms to be found in their attorney search feature. These sites dominate all SERPs, and based off of results user's are clicking on these sites and using them to see a list of local lawyers with reviews.
Nate, thank you very much for your comment!
I agree with you, and I'm certain that for individual lawyers, this seems to be the best way (or at least, it might help them boost their visibility during the early stages). However, those websites still won't help you build your personal brand in Google. They'll help you acquiring clients, but that's only the half of the battle. I believe in the extreme importance of investing in a brand, because that allows you to reach a broader audience.
Absolutely agree with you on that! Sorry if my comment came across in a way that I was suggesting that a law firm needs to only do this. This would only be one part of the overall strategy that goes along with their SEO, PPC, SM, etc campaigns to reach as many users as possible.
Great article Alexandra,
In the past, I would definitely agree on #3. However, Google recently has allowed paid inclusion in the local 3-pack & these ads are starting to roll-our right now.
You can see a screenshot as it was shared on twitter https://twitter.com/JoyanneHawkins/status/76195577...
What are your thoughts on that & how with this affect your Local Search Marketing?
Hi Kurt,
Thank you for your comment.
To be honest, it's hard to say how much has been changed in the local pack situation with regard to the ads that appear there. However, I still tend to believe that there are plenty of users who still prefer to click on organic results in local packs. Still, from my point of view, there aren't many options. At the moment, local packs are the less-competitive environments compared to organic results.
Really enjoyed this article..One thing I see in law the .com.au index is a lot of these exact match domains simply building tonnes of crappy comment links. Anchor text is always just the commenters name or some random letters, pretty frustrating to see these tactics still work well in such competitive spaces. One example has heaps of cooking site links, I guess cooking is "a type" of shoulder niche :) !!
This is not a concern just for legal services. I am a real estate agent in Fort Lauderdale, but the major national real estate sites always show up at the top of the generic results. I have the highest ranked private site in my market and I'm usually at the top of page 2. Some days I'm at the bottom of page 1, but the first page is usually all the national sites
Real estate is similar in ways. You have Trulia, Zillow, Redfin, etc. that get in the way for your SERPS. The main difference is the search intent.
RE has two main searches. Those who are looking at properties and those who are researching Real Estate Agents.
Unless you have a ton of pocket listings or content not found on these sites, you will be fighting a uphill battle for property search.
But for those researching which agent to go with, you are in the sweet spot. Customers are getting smarter and I'm sure you have found that they will look past those big sites to go with someone real. If you keep pushing quality content you will be able to move up and stay on the first page.
So number one ranking has got nothing to do with reviews, then why is it that reviews are looked as a good seo practice ? Is the legal niche different ?
Reviews are part of the research process and do provide some traffic. They are important, but do not effect SEO as one would think. I have seen plenty of companies benefit from reviews, but in these niches I have also seen some companies maintain a successful practice with poor reviews.
Those reviews can be repaired over time, but at the end of the day as an SEO/Marketer your emphasis should be on answering your customers answers best when they arrive to your site. If your content is not the best option, providing the most value, etc then your site doesn't deserve to be the top result.
Alexandra,
You start by talking about "employment rate" in the legal niche but then use a stat that doesn't factor in population. Most lawyers doesn't mean most "per capita" which is what you should have used. Here's a link in case you ever redo it: https://lawschooltuitionbubble.wordpress.com/original-research-updated/lawyers-per-capita-by-state/ . California is actually #9 on the toughest places according to your assumptions. Every time I read a sentence about this all being based on "law firm density" it would distract me into thinking about how it was not about density at all.
On top of that, this study is based on so many bad assumptions that I don't know where to start. Firstly, the manner in which you did your keyword pool is not representative to what law firm local businesses actually do or want. Did you consult with a lawyer before doing this study? Moreover, did you consult with a lawyer that knew about local SEO? If you would like to talk to one and potential release an updated (much-more accurate and representative) article, I'd love to work with you on this. I'm a computer engineer, lawyer, law firm manager, web-marketing company CEO so I think I could really help. I'm curious to see how much your results diverge should we collaborate. I hope you reach out. Cheers. Email: [email protected]
Anthony C. Johnson, CEO of attorneygroup.com and Managing Partner johnsonvines.com. Not linking anything here so Roger doesn't spam block me.
