Google has been making moves this week to improve legal advertising opportunities across its contagious brands. This includes Google AdWords, which gets you visibility at the top of Google’s results pages and Google Maps. Twitter and Facebook are also enhancing the prominence of adverts, so now might be a good time for you to review your law firm’s paid advertising element of your law firm marketing strategy.
Search Engine Land has been particularly excited about Google’s AdWords changes this week. Search Engine Journal, and Search Engine Roundtable have more news about expanded advertising opportunities.
Google Local Pack Ad Seen For The First Time
Google announced at an industry conference some time ago that it would be inserting ads into the local pack, which appears at the top of search engine results pages. This change has now appeared, although it has only been spotted in the UK so far. SEO gurus had been expecting Google to reserve the top 2 slots in the local pack for ads. That would present a problem for those trying to get into the pack, because that would only leave 2 slots left for organic results. As local search is vital for small and middle-sized law firms as a method of attracting customers, the advent of paid ads in the local pack means you should seriously consider paying for a position in Google’s search results via AdWords. The example highlighted in the Search Engine Roundtable article only allocated 1 slot to an AdWords entry, but this feature is still at the experimental stage and any further encroachment on the local pack by paid advertisements would make this channel of advertising an essential spend.
Excited about Google’s new map ads? You should be!
This Search Engine Land article explains how Google is enhancing its services to AdWords customers through Google maps. The first screenshot in this piece is a mock up of the local search AdWords placement that the Search Engine Roundtable article identified as now live. The Promoted Pins section of the article is of particular interest to lawyers. If you struggle to stand out from the crowd, because your office location is packed with other law firms, then getting a pin with your logo on it could help you out – you would need to design a very small logo, however.
So we have 45 more characters in AdWords text ads… Now what?
This is the big news story in the SEO world this week. If you are using AdWords, then make sure you expand all of your adverts to the new word limit – missing out on that opportunity would give your law firm’s rivals the edge. Search Engine Land gave column space to a techie who has come up with an automated way to expand all your AdWord texts. He explains this method in Expand all your AdWords ads in 30 seconds flat.
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Twitter Unlocks Conversational Ads For All Advertisers
Twitter has come up with a really good idea for those brands that use the platform for advertising. The scenario the author explains in this article probably wouldn’t work too well for law firms. The idea there is that people who want to access something posted on your profile, such as a movie preview, would need to give you a mention in order to earn access. That idea of unlocking access to a resource only works for industries that have avid fans. However, this unlock card concept could equally be used to put together a press pack surrounding a promotion you are running for your firm. You would grant people the right to reproduce your logo, promotional videos, or images in their tweets if they agree to write about you.
Mid-Roll Ads Coming to Facebook Live
Have you heard of Facebook Live? Not many people over the age of 14 have. However, if it has Facebook behind it, it is sure to thrive. This feature caters to all those annoying people who film everything with their smartphones. If you have ever been to a pop concert you will know how common this habit has become. However, people also film arrests, crashes, terrorist attacks, political announcements, police harassment, protests, etc. All of the streams for any event that might tie in with your legal practice’s area of specialization could be worth sticking an ad over.
Search engine optimization is concerned with enhancing the rankings of Web pages in search engine results. The wider pursuit of search engine marketing (SEM) encompasses paid advertising on search engine results pages. The charge basis for these adverts works out as a fee for each surfer who clicks on the advert to get to the payer’s page. Thus, SEM is often referred to as PPC, which stands for “pay per click.” PPC is a fraught topic because behavioral research shows that the general public avoid clicking on paid adverts in search engine results pages and trust the free (“organic”) listings more. However, if you just can’t get your law firm’s listing on the first page of search engine results, it might be worth trying PPC. This week’s SEO Trends report examines PPC advice posted on Search Engine Watch, Search Engine Land and Search Engine Journal.
