Legal Search Marketing

Archive for the ‘Google AdWords’ Category

Google introduced a new match type, well, a modifier to a match type that helps you control your match types a bit more. The modifier lets you be more specific with your broad match keywords, but be more lax than the phrase based match.

This new modifier is named the “broad match modifier” and it is currently being tested in Canada and the U.K. To implement the modifier, just put a plus symbol (+) directly in front of one or more words in a broad match keyword. Each word preceded by a + has to appear in your potential customer’s search exactly or as a close variant. Close variants include misspellings, singular/plural forms, abbreviations and acronyms, and stemmings (like “floor” and “flooring”). Synonyms (like “quick” and “fast”) and related searches (like “flowers” and “tulips”) aren’t considered close variants.

The graphic below illustrates the relative reach of different keyword match type strategies. As you can see, modified broad match keywords match more searches than the equivalent phrase match keyword, but fewer searches than the equivalent broad match keyword. Match behavior also depends on the specific words you modify. For example, the keyword formal +shoes will match the search “evening shoes,” but the keyword +formal +shoes will not.

During initial tests, advertisers who mainly used phrase and exact match found that adding modified broad match keywords increased campaign clicks and conversions, while providing more precise control than with broad match.

This seems like a good idea and hopefully they launch this in the USA soon!

Setting up a Google adwords Pay Per Click account is easy.  Getting the best value from it is not.  Ive had many clients who have just setup a few basics and not paid attention to their campaigns and as a result have overpaid for keywords that sometimes aren't even that relevant to their legal practice.

If your only spending a $100-500 per month, then its not that big of a deal if you make a few mistakes, but if your spending $5,000 – 10,000 per month, then you have a lot of room to make mistakes and overspend.

I have one client who before we took over his account was spending about $10,000 per month. After we optimized his accountt and fine tuned all the keywords and ads, he was only spending about $3,500 per month and getting more clicks!  I've had other clients who set their maximum cost per click (CPC) bid very high and wound up paying like $60 for a click when they could have just paid $5 or less.

Then there are people who don't bother looking at their quality score or they create one campaign with one ad group that has 50 keywords and only one general ad. You MUST create multiple campaigns with many different ad groups, each focusing on a group of keywords and using multiple ads. This is one of the best ways to lower the cost you pay per click.

There are many other factors that go into running a successful Google adwords campaign. If your law firm needs assistance with setting up and maintaining a Google adwords account, please contact us.

What is Google AdWords?

This is Googles pay per click program. If you type
in a search term like "Chicago Lawyers"
and click search, two types of search results come up: on the
left and below the search box are the organic search results
that are also known as natural or free results and on the right side of your browser screen, and sometimes
above the organic results, are the Sponsored Links.

An advertiser only pays Google for the times
when someone actually clicks on the ad and goes through to the
advertiser's website. Thus the term, "Pay Per Click".

BIDDING MORE IS NOT ALWAYS THE ANSWER

The higher the advertiser bids on a keyword combined with the users Google quality score will determine how high the ad ranks. So it's not always a matter
of bidding the highest amount, your campaigns have to be optimized so that they produce a high CTR – click through rate.

So this basically means you should create a number of different campaigns and ad groups and focus the ads on the keywords your bidding on.  If you only create one campaign and one adgroup and have like 50 keywords, your ads wont match up to the keywords your bidding on, so your quality score will be low and your ads wont show up as much, your won't get a high CTR and you will wind up paying more per click.

Sometimes its a good idea to
lower your Cost Per Click (CPC) and instead of being #1 for $2.50
a click, you can be #4 for only 50 cents a click. It takes some
tweaking and experimenting with different strategies but the goal
is to drive as much focused and qualified traffic to your site
for the best possible value.

There is no doubt that Internet marketing and pay per click marketing work, if you setup a Google adwords campaign and focus on the keywords related to your firms practice and have a professional monitor and maintain the account, theres a really good chance thaty ou will get a lot of traffic to your site of people looking for your firms speciality.

Marketing is more important than ever

94% of CMOs believe that "a tough economic period is precisely the time when marketing plays a key role."

