Legal Search Marketing Blog

Blogs Can Enhance Your Reputation As a Reliable Authority

All lawyers who are serious about Internet Marketing should have a web site and make sure its optimized for keywords related to the firms practice but they also should seriously consider starting a weblog or Blog.

A legal blog is affordable, can help with your search engine rankings and best of all your law blog enhances your reputation as a trusted and reliable authority in your area of the law.

I am working with Lexblog in helping some of my existing clients who want to expand their online marketing efforts.  Some lawyers have expressed concern to me about keeping the blog updated and fresh. Yet I assure them that its a very easy process and that with the right training, its pretty simple.

Yet some lawyers just don't have the time to blog and for those attorneys, my company is offering blog management services, including blog maintenance, advanced search engine optimization and content creation assistance.

Difference Between "Search" and "Content" In Google Adwords

When you setup a Google adwords account, your ads are automatically 'opted in' to run on the entire Google Network.

Search Total and Content Total, which appear in your Campaign Summary and Report Center reports, represent the two types of sites where your ads can be displayed within the Google network. 

Search Total shows the impressions your ad has received from search results pages generated by Google and by Google Network search partners. On these sites, your ads are displayed alongside the results from searches matching your keywords. (If you opt out of Google Network search sites, then the Search Total numbers will reflect results only from searches generated by Google.)

Content Total shows the impressions that your ad receives on content sites or products in the Google Network. On these sites, your ads are displayed alongside content relevant to your keywords. Your ads may appear on news sites, personal web pages, emails or many other types of content sites and products.

See examples of where your ads may appear on the Google Network.   You can opt out of the Google Network at any time by editing your distribution preferences.

You can get more exposure by leaving them as they are but sometimes you might want to turn off the content part.

Ive just always thought there's more chance for click fraud and sometimes the cost per click is higher, which doesn't seem right, plus you never know exactly where the ads are showing. Sometimes though you want as much traffic as possible and this does give you more exposure.

Valuable Lesson For Lawyers Who Want To Use Google AdWords

$39.52 for one click for the term "Chicago estate planning lawyer"?

I had a lawyer client who setup his own Google AdWords account and made the mistake of setting his maximum CPC (Cost per click) at $40.00 for every key phrase he setup.

The thing that stood out to me when reviewing and updating the account, was that he only got one click for Chicago estate planning lawyer but he was charged $39.52, which seems crazy since at Overture the top bid for that term is $1.51 and you can get into the top 5 for 14 cents.

Now once I took over the account and adjusted a few things, especially the max CPC, the average cost per click is now only $1.30. 

I'm waiting for Googles explanation but I think it comes down to setting the bid so high, then having competitors who were also bidding high on that term.

Its a valuable lesson for lawyers to learn that its important to understand just how Google AdWords works before setting up an account and bidding so high, otherwise you might be in for an unpleasant surprise.

Google More than a One-Hit Wonder

The Motley Fool explains why Google is more than the "one-hit wonder" claimed by Microsoft's CEO, Steve Ballmer.

...rather than argue about Ballmer's gutsy move in biting the hand that feeds his audience, let's get into how hypocritically preposterous that accusation seems. Microsoft was once erroneously tagged as a one-hit wonder when it was simply providing personal computers with its operating-system software...If Google is a one hit wonder, Steve... man, oh, man, just wait until you check out the B-side.

Follow Up On Wordtracker Keyword Accuracy

A follow up to my post last week about the Wordtracker keyword tool bringing back inaccurate and misleading results for the search phrase of "chicago lawyers".

So what I did was setup a campaign with Google adwords for the 10 keyphrases and bid low just so I could see the stat results from Google which shows how many times these keywords were searched over the last week at Google.

Now wordtracker had reported that Chicago wrongful death lawyers had a high count in its database and that it would produce more traffic then the more general "chicago lawyers". Now at Google after a week, they are showing that chicago attorney got 304 searches, chicago lawyer 129 and chicago wrongful death lawyers only 13 searches (See Table).

