Legal Search Marketing

Archive for the ‘Google AdWords’ Category

Invalid clicks on Google AdWords ads have consistently remained under the 10-percent mark, and are generally in low single-digits, Google revealed. In addition, the amount of invalid clicks that are not proactively detected and are caught by advertisers is less than 0.02 percent, according to Google’s Shuman Ghosemajumder.

Google advertisers have been clamoring for a hard number to put on click fraud for years, but Google has been unwilling to share specifics. The company has often said that revealing too much would make it easier for fraudsters to take advantage of the system, which has frustrated advertisers who want to know where their money is going.

This revelation is the latest in a series of moves designed to offer more transparency to advertisers, Ghosemajumder said. Google has come under fire from lawsuits, click fraud reporting firms, and advertisers in recent months, all looking for more granular details on the level of invalid clicks occurring in the AdWords system.

Google is also undertaking several more click fraud-related initiatives in coming months. Among these are IP Filtering capabilities for advertisers, enhanced invalid click reports, educational initiatives, and an improved reporting format. The first three initiatives are expected to roll out this month, while the improved reporting format will come later this year, he said.

SOURCE: Search Engine Watch

Google has added a new budget option, so that you can choose to either show your ads evenly over the course of a day, or a new accelerated option, which will show your ads as much as possible, until your daily budget is reached.

This will explain why sometimes your ads wont show up when you do a search. Its either that your budget has been reached, or your ads are just not being shown all the time.

Which ad delivery option is best for my campaign?

New! AdWords site demographics.
Google now has a way to target specific groups of people to focus your legal adwords campaigns on.  I will test it out and blog about the best ways a law firm can take advantage of this new feature.

From Google Adwords….

Want to reach 18-24 year-olds, or women with children? Site tool demographics match your ad with your audience. Available now for campaigns targeting the United States.

What is demographic site selection?

HOW TO SAVE MONEY ON GOOGLE ADWORDS

If you have an existing Google adwords account and don’t pay much attention to it, odds are pretty good that your paying more then you should.

Ive had a number of clients accounts that Ive taken over and each time it amazes me how much I can save them just by making a few adjustments.

An example is a new client that I just looked at today, they have an existing adwords account and they spend about $3,500 per month.  Just by looking at it, I could see that they had set their Max CPC (Cost Per Click) very high at $10 per click. Sometimes people will do this in the beginning  and then never change it, so it carried over to all campaigns and keywords.

What this means is that you can pay way to much for certain keywords and while bidding high is a good way to get to the top and be the #1 listing, sometimes it can be very expensive and doesn’t really make much sense.

Just making one adjustment to the account, by bringing the max CPC down to $2, I saved them over $90 per day and the estimated clicks per day are basically the same. This would add up to over $2,500 saved in the first month, just by making one adjustment. We will be able to save them a lot more then that once we make further updates and tweaks.

BOTTOM LINE

Its important to monitor the bids and make adjustments and Its better to adjust your Max CPC to a lower amount and then work your way up. Also make sure that you set a maximum spend limit per day. 

We can assist you with your pay per click marketing needs, contact me for further information.

Usually when you first launch a legal web site, your going to do a more aggressive Pay per click campaign at Overture and Google adwords because it takes some time to get good organic or free listings, especially at Google. Over time you can draw back on your PPC campaigns once your organic listings come in, but its usually best if you can have both going.

This way you get the most exposure on the search engine page. When you have your firm listed in the organic listings on the left side and then also the sponsored listings on the right side, it gives you a better chance of someone clicking on your site and finding your firm.

An example of a law firm that has dual exposure at Google is The Law Offices of Don Thompson. If you type in the search of Chicago Probate at Google, his site comes up #1 in the organic listings on the left side, then the same site comes up on the right side under "sponsored listings".   

Sometimes it might not make as much as sense to bid on keywords that are very expensive, especially if your already coming up in the free organic listings but if the pay per click keyword is less then 50 cents per click, then I would suggest it.

