Find a Solicitor, ReviewSolicitors or your own website: what each sends a firm

The directories are useful to a firm and not sufficient for one. Find a Solicitor, ReviewSolicitors and the comparison sites rank above most firms and send clients, but they send them to a profile that looks like every other firm's, and the client still opens your own site before ringing. The honest answer to "directories or our own website" is both, in the right order: complete and consistent entries everywhere, pointing at the practice pages on a site that is better than the entry. This guide is what each sends, what each costs a firm, and how to make them work together.

What the directories are good at

They rank. The Law Society's Find a Solicitor is the register the public is told to use; ReviewSolicitors has become the review site clients read; the comparison sites hold "conveyancing quote" in most towns. For a firm with a weak site and few reviews, a complete entry with answered reviews is the fastest way to appear in front of a client, and the badge does some of the trust work a new site cannot yet do.

What they are bad at

• The entry looks like everyone's. A template profile with the same badges as the firm above and below, and nowhere to show the person or the process.
• The comparison sites sell on price. A client who arrives from one has been shown a number and is comparing numbers.
• The reviews are theirs. Years of reviews on a platform do little for your Google profile, and they stay with the platform.
• Some charge for prominence. The fee rises with the work, and the client relationship stays on the platform.

What your own site and profiles are good at

Closing the referral: the accountant gives your name, the client searches it, and your site with the people, the fees and dated reviews is what they find. Ranking each office in the map pack, which no directory can do for you. Ranking for the practice searches over time, with pages the directories cannot write because they do not know your work. Keeping the enquiry, the reviews and the relationship yours. And costing the same whether you win one matter a month or twenty.

What your own site is bad at

Being there on day one for the practice searches. A new site ranks for the firm's name in weeks and for the office town when the profile is right, but "conveyancing solicitors <town>" takes months, and a new site has no reviews to show. That gap is what the directories are for.

The order

1. Complete the Find a Solicitor entry and claim the ReviewSolicitors profile, with the same name, address, telephone and practice areas as the site.
2. Point each directory entry at the relevant practice page on your site, not at the homepage.
3. Ask for Google reviews at the end of every matter; ask for a ReviewSolicitors review where the client is willing to do both. Google's stays yours.
4. Answer every review on every platform within a day.
5. When Search Console shows the practice pages bringing enquiries, any paid directory prominence becomes optional. Keep it if the arithmetic works.

The test: for the last twenty instructions, write down where each came from. If most came from referral and the site had no part, the site is overdue. If a paid directory sends fewer than it costs, it is optional.

A note on badges

The Law Society accreditations, CQS, Lexcel, Resolution, STEP, the SRA digital badge: they are worth something to a client and to Google. Put them on the practice pages with what each means, not in a logo strip in the footer. The site is where the badges work for the firm rather than for the directory.