Legal Search Marketing Blog

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.

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.

Click Fraud Article

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

Google Shares More Click Fraud Numbers

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

Arkansas judge finalizes Google "click" settlement

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

Report backs Google efforts to combat fraud

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. 

PPC Keyword Prices Fall In Q1

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

Pay Per Click Ad Impressions Grow 16% in 6 Months

ClickZ reports sponsored link impressions on Google and Yahoo! grew 16 percent in the past six months, according to data released by Nielsen//NetRatings .

That study shows that "sponsored link advertising impressions" grew from 55.4 billion to 64.3 billion over the past six months (August 2005 and January 2006).

Google in August 2005 earned 36.2 billion, which increased to 41.1 billion in January 2006, a six-month increase of 14%. Yahoo percentage growth was larger than Google's, accounting for 19.2 billion in August of 2005 with an increase to 23.2 billion in January 2006 or a 21% increase in the past six-months. These figures include all of Google's and Yahoo's search partners and contextual networks.

Covering Your Firm At The Search Engines In Both Organic AND Paid Listings

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.

Click Fraud Case Against Google Continues Its Way Through Federal Court

The search engine watch blog has a post about a click fraud lawsuit filed against Google by Steve Mizera in the Northern District of California in San Jose.

Yahoo! Search Marketing Eliminates Minimum Spend

Yahoo Search Marketing, formely Overture, has eliminated the $20 monthly minimum spending requirement for the pay per click Sponsored Search.

This is a good thing because for some lawyers, they only need to bid on certain geographic specific keyphrases that arent that expensive and dont have much competition. So now lawyers who may have been hesitant because of the minimum requirement can now choose to spend as much or as little as they like, with no minimum to meet.

MSN adCenter Pilot Program Opening In US

Search engine watch reports that MSN is opening its pay per click program and is now looking for takers. The pilot is invite only, but you can hope to get picked by signing-up here. 

The sponsored ads will rotate in on a portion (25 percent) of MSN's pages, with the rest still coming from Yahoo Search Marketing/Overture.

MSN Paid Search Details Emerge

ZDNet Asia reports on MSN Paid Search that details the launch in Singapore, with France to follow and a MSN Keywords pilot in the US in October. 

According to Eva Balan, MSN's international marketing manager for MSN adCenter, advertisers pay a one-time subscription fee of S$5 (US$3) for MSN Keywords.

For each keyword, they bid a minimum of S$0.10 and pay for the number of times search users click on their advertisements, which appear as sponsored links alongside search results. The placement of the links will depend on the bid price, click-through rate as well as the types of user profiles captured by the system.

MSN Keywords: New Ad Product from MSN

The WSJ reports that next week MSN will announce a new ad program called MSN Keywords and this is another example of how MSN is trying to mimic Google and encroach on its search territory.

Microsoft next week will announce that an invitation-only test of MSN Keywords will begin in October with 500 advertisers and search-engine marketing specialists. The service will move MSN closer to how Google handles advertising, by using live auctions of keywords. MSN Keywords is one tool of a broader set of new advertising services called adCenter that Microsoft is building on MSN. Microsoft executives say they hope the tools will allow companies to tailor advertisements by giving them more detailed information on Web users than is currently available.

Value In NOT Bidding On The Top 3 Spots At Overture Yahoo

Ive noticed that when your bidding at the Overture Pay Per Click search engine, that sometimes it makes more sense to NOT bid on the top 2-3 spots, at least for the Yahoo results.

This is because at Yahoo, the top 2 or 3 spots are listed at the very top of the page and then the #3-5 spots are listed at the bottom of the page, AFTER the top 10 organic listings. THEN on the right side of the page, the first 3 listings are the same as the bottom 3 listings, thus giving you two listings on the main page.

An example of that is for the term of california elder law and at Overture my clients site, California Elder Care Lawyers is #5 in the sponsored listings and its at the very bottom of the page and then also the 3rd sponsored listing on the right side.

Not only does he get two listings on the main page, but he's only paying 10 cents per click, where the #1 and 2 are paying over 50 cents per click.

MSN USES OVERTURES RESULTS A LITTLE DIFFERENT

NOW the other search engine that uses Overture pay per click results is MSN and they do it a little different, they list the top 3 bids at both the top and bottom of the page, then on the right side, they start out with the #4 bid and work down. 

