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Helping Clients Give You a Positive Review or Testimonial

By SLS Consulting on February 10, 2024

According to Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines (SQRG), trustworthiness is an important factor used to calibrate the algorithms that determine how your legal website will rank in Google search engine queries. Positive client reviews on Google Reviews, Yelp, and other rating sites will enhance your firm’s reputation and increase the likelihood that your website will appear at the top of the page in Google search engine results pages (SERPs). You can also solicit video testimonials directly from clients.

Positive reviews and testimonials may be used on your website and across marketing channels to provide social proof that will increase trustworthiness and encourage new clients to choose your law firm. But there are some clients out there who may have difficulty providing you with a positive review or testimonial for technical reasons. Perhaps they don’t have a Google or Yelp account, or maybe they don’t know how to record a video and share it with you.

Fortunately, there are easy ways to assist clients who want to give you a positive review.

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Posted in: Online Review Sites

Ask SLS: Is It Better to Get Written or Video Reviews from Your Clients?

By SLS Consulting on December 9, 2019

Today, we’re tackling the world of client reviews. Whether you’re placing reviews on your website, asking clients to leave you reviews on a third-party site, or setting up a camera and asking them say a few words about what it was like to work with you, you can never go wrong with getting feedback from clients. Not only will it potentially help your marketing efforts, but it also comes in handy if you’re constantly trying to improve the quality of service your law firm is delivering. That said, our question for today is…
Written Review
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Posted in: Online Review Sites

Everything You Ever Needed to Know About Online Reviews!

By SLS Consulting on December 13, 2018

Whether you’re looking for a new restaurant to try, deciding which hotel to stay in, or even trying to find a new mechanic to work on your car, the odds are pretty good that you took a look at an online review site to help you make your decision. Even though online reviews can sometimes be questionable, they do represent crowdsourced opinions regarding specific businesses, and people often find reviews more reliable than how a company markets itself. In short, people often trust other people more than they do the business.

For lawyers, obtaining client reviews can be difficult, but the potential benefits are huge! Not only do online reviews help differentiate you from your competition, but they can also provide valuable insight that can have a big impact on conversion and signing new cases. Let’s take a look at some specific review sites and how law firms should strategize for each one.
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Posted in: Online Review Sites

The SLS Minute – Episode 2 – New Year, New Reviews

By SLS Consulting on February 14, 2017

Watch SLSer Scott gives a full rundown on why customer reviews are so important for ranking on Google and how you can get a few of your own.

Posted in: Online Review Sites

Give Local Reviews to Land a Client or Two in the Future

By SLS Consulting on September 22, 2014

Local Marketing FirmThere’s no denying that reviews on local search sites, like Google+ and Yelp, are critical pieces of the search result rankings pie, but the approach that personal injury attorneys take towards obtaining new reviews doesn’t need to be as daunting as they think. While it is certainly beneficial for attorneys to get reviews from satisfied former clients, it’s also important that they don’t forget to create a review symbiosis with the other local companies that they frequently do business with.

Let’s say, for instance, that your law firm hosts a monthly lunch for your staff. Sometimes you go out to a restaurant, while other times you have the food catered. Since your law firm is doing business with these local businesses, it is well within review site guidelines for your law firm to leave a review for them (you can easily write reviews as your law firm on Google+). While the restaurant or catering company may not be able to reciprocate and leave your law firm a review for its legal services, that doesn’t mean that writing such a review for another business is a complete waste of time. Read the rest »

Posted in: Online Review Sites

Yelper Convicted for Defamation Due to Angry Reviews

By SLS Consulting on February 21, 2014

Online Management Firm A multi-day Virginia trial recently concluded with a woman convicted of defamation for her scathing online review of a local contractor. As reported by Eater.com, the defamation charge stems from a one-star review that she published on Yelp back in 2011.

The Yelp review claimed that the contractor not only botched the job he performed for her, but also stole her jewelry and damaged her home. While the review has been deleted since then, the man filed a $750,000 lawsuit against her, stating that she had committed defamation and cost him thousands of dollars in lost business.

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Posted in: Online Review Sites

Why Focusing on One Online Review Site Might Not Be the Best Strategy

By SLS Consulting on July 10, 2013

Pasadena Online MarketingHave you ever heard the expression “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket”?

If you haven’t, it plainly means that you shouldn’t devote all of your efforts to one individual endeavor. In the world of online reviews, it roughly means that you shouldn’t just focus on one individual review site to obtain reviews.  Instead, you should attempt to create and foster a well-rounded review profile across multiple sites.  Not only will Internet searchers appreciate the variety of reviews, but search engines may give you a boost in search results as well.

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Can You Pay to Remove Negative Reviews? Yelpers Can’t…

By SLS Consulting on June 27, 2013

When it comes to online reviews, one of the most frequently asked questions we receive centers around paid advertising. Specifically, we’re often asked whether or not paying for advertising gives a company more leeway when it comes to removing negative reviews. The short answer to this question is an emphatic NO. However, that’s not to say that paid advertising doesn’t have its benefits.

Many businesses assume that if a review website is willing to offer a premium listing, then that review website must certainly be willing to remove a negative review or two at the business’s request. While there may be some sites out there that are willing to bend the rules for their paying customers, most respectable online review sites (the kind that search engines like Google actually pay attention to) are not willing to compromise their online credibility in order to pacify businesses with negative reviews that also happen to be willing to pay. Read the rest »