Keyword	Clicks	Impressions	CTR	Avg. CPC	Cost	Avg. Pos
chicago attorney	1	304	0.3%	$0.14	$0.14	8.2
chicago lawyer	1	129	0.7%	$0.31	$0.31	10.2
chicago lawyers	1	56	1.7%	$0.30	$0.30	7.8
chicago attorneys	2	41	4.8%	$0.29	$0.57	6.3
chicago wrongful death lawyers	0	13	0.0%	-	-	6.4
chicago car accident lawyers	0	7	0.0%	-	-	3.8
chicago personal injury lawyers	0	4	0.0%	-	-	8.3
chicago accident lawyers	0	2	0.0%	-	-	8.0
chicago injury lawyers	0	2	0.0%	-	-	12.0
chicago brain injury lawyers	0	1	0.0%	-	-	5.0

So that proves my point that wordtrackers data was incorrect for those search phrases. I'm sort of surprised that the singular versions got so many more searches then the plural versions, and also that Chicago attorney got more searches then Chicago lawyer but this is only a short period of time. I will monitor the results and blog about it after a month and also see if wordtrackers data has gotten any more accurate.

Google Launches AdSense for RSS Feeds

From the Google Blog, Google has launched Adsense for RSS Feeds, which enables publishers distributing content through RSS (Really Simple Syndication) or Atom feeds to include relevant text ads in their feeds and receive a share of the revenue generated by ad clicks.

Enter AdSense for feeds, launching today in beta. The idea is simple: advertisers have their ads placed in the most appropriate feed articles; publishers are paid for their original content; readers see relevant advertising - and in the long run, more quality feeds to choose from.

Given the great flexibility that feeds can offer, it’s essential to get the model right, especially so that readers are satisfied. Towards this end we have outlined what we believe are some best practices for advertising in feeds.

Publishers who want to participate in the public beta can apply here.

Market your Law Firm with official US Postage Photo Stamp

Good post from the Justia legal blog about Stamps.com relaunching their personalized US postage stamp program.

You can use your own photos to make custom official US postage photo stamps. Law Firms can use photo stamps as an inexpensive way to market their services (the stamp cost is about 1.6x - 2.3x the price of postage, with additional higher volume discounts (see photo stamps pricing)).

This would be a great idea for law firms or really anyone to promote their brand to clients or potential clients. Its also inexpensive and very unique.

Yahoo Dispute with FindWhat Ends in Hung Jury

FindWhat.com's patent infringement dispute with Overture Services, Inc. ended in a hung jury, according to CNN Money.

Wordtracker Keyword Results Not Always Accurate

I use Wordtracker all the time to do keyword research and its probably the best keyword tool out there, yet Ive always said that its not a perfect science and sometimes I'm skeptical of the results.

The first thing to know is that the way they report all the results is somewhat confusing, they give you two different columns, one a "Count" and then the 2nd is a "Predict" number. (See Below) 

Keyword

Count

Predict

chicago wrongful death lawyers

83

71

Usually these #'s are pretty close but here are the definitions of what "Count" and "Predict" mean exactly from the Wordtracker site.

Count - This shows the number of times a particular keyword has appeared in our database. E.g. Our database currently holds 373 million words. A count of 147 tells us that this particular word has appeared 147 times out of 373 million (this is over a two month period).   

Predicted - This is the maximum total predicted traffic for all of the major search engines/pay per bids and directories. It is based on the current 24 hour period.

SO, the count # is the number of times the keyword has appeared in the database over the last 2 months. The Predict # is just a prediction of how many times max that keyword would be searched in a 24 hour period at ALL the search engines.

This database of keywords is from meta-crawlers and not from any of the big search engines actual search database. According to Wordtracker, "We get our data from metacrawlers, rather than the search engines themselves. After all, the metacrawlers contain the results from the search engines."

This might be true but I still would probably rather have the #'s direct from Google as to the number of searches done and the keywords used.   

I do know that I tend to question the results from Wordtracker from time to time.  I mean as a quick example I was doing  some keyword research on the term "Chicago Lawyers" and wordtracker brought back some very interesting results (see below), they said that the key phrase "Chicago wrongful death lawyers" has a count of 83 and a predict # of 71, which is much higher then the more general term "Chicago Lawyers" which has a count of 26 and predict # of 22.

