Legal Search Marketing Blog

Mobile Image Ads Now Available via Adwords

What are mobile ads?

Mobile ads are a format of AdWords ads that appear on mobile websites, and are available as either text or image ads. Mobile text ads can also appear when users search Google from a mobile device. With either type of ad, users who click on your ad will be sent to your mobile webpage. With mobile text ads, you also have the option to connect users to your business phone.

How do I create a mobile webpage?

You can create a mobile webpage for free through Google's free AdWords Business Pages for mobile ads service, although this feature isn't available in all countries. AdWords advertisers can set up business page in a few quick and easy steps.

You can also create a mobile website of your own by rewriting your page in a mobile markup language, such as XHTML, WML, and CHTML. You should also make sure the layout of your website is properly formatted to display on mobile phones.

Latest Legal Mini Site

Creating a mini site for your legal practice can be a good idea for a few reasons. If you have multiple practice areas or multiple geographic locations, it can be a good idea to create a separate site that focuses just on that area.

The key is creating a unique site with unique content and if done right, you can then have multiple sites listed in the top 10 at Google and other search engines.

The latest mini site we have done is for the Law Offices of Robert Kornfeld. We created a site that focuses on seattle car accident law.  This site focuses on a specific geographic location and a specific set of keywords.

if your law firm would like to create a legal mini site, contact us today.

Change to Google Adwords URL Policy

From Google Adwords as of 4/01/08



Important Change to URL Policy Enforcement
Starting in April, display URLs for new ads will be required to match their destination / landing page URLs, without exception. Please adjust your URLs accordingly when creating new ads.

Based on feedback from both our advertisers and users, and consistent with our efforts to present relevant results, we'll no longer allow certain exceptions to our display URL policy. These include, but aren't limited to, redirects and vanity URLs. In line with our existing policy, we'll continue to require that your ad's display URL matches its destination URL (the URL of your landing page). This policy will be strictly enforced for new ads, regardless of previous exceptions.

While no immediate action will be taken on existing ads, we encourage you to make the necessary changes to all ads within your account. This will ensure that your ads run without being disrupted by future disapprovals related to this policy enforcement.

For further details visit Google adwords

Saving Money at Pay Per Click is Good, Getting top 10 Organic Rankings is Better

A few backs I blogged about the importance of making sure that your Google Adwords campaign is properly optimized. 

Many times lawyers will create an Adwords campaign and not really pay attention to it or use the Pay Per Clicks search engines optimization suggestions, which can result in you paying a lot more money then you should.  We will easily save this client at least $3,000 a month, if not more as a result of reviewing and adjusting his campaigns.

TOP 10 ORGANIC RESULTS ARE VALUABLE
More important though is having top 10 organic results at Google for the same keywords your bidding on via Pay Per Click.  The best thing about the organic listings are they are free!   So if your paying $20 per click on average and you get 100 visitors for the month via the organic listings, that would value your organic listing at $2,000 each month and thats just for one keyphrase.

SAVE MONEY AT PPC & GET TOP 10 ORGANIC RANKINGS
The same Massachusetts Drunk Driving Lawyer that we helped save money on the Pay per click ads, we have now also gotten him top 10 rankings at Google organics for many of the same terms he is bidding on.  Some of the terms are 
- Massachusetts OUI (#6)
- OUI Lawyers Mass (#4)
- Massachusetts DUI (#6)
- Massachusetts DWI (#8)
- Massachusetts Drunk Driving Lawyers (#8)

I already see an increase in traffic from the organic listings. So as a result of our Internet Marketing work, the client has not only saved over $3000 a month but now has many top 10 organic listings and is now getting more traffic and visitors then ever before, which will result in more clients.

If we can be of assistance to your legal practice, with either pay per click marketing or organic optimization, please contact us.

Example of Search Engine Traffic to Law Firm Website

Below are the stats of a Seattle Personal Injury Law Firm website and this is all of the traffic from free or organic search engine listings in 2007. 

Out of the 8500 total visitors, almost 69% or 6000 of them came from Google, which proves Google is the most important of the search engines.  MSN and Yahoo still do produce traffic though, so you have to optimize for each of them but Google is the King of traffic!

