Foundation — claim, categorize, name (settings 1-5)
Sounds basic. Half the firms I audit have an unclaimed listing or a verified one in a former managing partner's personal Gmail. Both kill you.
Verify by postcard (5-7 days), phone, email, or video — Google picks the option based on category and history (see the Google Business Profile help center). Once verified, lock the listing to a firm-owned email account. Not a paralegal's. Not the marketing intern's. The firm's.
This is the single highest-leverage setting. "Personal Injury Attorney" beats "Law Firm" every time, because Google reads the primary category as the strongest signal of what you actually do. Sarvesh Shrivastava — TEDx speaker, Forbes-featured SEO consultant — put it bluntly in a June 2025 post: "Main category = your core service. Secondary categories = every related service" (Sarvesh 2025).
The trap is generality. "Law Firm" is a catch-all that competes with every solo, mid-size, and biglaw outpost in your zip code. "Estate Planning Attorney" or "Bankruptcy Attorney" narrows the SERP to the people who actually search for what you do.
You can stack up to 10 secondary categories. Use them for genuinely related services — "Trial Attorney," "Legal Services," "Estate Planning Attorney" alongside a primary of "Personal Injury Attorney" works. "Notary Public" and "Tax Attorney" do not. Irrelevant categories confuse Google's classifier and quietly tank your rankings.
Contact and content — phone, site, hours, description (settings 6-10)
This one surprises attorneys. Google's algorithm uses the phone number as a citation-matching signal. A local area code (216, 614, 305) ties the listing to a geographic market. A toll-free number (800, 888) doesn't. Use a local number as your primary, and put your toll-free or call-tracking number as the secondary if you need attribution data.
The MyCase 2025 marketing report — which surveyed law firms across the U.S. — found 70%+ of first contacts still come by phone (MyCase 2025). The phone number on your GBP is one of the highest-leverage fields on the entire page.
Single office? Point to your homepage. Multi-office? Each GBP should point to a location-specific landing page — "/cleveland-personal-injury" or "/columbus-estate-planning" — not the homepage for all of them. Location-specific pages let you match the GBP's local intent with on-page content (phone, address, attorney bios, local case results) and dramatically lift conversion from map-pack visitors.
If you don't have location pages yet, build them. We have a directory-and-landing-page playbook over at /for-law-firms that walks through the structure — and the same /for-law-firms engagement covers the GBP setup if you'd rather hand it off.
Sloppy hours kill trust. If you list 9-5 and a prospect calls at 4:45 to a voicemail, that's a lost case. If you take after-hours emergency calls (DUI, criminal defense, immigration), turn on the 24/7 emergency flag — it's a separate setting, and it shows a green "Open 24 hours" indicator on your listing. That single badge converts. Honestly.
Visual and social proof (settings 11-13)
Google quietly added a Products feature to GBP that lets you create scrollable cards with images, titles, descriptions, and links. It was built for retail. Attorneys can use it for service packages — "Estate Plan Bundle," "Probate Filing Service," "Free Case Review" — each as a card with a photo, a price (or "Free consultation"), and a click-through to the matching landing page.
I've seen exactly one firm use this in three years of audits. It works because nobody's competing for it.
Casey Meraz cites BrightLocal data: listings with photos get 35% more clicks than those without (Meraz 2026). The bar isn't "have photos." The bar is fresh, varied, descriptive photos uploaded on a monthly cadence.
Cover the categories Google asks for: exterior of the office, interior (lobby, conference room), team photos with named attorneys, your logo (transparent PNG), and any awards or press mentions. Filename matters too — cleveland-probate-attorney-office-exterior.jpg beats IMG_2847.jpg for image search.
The monthly upload signal is the real unlock. Google's local algorithm rewards activity. A profile that gets one new photo every month is read as "active business," and active businesses rank above dormant ones with identical setups.
Active surfaces (setting 14)
Google Posts are the activity feed inside your GBP. Each post lives for 7 days, then expires and disappears from the listing (though it stays in the post archive). Most attorneys ignore them. Don't.
The cadence Casey recommends — 1-2 posts per week — is achievable in 15 minutes a week. Each post needs three things: a photo or graphic, 100-300 words of body copy, and a CTA button ("Call now," "Learn more," "Sign up," "Book"). Skip the CTA button and you've built a static announcement instead of a conversion surface.
Topic ideas that actually work for attorneys:
- A new client win (anonymized — no client info, no dollar figures unless ethics rules permit)
- A practice-area FAQ ("Do I need probate if my parent had a will?")
- A state-law or local-rule update — new filing fee, statute change, court holiday schedule
- A community sponsorship or speaking event the firm is involved in
- A seasonal reminder tied to your practice area — year-end estate planning, tax-season probate filings
The maintenance ritual that compounds
Setting it up is 80% of the work. Keeping it active is the other 80% — and yes, that math is on purpose. Here's the cadence I use with clients:
Monthly (30 min):
- Review and reject inaccurate Google "suggested edits" to your profile
- Upload 3-5 fresh photos with descriptive filenames
- Audit the categories — has Google added new ones for your practice area?
What this looks like in 30 days
If your GBP is currently 60% configured (which is the median for the firms I audit), here's the order I'd run it in:
Week 1 — Foundation. Verify ownership, lock the primary category, prune the secondary list, fix the business name if it's been stuffed. Audit address/service areas. Effect: stops the bleeding.
Week 2 — Contact and content. Swap toll-free to local primary, point the website URL to a location-specific page (build one if you don't have it), accurate hours with 24/7 flag if applicable, rewrite the 750-character description, list every service you actually offer. Effect: matches local intent.
Week 3 — Visual and social proof. Upload 15-20 photos with descriptive filenames, fill out the Products feature with service packages, draft a review-request text template, respond to every old review you've ignored. Effect: lifts click-through.
Week 4 — Active surfaces. Schedule 8 Google Posts (two per week × 4 weeks ahead), seed 5-10 Q&As with your own answers. Set the monthly + weekly + quarterly maintenance calendar. Effect: compounds for months.
Disclaimer: This article is for general educational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Made For Law is not a law firm, and our team are not attorneys. We are not affiliated with any federal, state, county, or local government agency or court system. Content may be researched or drafted with AI assistance and is reviewed by our editorial team before publication. Laws change frequently — always verify information with official sources and consult a licensed attorney for advice specific to your situation. Full disclaimer
- Google Business Profile help centersupport.google.com
Alex Tarlescu is co-founder of Made For Law — the SaaS platform that gives attorneys embeddable legal calculators with built-in lead capture. He's also co-founder of Good Smart Idea, the sister marketing agency that handles broader marketing engagements for law firms. Based in Cleveland with nearly 20 years of experience in sales, digital marketing, and AI automation, he writes about marketing — not legal advice — and the systems that turn website visitors into signed clients.
Alex Tarlescu is co-founder of Made For Law — the SaaS platform that gives attorneys embeddable legal calculators with built-in lead capture. He's also co-founder of Good Smart Idea, the sister marketing agency that handles broader marketing engagements for law firms. Based in Cleveland with nearly 20 years of experience in sales, digital marketing, and AI automation, he writes about marketing — not legal advice — and the systems that turn website visitors into signed clients.