Getting listed in the PPC engines is easy, the real trick is getting your law firms site in the top 10 in the organic listings.  We have helped many lawyers achieve this and as a result they have gotten new business and many new clients.  Contact us if we can help your law firm succeed on the Internet.

Tune Your Google Ad Campaign from Kevin Lee at ClickZ provides a lot of useful tips, especially for those who have not updated your adwords campagins for awhile.  It can really make a difference in your campaign when you monitor and tweak your keywords.

Ive tweaked many clients Google Adword campaigns and it has always resulted in a substantial savings in money. Its important to have someone monitor the campaigns, especially if your bidding on expensive keywords or have multiple campaigns running.

Post from the Google Adwords Blog

To give you the chance to review and activate previously disabled keywords after the launch of our new keyword evaluation system, disabled keywords have remained in your account for the past several weeks. Next week, they’ll be deleted.

So, what should you do? You don’t have to make any changes to prepare for this — your previously disabled keywords will show up as deleted in your account, and you can still choose to re-enable them. However, if you’d like to keep a list of your previously disabled keywords on hand, you can create and save a custom keyword report.

Google has launched a new blog specifically for people who use the Google AdWords pay per click program.  The new blog has all the latest info and tips on how to best utilize the Adwords program.

SOLVING THE PAY PER CLICK PROBLEM BY GETTING INTO THE ORGANIC LISTINGS

I blogged last month about the legal client who setup his own Google adwords account and made the mistake of bidding to high and wound up paying $39 for one click for the keyphrase of "chicago estate planning lawyer".

We wound up getting the cost down to $1.30 per click BUT the best solution to that problem is getting listed in Googles organic or free listings or what I call "the gift that keeps on giving". It takes time and effort to get listed in the top 10 at Google but we have achieved this and the client is now #7 for chicago estate planning lawyer, as well as #3&4 for chicago wills, #3 for chicago estate planning, among many others.

Its a good idea to still maintain the pay per click listings though because it gives the law firm more overall exposure at Google, but its not as important now and can be cut back on.   

The best way for a law firm to get good rankings in the Google organic listings is by having good content, content that changes, listings at the key directories and links from other high rankings legal sites.    If your law firm wants to achieve long term results in the search engines, contact me.

I had blogged last week about a legal client who made the mistake of setting his bid to high for the term "chicago estate planning lawyer" and got charged $39.52 for one click. 

I got a response from Google adwords (see below)and like I thought there’s nothing that can be done because of the fact the maximum CPC (cost-per-click) was set so high and other variables were in play.  Once I took over the account, I was able to reduce the max CPC and got the click charge down to $1.30 per click, from $39 per click. 

Here is the response from Google Adwords:

After reviewing your client’s account, I found the keyword ‘chicago estate planning lawyer’ was charged $39.52 on April 3, 2005 because his maximum CPC was designated at $39.88. He was charged a lower amount of $1.30 per click this month because his maximum CPC is currently set at $2.00. These clicks are not charged the full designated maximum CPC because our AdWords Discounter automatically keeps your actual CPC at the lowest possible cost needed to maintain your ad’s position on the page.

Additionally, the position of your AdWords ad varies per keyword and is determined by various factors such as your maximum cost-per-click (CPC) for the matched keyword, your clickthrough rate (CTR), and your ad text in relation to other advertisers’ CPCs, CTRs, and ad text. Because Google AdWords doesn’t rely solely on your CPC bid to rank your ad, it is not possible to know what your competitors are bidding.

The bottom line here though is that if you set your max cost per click so high and have competitors that are also bidding high, there’s a very good chance you will overbid. 

I usually start with a lower bid and then see how the keywords perform and then raise the bid when needed. Google adwords is more complicated and harder to manage then Overture (now Yahoo Search Marketing) but much more effective, if setup and managed correctly.

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