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Search Engine	Referrals	Percent
Google	5,874	68.98%
MSN	808	9.49%
Yahoo! Web Sites	673	7.90%
Google AdSense for Content	241	2.83%
Microsoft Live Search	209	2.45%
Google Canada	188	2.21%
AOL	156	1.83%
Google U.K.	89	1.05%
Ask	76	0.89%
Dogpile	34	0.40%
Google India	20	0.23%
Excite	16	0.19%
MetaCrawler	11	0.13%
Yahoo! Web Sites Canada	8	0.09%
Google Spain	8	0.09%
Google New Zealand	7	0.08%
Google Ireland	6	0.07%
Google South Africa	6	0.07%
AltaVista	6	0.07%
Google Germany	6	0.07%
Google France	5	0.06%
Google China	5	0.06%
Google Netherlands	5	0.06%
Google Italy	5	0.06%
Google Poland	5	0.06%
Google Sweden	4	0.05%
Mamma	4	0.05%
MSN Australia	3	0.04%
Open Directory Categories (dmoz.org)	3	0.04%
HotBot	3	0.04%
Google Israel	3	0.04%
Google Belgium	3	0.04%
Google Bulgaria	3	0.04%
Google Finland	2	0.02%
Ask U.K.	2	0.02%
Netscape	2	0.02%
Yahoo! Web Sites U.K.	2	0.02%
Yahoo! Web Sites Singapore	1	0.01%
Search.com	1	0.01%
MSN U.K.	1	0.01%
All the Web	1	0.01%
AOL U.K.	1	0.01%
Google Austria	1	0.01%
Google Japan	1	0.01%
Google Kenya	1	0.01%
Google Portugal	1	0.01%
Google Russia	1	0.01%
Google Philippines	1	0.01%
Lycos	1	0.01%
Google Switzerland	1	0.01%
Google Turkey	1	0.01%
Google Sri Lanka	1	0.01%
Total 52:	8,516	100.00%

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This organic traffic is all very valuable and it can lead to many new clients.  If you would like a free analysis on your legal website, contact us today.

How To Save a Client $200 on Day 1 and $1000 in Week 1 with Google Adwords

Usually when I take over pay per click accounts, the person is usually overpaying for visitors to their sites.

Ive had many occasions where the person is paying $20 or more to much per click, usually because they set one high amount for their max bid on all keywords.  If you say you will bid a max of $60 per click, there's a good chance you will and that can really add up.

In the case of this client, who is a Boston criminal Dui lawyer, he was paying a high amount per click so that he could be at the top of the sponsored matches. 

$25 A CLICK SAVINGS IN FIRST WEEK, $1000 SAVED

You can see in the chart below that on Feb.12, 2008 he was paying on average $35.83 per click and he was on average in position 1.3. Yet on Feb. 14 the first full day after I took over and made changes, he got the same # of clicks but was only paying $10.69 per click and the only downfall, is he slipped to ad position 2.3, no big deal but what a savings of $25 per click.

Then if you look at the totals for the first week where I took over compared to the first 10 days of February, we got more clicks for over $1,000 less. This is only one campaign of 5, so just a portion of the overall savings.

Looking at the amount spent on 2007 ($45,000+) we would wind up saving the client over $25,000 at least just for this one campaign, and probably wind up getting more clicks.

Part of the reason he is getting more clicks for less is because when you set your bid to high, you might meet your daily budget much quicker, so your ads will be taken down until the next day.   

Here are the stats for the first 7 days of when I took over, the 10 days prior and then the totals for Jan. 2008 and the entire 2007.