So this is why the California elder law site is only listed on the right side as the 2nd listing at MSN Search. Luckily though they are coming up in the organic or free listings and are #5 & 6!

**Actually they now moved up to the #3 spot in the pay per clicks, and also moved up in the organic listings to #4&5. Plus the basic elder law blog we put up is coming up #3. **

Its important that you know the pay per click rules and its usually best to employ a professional to optimize your legal web site and then also manage a focused pay per click campaign.  Contact us today if we can assist your law firm.

Organic Listings At Search Engines Are Better Then Paid Listings

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.

First Lawsuit for Click Fraud

Article from the AP about a click fraud lawsuit. This is the first lawsuit Ive heard of being filed against Google and other pay per click engines.

A Texarkana gift shop that advertises on the Internet has filed a lawsuit against America Online, Google, Yahoo and other Web-centered companies alleging they knowingly overcharged the shop and other companies for "pay per click" advertising.

Lane's alleges a conspiracy in which the companies worked with one another to create an online environment that harms advertisers.

This might be pretty hard to prove but will be interesting to see what happens.

Click Fraud: If Everyone Benefits, Who Will Stop It?

Another article on click fraud at the pay per click engines from DM News. Great article that goes into detail about the different forms of click fraud and the fact that click fraud benefits more people than it hurts.

What is click fraud? Click fraud appears in three (or four) major forms, each with its own technique and desired income. Traditional click fraud, in which fraudsters click on advertisers’ pay-per-click ads with no intention of purchasing the advertised product or service, is mostly conducted by two groups: competitors and network partners/publishers. Competitors click on PPC ads to charge money to rival companies.

Generally, competitor click fraud occurs when a competitor clicks a couple times in a row on another company’s ad. Limited by the sheer determination of virulent competitors, such fraud is damaging only to small businesses in competitive spaces with high PPC costs.

A lawyer in New York with an average bid price of $10 could lose $300 a month from one extra fraudulent click per day. If that lawyer deals in Vioxx or mesothelioma cases, where keyword prices range from $20 to $50, he stands to lose as much as $1,500 from just one instance of click fraud per day!

This is all very true and Ive always been concerned about click fraud, but especially when handling campaigns for very expensive legal keywords, such as vioxx and mesothelioma.   

This is all just another great reason to make sure you focus on your ORGANIC search engine listings. Free listings are a lot better then paid listings and while its a good idea to have both sometimes, putting more focus on organic listings is a better move in the long run.

Will PPC Costs continue to rise?

Good article from Clickz about rising pay per click costs.

No doubt the legal arena still has a lot of room for growth in the pay per click market and I expect many new law firms to get involved in the ongoing bidding war.

So costs will probably rise for many popular keywords over time, but its important to stay on top of the bidding and make sure that your covering all the possible keywords. There are many good values out there for keywords if you do the research.

Click Fraud Riles Search Advertisers

Article from EWeek reporting on click fraud at the Pay per click search engines.

As search-based advertising grows, so too does the concern over fraudulent clicks running up advertisers' bills and shifting the rankings of paid search listings.

This is a big concern and the article talks about how Google will sometimes email an advertiser telling them they are getting a refund for suspected click fraud. I have gotten that email before and it does make you think, how does Google figure out what is fraudulent clicks and are they missing any?

While Google and Overture do proactively inform advertisers of the click fraud they detect, the majority of the burden for finding and proving click fraud has fallen to advertisers, panelists said.

"Search engines are profiting and have not published rules that speak to an investigation or give those harmed the information to get to the bottom of problem," said Ben Edelman, an Internet privacy research and Harvard University student.

Advertisers can analyze click patterns, visitor logs and other information, but Edelman said the search engines themselves should be able to access more detailed information that could help advertisers track down click fraud and even prove it in court.

So far, click fraud has yet to be tested in court, but panelists and attendees largely agreed that they expect cases to emerge both against alleged fraudsters and possibly against the search engines.

I have not had a real problem with click fraud at Google or Overture but have detected it at the smaller pay per click engines.   

Its KEY to use your stats analysis programs that track traffic from the pay per clicks and make sure it adds up.  At some of the smaller engines, I just noticed that they were reporting that I got 40 clicks BUT on the stats tracking, it would show maybe 4 visitors, that just didn't add up and I reported it and got a refund.