WORDTRACKER RESULTS FOR "CHICAGO LAWYERS"

Keyword

Count

Predict

chicago wrongful death lawyers	83	71
chicago injury lawyers	82	70
chicago accident lawyers	80	68
chicago car accident lawyers	70	60
chicago personal injury lawyers	67	57
chicago medical malpractice lawyers	62	53
chicago slip and fall lawyers	60	51
chicago malpractice lawyers	57	49
chicago auto accident lawyers	56	48
chicago motorcycle accident lawyers	48	41
chicago dog bite lawyers	35	30
chicago product liability lawyers	34	29
chicago nursing home abuse lawyers	29	25
chicago lawyers	26	22

Notice it also lists many other keyphrases with higher numbers such as "chicago accident lawyers" and "chicago injury lawyers". I thought to myself though, no way is that possible because it just seems like that specific search would never get as many searches as a more general term like "Chicago Lawyers".

So I went to Google Adwords and used the keyword tool and the predictions were much different and more realistic I thought (SEE TABLE BELOW).

Traffic Estimates from Google Adwords - 5/11/05

Keywords	Clicks / Day	Average Cost-Per-Click	Cost / Day	Average Position [?]
chicago accident lawyers	1.0	$0.28	$0.26	1.8
chicago attorney	15.0	$1.49	$22.22	1.8
chicago attorneys	9.4	$1.26	$11.78	2.0
chicago brain injury lawyers	< 0.1	$0.05	$0.00	1.0
chicago car accident lawyers	< 0.1	$0.05	$0.00	1.0
chicago dog bite lawyers	< 0.1	$0.05	$0.00	1.0
chicago injury lawyers	0.3	$1.44	$0.46	3.5
chicago lawyer	8.6	$1.50	$12.85	2.6
chicago lawyers	13.0	$1.39	$18.00	2.6
chicago personal injury lawyers	0.2	$1.79	$0.41	3.5
chicago slip and fall lawyers	< 0.1	$0.05	$0.00	1.0
chicago vioxx lawyers	< 0.1	$0.05	$0.00	1.0
chicago wrongful death lawyer	< 0.1	$0.05	$0.00	1.0
chicago wrongful death lawyers	< 0.1	$0.05	$0.00	1.0
Overall	47.5	$1.39	$65.98	2.2

Notice how Chicago lawyers & Chicago attorneys would both get about 12-15 clicks per day, BUT "Chicago wrongful death lawyers" would get LESS then one click a day.   PLUS notice it would only be 5 cents per click for that term, which really says that it gets no action at all and nobody is interested in it.

SO that tells me the numbers from Wordtracker are way off, at least for the keywords Ive listed. I mean they are saying that the term "Chicago Lawyers" only appeared 26 times in 2 months. 

Yet according to Google, if you were listed in the top 3 for that term, you could get 12-15 visitors a day. That might be high but its at least 5-10 per day, because I have clients that are listed for that term and I monitor the traffic.

Wordtracker is still a great tool and it usually is more accurate then this example.  I usually use Wordtracker in combination with the Overture and Google keyword tools for the best possible results.

Google Confirms Bugs in Web Accelerator

Matt Hicks confirms that Google Accelerator does indeed have a bug that can cause users to see web pages under other users' logins.

Google officials Friday confirmed that the company was aware of as many as five sites where Web Accelerator was returning users cached pages under other people's user names.

"It is an unfortunate problem, but it looks worse than it is," Mayer said. "We are caching those pages on the server side with the user name on them…You see it, but it's important to point out that you are not logged in as user and you do not have the session cookies needed to perform operations as [that] user."

Update From Search Engine Lowdown:

It appears that Google is on the ball. They've stopped allowing downloads of Accelerator, while they fix the bugs. From the download site:

Thank you for your interest in Google Web Accelerator. We have currently reached our maximum capacity of users and are actively working to increase the number of users we can support.