Alexandra:
Would still love to hear your response to my above thoughts when you have time. Thank you.
Hi Alexandra, great post and extremely well researched. I act for a few law firms and I'm very interested in the rise of the online legal businesses. I'm in the UK and I haven't seen this issue as much, however, the apathy in a lot of the firms leaves the door open for those who are willing to focus on their organic traffic and optimise their site and the content properly. Adwords can be very expensive for lawyers yet it seems a the majority will aimlessly throw money at this whilst ignoring the organic side of traffic. A lot of education and persuasion is still required. Cheers, John
Thanks Alexandra
I find your article very interesting since despite working in a very different article, it is also a highly competitive one, and shares somethings very important with legal advice, but I also find a very important difference as well which I think it is interesting to share here.
I am in the travel vertical. Both travel services and legal advice are services. In none of them a product is mailed. And there is no reason why you should expect the local entity in your street to be better at what they do than a regional brand for instance. I want local search to be really local if I am looking for an icecream shop in my area.
BUT where I see an important difference between legal and travel is in a local legal firm being an expert in local regulations.
A local travel agency in Paris may be an expert in selling Safaris in Kenya for instance, so if I plan to travel to China my expert might be in London, or China, and not in my street..... However you´d expect a local legal firm in Paris to be potentially good about local noise regulations if you own a restaurant with terrace....
If certain regulation changes from State to State in the US (being from Europe my knowledge is very limited but I guess this is the case) then the role of local search should be increased, at least for certain keywords.. In an indeal search-world I believe the engine should be clever enough to identfy if a user has a legal problem expressed in a keyword that has a different implication in NYC and LA... and from there decide what weight is given to local search.
Would that make sense to you?
Hi Luis,
I absolutely agree with you that people expect to see in local company search results both who we are and what's happening in this area. It's quite logical, however, that if a large company has an office on the same street as local ones, it deserves to be featured in Local Packs as well. It's hard to understand why Google would rank a local company higher than a huge corporation.
Hi Alexandra
Thanks for sharing this but i don't understand how all my working projects are ranked well some on local results, other on organic result, but I don't know our which seo activity is working for ranked first on google. This is really true so many reviews are not the reason for ranked first on google serp.
Good write up Alexandra. Having a majority of clients in the legal profession, I see and deal with these points all the time. I think 2 key points is the fact it is difficult to create quality, engaging content for lawyers. The content is either too heavy on legalese or is not engaging and interesting enough to garner links. It is a difficult balance to strike.
In addition, I have noticed that the number of reviews and the review rating does not matter for ranking in the Local Pack. Despite what the local ranking factors say, for this niche, reviews are not much of a ranking factor, though the stars and ratings obviously effect CTR.
Thanks , Good and Informative Post
Nice Article and well-researched. :-)
Awesome...GREAT information. Much appreciated!
thanks! Glad you liked it!
Hi Alexandra
Excellent guide for those who open a new local business and must compete with brands that are present in the market for longer.
Thank you very much for the information
Hi Ivan, thanks for your kind words, it's greatly appreciated :)
Good job Alexandra!
Nice Article and well-researched
regards,
Thank you for the post Alexandra, I think it will help to local business to improve SEO ;)
Thanks, guys! Glad to hear you liked it!
hai to Alexandra Tachalova
This is my first interaction with you
i want to ask you a question that i have read a article in neilpatil blog: " in his article he metioned that google is not a programmer if google doesn't find a link to our websites (it means that if we have any broken link pages in our website) google will immediately teriminate looking further our sites & it will go to next sites....."
Have to say anything about this..? Alexandra Tachalova
Hello Alejandra, thanks for sharing this article. He has done a great job.
nice
Thanks for your post.