Paid search market will double from 2.6 billion to 5.5 billion

The paid search market will more than double from $2.6 billion in 2004 to $5.5 billion in 2009, and that growth will be driven by the "four horsemen" of vertical search, according to a new study by JupiterResearch.

The study, "Vertical Search: Early Marketers Will Reap Rewards of Low Pricing," predicts that the paid search industry will evolve similarly to media markets like television and magazines: with broad-based engines spawning a host of vertical players devoted to specific categories.

More from ClickZ: The Four Horsemen of Vertical Search

PPC Study Finds Longer Search Phrases Convert Better

A study from Oneupweb finds that in general, longer search terms convert better than shorter ones. In particular:

• Conversion rates rose as the number of keywords increased, peaking at between 33 to 38 percent when there were four keywords in total. Then rates dropped.
   
• Single keywords searches had high conversion until company names were removed. Without these, single keyword searches then converted less than searches with two, three or four terms in them.

This makes sense and for most lawyers and law firms, usually you want to try and target the key phrases that combine your geographic area with your practice areas.

So it makes sense to bid on terms like "Chicago eminent domain lawyers" or "Illinois condemnation attorneys" instead of just "eminent domain" or "condemnation lawyers", if your a Chicago based condemnation firm.

You might not get as many clicks but odds are you will convert more of these leads into clients because someone searching just for "eminent domain", probably is just looking for free or general information opposed to hiring an attorney.

New Form Of Google AdWords Click Fraud

Another story from Pay Per Click Universe talks about click fraud and how it only applies to Google Adword accounts because Adwords is the only PPC to use a complex algorithm to determine how high your overall ranking is.

This is where a lot of people get confused about Google adwords. Its not as simple as Overture, where whoever bids the highest, gets the top spot.   At Google adwords, its different because your CTR / click through rate determines how high your position is.  The article goes into more detail with a good example.

"For example, if you get a 5% CTR (50 clicks out of 1000 impressions), but your maximum bid is only 50 cents, and your competitor bids 80 cents but has 1% CTR, you WILL appear higher than him. With AdWords, though, if your CTR is less than 0.5%, your ad is disabled and disappears until you make some changes to bring your CTR back up."

The story goes on to talk about how certain click fraudsters will artificially inflate the number of impressions for certain keywords and what happens is your CTR will go down and if its under .5%, your ads will be disabled and then when your sites out, someone else moves into your position.      

Now I don't know how illegal that is since they are not clicking on ads. I would be more concerned about your competitors who might click on your keywords.

Its key to have someone pay attention to the pay per click traffic and monitor the stats and make sure the same IP address isn't visiting your site multiple times.  This is usually only an issue when you are bidding on high valued keywords like "vioxx" or "mesothelioma lawyers".

Top 10 Pay Per Click Search Engines

Pay Per Click Universe is a free resource dedicated to providing unbiased information to the small-to-medium sized business owner interested in exploring the world of pay per click advertising (PPC).

They have a section where they review each of the pay per click search engines and give what it considers the top ten pay per click engines.

They don't really list them in order but give each PPC search engine a rating. Google ad words has an overall rating of 8.4, Overture 7.5, Findwhat 4.0 and Kanoodle 1.0. Those are what I always have considered to be the top 4 and really only Google and Overture seem to produce real results. So I would probably agree with those ratings, even though I would put Google at about a 9 and Overture a 7 at best.

They give Searchfeed a rating of 8.2 and the user reviews are all pretty favorable, so that might be one to check out. I will sign up for an account and see how it works out and write a review next month.

When doing pay per click projects for my legal clients, I usually try and test out the smaller pay per click engines, but normally what I find is that I get a lot of so called clicks and visitors but no real conversions.

I've also had problems in the past, where the pay per click engine says I got 30 clicks at 25 cents a click BUT my stats program doesn't back that up.   Ive never had a problem with that at Google or Overture and no doubt those two are the ones to focus on when doing a pay per click strategy.

Increasing cost of PPC

BusinessWeek Online takes a look at the increasing cost of PPC and how some advertisers are becoming more targeted with their keyword buys .

"On Feb. 1 the search giant reported $400 million in net earnings for fiscal '04 -- a whopping 278% gain -- on revenue of $3.2 billion. What accounted for the outsize profits? The high prices Google charges for search keywords, for one. "

No doubt Ive noticed over the past year that certain keywords have really been bid up to crazy amounts. An example is the keyword Mesothelioma lawyer, the top bid is around $100 per click, thats pretty high!