Google Business Profile Optimisation for Law Firms
Most law firms treat their Google Business Profile like a business card filled out once in 2019 and never opened again — meanwhile the website gets all the love. Here's the uncomfortable bit: for "divorce lawyer near me" or "conveyancer Brisbane CBD", the map pack above the organic results is often the first thing a stressed person googling at 11pm actually sees. A thin, outdated profile makes you invisible before anyone reaches your lovely new site. We've audited enough legal listings to know the mistakes are depressingly consistent — and fixable. 💖
What most law firms get wrong on Google Business Profile
- Primary category left generic ("Lawyer") instead of a specific practice-area category
- Services section empty, or one vague line: "Legal services"
- Description written for search engines, stuffed with suburbs, not for the anxious human reading it
- Q&A section left blank, so a stranger's guess becomes the top answer to "do you offer fixed fees?"
- No photos beyond a logo, or a burst of reviews from one campaign years ago, then silence
The law firm GBP checklist
Business info
- ☐ Name matches your legal trading name exactly — no suburb or keyword stuffing
- ☐ Primary category is the most specific fit (e.g. "Family law attorney", not "Lawyer")
- ☐ 2–3 accurate secondary categories added
- ☐ Address matches your office, or service-area business set if no walk-ins
- ☐ Service areas set by suburb; hours accurate including public holidays
- ☐ Phone and website link match your site, pointing to a relevant practice-area page
Services, description and ongoing care
- ☐ Every practice area listed as its own service, each with a short description
- ☐ Description (up to 750 characters) in plain English — what, who for, where
- ☐ Attributes filled in: accessibility, languages spoken, online consultations
- ☐ 5–6 FAQs seeded in Q&A before the public asks (and gets it wrong)
- ☐ Real photos added quarterly; a GBP Post published fortnightly
- ☐ A compliant, consistent process for asking clients to review you, answered weekly
- ☐ NAP consistency checked across website, directories and socials
How Google actually ranks your profile
Google weighs three things locally: relevance (does your profile match the search), distance (how close you are to the searcher), and prominence (how well-known and reviewed you are). Distance is the one factor you can't optimise away — a searcher in Southport sees Southport firms first, full stop. What you can influence is relevance (category and services genuinely matching how people search) and prominence (consistent citations, review recency, and ongoing profile activity — Google can tell a profile touched monthly from one static since 2021).
Mistakes to avoid
- Choosing "Lawyer" as your primary category when a specific practice-area category fits better
- Running one listing for a multi-partner firm across five practice areas with no services breakdown, so you rank thinly for all instead of strongly for any
- Buying reviews or "review-gating" (only asking happy clients) — breaches Google's policies and can sit uncomfortably against advertising conduct rules too
- Leaving Q&A unmonitored, letting a wrong public answer sit for months
- Letting individual solicitors' names generate their own listings at the same address, competing with your firm's own profile
Frequently asked questions
Can we put our suburb in our Google Business Profile name to help rankings?
No. Google only allows your actual registered or trading name there, and legal directories are monitored closely. Firms that add "Gold Coast Family Lawyers" to a name that isn't legally that get flagged and can lose the listing entirely — a bigger cost than the ranking bump was ever worth.
How many Google reviews do we actually need to rank well?
There's no magic number, and anyone quoting you one is guessing. Recency and response rate matter more than raw volume — 20 recent, answered reviews often outperform 80 that stopped in 2022. For criminal defence and family law, client reluctance to leave a public review is real and unlikely to change; don't measure success purely on count.
Should each practice area have its own Google Business Profile?
Generally no. Google only permits a separate listing per genuine physical location, not per service line — multiple listings at one address for "divorce" and "conveyancing" risks suspension of both. The workaround is one well-built listing with every practice area properly represented.
Does replying to reviews actually affect rankings?
It appears to help modestly as a prominence signal, and it helps conversion — people notice whether a firm responds. But it's a supporting factor, not a fix for a thin or miscategorised profile. Get the fundamentals right first.
Keep reading 🤍
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