Consumers will look online more

This year has seen a 10% increase in people who research online before buying in the store. Additionally, Compete, Inc. reports a 21.8% growth in oline search queries from last year to this year. *

* From Google Adwords Tactics 2008

We can help your law practice market via Google
Adwords. We have helped many attorneys market via Adwords and
have driven a steady stream of qualified visitors that have turned
into new clients. Adwords is one of the best ways to market your
site online and it can give you immediate results.

Contact us
today to see how we can help your law firm succeed with Google
adwords.

Google Inc. announced today it was dropping plans to provide some ads on Yahoo search results pages and publisher sites, laying to rest fears that the partnership would increase Google’s dominance in search marketing and lead to higher prices on pay-per-click ads.

Since announcing plans for the partnership in June, Google and Yahoo Inc. have been negotiating with the government about possible modifications that would address objections from advertisers. “However, after four months of review, including discussions of various possible changes to the agreement, it’s clear that government regulators and some advertisers continue to have concerns about the agreement,” Google chief legal officer David Drummond said in a statement today.

The government made clear in its own statement that it viewed the proposed deal as anticompetitive. “The arrangement likely would have denied consumers the benefits of competition—lower prices, better service and greater innovation,” Thomas O. Barnett, the assistant attorney general who heads up the antitrust division of the Department of Justice, said in the statement.

In its own statement, Yahoo expressed disappointment over Google’s decision, but says the deal was only an add-on to Yahoo’s own product road map “and does not change Yahoo’s commitment to innovation and growth in search.”

Google’s announcement is good news for search advertisers, says Mark Simon, vice president of industry relations at search marketing firm Didit LLC. “As Google’s reach in the search landscape has grown exponentially, it is important to the advertiser that there remains viable competition in this ecosystem,” Simon says. “Without having those options, we are all under the direct control of the lead horse.” He added his hope that Yahoo, the second-leading search engine, and No. 3 Microsoft Corp. “can help create this environment of choice for the marketer.”

Search marketing firm SearchIgnite released a report in July saying that pay-per-click ad prices could go up as much as 22% as a result of the planned Google-Yahoo partnership.  Source

Im not sure how much this would have raised any prices, I mean the bottom line here is that it would have just meant your Google adwords ads would now be shown on Yahoo sites, giving you more exposure at a higher cost.  It probably makes more sense to just open a Yahoo PPC account since the prices are usually cheaper at Yahoo per click. 

If your law firm is considering advertising online with Google, contact us for a free PPC analysis. We have helped many lawyers setup PPC programs at Google Adwords, Yahoo search marketing and MSN adcenter and have saved them all a lot of money.  PPC works because it can drive the types of clients your looking for directly to your website.

Google Traffic Estimator
- This tool estimates the number of Google AdWords ad clicks and bid prices for
the top ad position.

This tool offers quite rough estimates, but should
be decent at estimating relative search volume and ad budget
requirements.

It gives you a general idea of how expensive certain keywords are to be ranked in the top 3 and how much traffic you might expect. Very useful tool from Google.

Negative keywords are basically keywords you don’t want showing up for searches that bring up your ad. 

So if you were bidding on the broad match term of New York Lawyers, your sites ad could come up for many different variations of that term.   If your law firm doesn’t handle personal injury cases, then it might make sense to make sure your ad didn’t show when someone did the search of New York Accident Lawyers.

So if you add the negative keyword (-new york accident lawyer) to that campaign, then that keyword will never trigger your ad and you won’t be paying for that potential click from someone who was looking for something your law firm doesn’t handle.

What are negative keywords?

This makes a lot of sense and is a way to fine tune your campaigns so you don’t overspend on your online advertising.

We have helped many lawyers succeed with their Internet PPC campaigns at Google adwords, Yahoo search marketing and other PPC programs.  If we can be of service to your law firm with legal PPCo or attorney organic SEO campaigns, please contact us for a free estimate.   

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

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.

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.

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!!

Your text ads may appear on mobile browsers when users search Google from a mobile phone. When users see these ads, they can click the link to your website. Ad displays with more than 70 characters are adapted so that only the Headline and URL is displayed when the ad appears on a mobile browser. Your website’s landing page may also be adapted so that it’s better displayed on mobile phones that do not have rich internet browsers, thereby enhancing the overall web experience for you and your potential customers.

How do my search ads appear on mobile devices?