Legal Search Marketing

Archive for the ‘Pay Per Click Marketing’ Category

The New York TImes reports
Microsoft has filed suit against Eric Lam, Gordon Lam and Melanie Suen,
of Vancouver, British Columbia. The suit comes after a year of
investigative work by Microsoft in tracking down reports of click fraud.

According to the NY Times, these defendants allegedly:

Microsoft said it found a pattern of click fraud on its search pages,
where lists ranked by relevance and popularity appear alongside a
handful of paid results. Advertisers bid on what they will pay to
appear in the paid-search results for certain keywords. The more an
advertiser pays, the higher they are in that list, and advertisers
usually pay for each click on their ad.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

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.

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.   

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.

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.

John Marshall and Eric Enge Talk About Click Fraud

Clicktracks is well known as a significant player in the analytics space, and is in particular well known for the click fraud analysis tools that they provide to their clients as part of that package. Recently the Clicktracks CEO, John Marshall, and I spoke about click fraud in a podcast we did together.

John provides an excellent overview of what click fraud really is, how pervasive it is, and what the search engines are doing about it. For example, John outlines that click fraud affects sites in a very random manner, where some sites are hit very hard by it, and others not at all. John also indicates that the problem is much worse in very competitive markets.

When I asked John if the search engines were doing enough to combat click fraud, he provided an answer that will surprise most people (the answer was "yes"). John is not minimizing click fraud when he says this. He is simply saying that it is incumbent on the advertiser to play an active role in combatting click fraud as well.

Click fraud does exist and you have to monitor your pay per click campaigns and pay attention, otherwise your going to wind up paying a lot more in the long run. 

The better investment for the long run is to make sure your website is setup to be well ranked in the organic listings. No need to worry about click fraud then!

SOURCE: Search Engine Watch

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

TEXARKANA, Ark., July 27 (Reuters) – An Arkansas state judge on Wednesday granted final approval to a class-action settlement between Google Inc. and advertisers who alleged Google allowed third parties to drive up fees by fraudulent use of its Web search advertising system.

Judge Joe Griffin of the Circuit Court of Miller County, Arkansas made no changes in approving the settlement, which calls for Google to pay up to $90 million in online credits to customers and legal fees, according to court documents.

The Google settlement hearing is part of a broader legal action by plaintiff Lane’s Gifts and Collectibles originally filed in February 2005 against Internet advertising industry players over the issue of so-called "click fraud".

SOURCE : REUTERS NEWS

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – An independent report filed on Friday in an Arkansas court sided with Google over disgruntled advertisers who had sued the search engine giant accusing it of trying to drive up fees through so-called click fraud.

The two sides agreed to commission the report as part of a settlement deal for the lawsuit, filed by advertising customer Lane’s Gifts in a state court in Miller County, Arkansas.

Pay-per-click advertising, where advertisers only pay when people click on ads, is seen by critics as the Achilles’ heel of Web search leader Google, which last quarter saw revenues grow 77 percent to $2.46 billion, virtually all from such ads.

The suit alleged Web advertisers allowed their pay-per-click ad systems to be abused in order to drive up fees paid by customers. It argued that companies such as Google have not taken reasonable steps to regulate the practice.

"Based on my evaluation, I conclude that Google’s efforts to combat click fraud are reasonable," Alexander Tuzhilin, a professor of information systems at New York University, said in the report. Lane’s Gifts commissioned Tuzhilin’s report.

The Google Blog just posted the independent study on their click fraud detection practices that shows Google makes reasonable efforts to detect click fraud.

This is probably true and Im sure Google does all it can to battle click fraud, but they cant prevent it totally.   I think Google adwords is the best pay per click program by far but I would be cautious of the Google content network and I never recommend it to clients when doing Adwords advertising. 

AFTER SURGING DURING THE HOLIDAYS, the price of purchasing keywords ebbed dramatically last quarter, according to DoubleClick’s most recent quarterly report about search pricing.

The "cost-per-keyword" fell to around $30 in the first quarter–from around the yearly high of $59 last December, according to the report. Year-over-year, cost-per-keyword was relatively flat. To arrive at a cost-per-keyword, Performics combines cost-per-click with the volume of clicks; the figure represents the average cost to a marketer of purchasing a keyword for the entire month.

Read entire story at Mediapost Publications