DATE RANGE:	CLICKS	IMPRESSIONS	AVG. CPC	TOTAL COST	AVG. POSITION
FEB. 12, 2008	8	864	$35.83	$286.67	1.3
FEB. 13, 2008	2	504	$ 3.27	$ 6.54	1.8
FEB. 14, 2008	8	1609	$10.69	$ 85.49	2.3
FEB. 15, 2008	7	1135	$10.23	$71.59	2.9
FEB. 16, 2008	12	711	$ 8.46	$ 101.51	3.0
FEB. 17, 2008	18	543	$ 7.08	$ 127.44	2.7
FEB. 18, 2008	14	675	$ 8.14	$ 113.91	2.5
TOTALS (2/12 - 2/18/08)	69	6,141	$11.49	$793.15	2.4
TOTALS (2/1 - 2/10/08) PRIOR TO MY DOING THE UPDATES	65	2,926	$28.84	$1,874.37	1.3
TOTALS (1/1 - 1/31/08)	253	11,600	$29.60	$7,489	1.2
TOTALS 2007	1,885	93,634	$24.77	$45,942	1.3

These are some huge savings and it won't always be that much but usually I find that there's always some room for improvement on pay per click campaigns. You really have to pay attention to them and track the progress and it helps to hire someone who does it all the time.

If we can assist your law firm with pay per click marketing, contact us today and we will review your campaigns and help save you money.

We will be helping this client save even more money once we do his organic optimization work. It makes sense to have top 10 rankings for keywords your bidding over $25 per click on! Once that is achieved, then you can reduce the amount spent on pay per click.

Bigger Lawfirms Don't Do SEO

Most lawyers that contact me for doing organic search engine optimization or pay per click marketing are smaller law firms and solo attorneys.

CAN YOUR FIRMS ATTORNEYS BE FOUND WHEN THEY ARE GOOGLED?

I usually notice that bigger law firms websites aren't optimized and sometimes you can't even find key partners when "googling" them, let alone finding the firms site for keywords related to their practice areas.

I would think that bigger law firms with big marketing budgets would do more with search engine optimization and pay per click marketing.  This is good news though for the smaller firms of the world, they can compete and beat the bigger guys in online advertising.

MOST LAWFIRM MARKETING DIRECTORS DONT GET SEO

I do have a number of bigger law firms that do recognize the value of search engine optimization and thats usually because of a sharp law marketing director.  Yet I find most law firm marketing directors don't seem to understand how important it is to have some optimization done on the firms site, at the very least make sure your firm and its partners can be found at Google.

I do see more and more lawyers recognizing that online marketing is the wave of the future and replacing the yellow pages and traditional ways to advertise.

The latest large law firm client that we are working for is a Canadian law firm with multiple locations including Toronto, New York & London.

If you law firm needs assistance with search engine optimization or pay per click marketing, contact us today.

JDSupra Free User Generated Legal Document, Forms & Brief Library

JDSupra has officially launched and opened its site to the public. The JDSupra site allows legal professionals to upload legal documents, memos, forms, filings and briefs and share them with the legal community. On the marketing front, lawyers and law firms can have their own detailed profile page that promotes their practice.

This seems to be one sharp product and its FREE!  This is another way to get your firm recognized and for an extra fee you can get a link to your website.   It lets lawyers create a profile and then upload a variety of documents but you can also search the database for information and it seems to be a very useful legal research tool.

source: Justia

Google Adwords Can be Very Expensive

Google adwords is by far the best place to bid on keywords for your legal practice BUT you have to be very careful that you don't overbid.  I have had more then one lawyer who has paid 10 times the amount per click then they had to.

Some people are under the impression that the more you bid, the better your results but thats not true.  You might be guaranteed of a higher placement but in the long run you will waste a lot of money.

Sometimes you have no choice but to bid a high amount if you have a lot of competition and you want to be in the top 3. Yet usually you can get in the top 3 and not pay a premium price.

An example is the term Boston DUI lawyer, if you bid a max CPC of $60, you would probably pay around $20 per click. Now if that same person had lowered the max CPC to $10, then they would only pay around $3-4 per click and still be in the top 3 positions at adwords.  The savings over time can be $1000's of per month and more.

With a savings like that, you could then hire an organic SEO specialist like myself and save even more money in the long run!!

Latest Legal Web Design Project

We have created a new website for New York Construction Lawyer Allan Bahn.  This is a separate site then the firms main site and focuses on Mr. Bahns specific areas of legal practice. 

The site focuses on New York Construction law, New York Criminal Defense, New York Business law & New York Governmental law.

It can be a very good idea to have multiple websites, as long as they are each focused on a specific group of keywords and don't contain duplicate content.