The Essential In-Depth Overview Of PPC Bid Management
Any project requires a strategy and you should start your strategic planning by defining the goal of your PPC campaign. When working out what you want to gain from your paid search budget, you would probably think that your goal is to get more clients for your law firm. However, there are routes to that aim and the method of getting those new clients will dictate your PPC strategy. You may have identified weak points in your SEO campaign that need to be compensated for by a PPC campaign. Identifying where PPC fits into your lawyer marketing strategy is a starting point for your goal definition. This article will guide you through the process of stating goals and planning tasks to achieve them. You will need to know the meaning of a few terms in order to understand this article. “CPM” stands for “cost per thousand” and refers to the price charged for a thousand impressions on the same Web page. “CPC” means “cost per click” and “CPA” means “cost per action” – the action involved will vary. “ROI” stands for “return on investment and “ROAS” is a similar concept, because it stands for “return on advertising spending.”
Need To Grow Your PPC Account? Look To The Search Queries
The article above explains how to analyse data to direct your PPC campaign and what to do at the beginning of your law firm PPC marketing effort when there is no historical data available. Once your campaign beds in you will be able to analyze the Search Query Report that both Google’s AdWords and Bing Ads provide. This article explains how to use the SQR to target your law firm’s PPC spend.
PPC Budget Strategy 101
This article gives you some more metrics to look out for when analyzing your law firm’s PPC campaign. A term you will meet in this piece is “CVR,” which is the “conversion ratio” – it expresses the number of clicks you had to pay for to get each client.
10 Must-Haves For Competitive #PPC Lead Generation (On a Budget)
Digital marketing consultant, Albert Costill wrote this piece for Search Engine Journal and explains all the aspects of a PPC campaign that will help you get value for money for your law firm. Unfortunately, the ten things to focus on seem to cover just about every aspect of your website and your SEO strategy, so it may take you a long time to implement all of Costill’s recommendations.
5 Valuable Lessons From Expertly Designed PPC Landing Pages
Costill’s advice included the primary directive that your landing page should be your number one priority. This article focuses on the task of optimizing the page on your law firm’s website that your PPC ads point to. One more acronym you need to know is “CRO,” which stands for “conversion rate optimization.”
Many digital marketers have been waiting for more than a year to a new rollout of Google’s Panda update. That update came more than a month ago now, but does not seem to have improved the rankings of those who strove to clean up their websites’ content. Now, those who did see a rankings boost detect a loss of that rankings boost – making some suspect that Google is reversing Panda. In last week’s SEO Trends report on Finding Local Audiences, we explained that Google has reengineered its AdWords format for local searches. Those changes make paid appearances in Google’s results pages more attractive than the “Local Pack.” These two developments reduce the effectiveness of content marketing and improve the value of “pay per click” (PPC) advertising. So maybe now it would be a good idea to switch your attorney marketing strategy towards paid search results. Search Engine Watch, Search Engine Land andSearch Engine Journal seem to have picked up on this trend, because they have a lot of news on pay per click topics this week. Click to call and video advertising can now help funnel search engine users into your law firm’s offices.
Local SEO Is Not An Island (Or At Least It Shouldn’t Be!)
Every behavioral study on the public’s usage of search engines explains that people don’t trust paid adverts. However, this Search Engine Land article illustrates the developments that we spotted in last week’s SEO Trend’s article. Google’s revamp of its presentation of local advertisers and its truncation of the Local Pack mean that PPC should become a more active source of clients for your law firm.
Is It Time to Add Click-to-Call Campaigns to Your AdWords Arsenal?
Click to call (CTC) could be a really useful addition to your law firm’s PPC campaign. With this feature, people can click on your (paid) Google listing and instantly dial your law firm. This trick is particularly important for mobile search leads, because potential clients are searching on their phone, so integrating the dialing step into your ad helps funnel browsers into callers, giving you a chance to make your pitch in person to potential clients.
5 Steps for Optimizing Paid Search ROI with Calls
This Search Engine Journal report expands on the recommendation of CTC into advice on how to formulate a CTC strategy for your law firm’s paid search digital marking campaign. SEJ seems to be really on the ball with the click to call feature at the moment. This is the second article they published on the topic over the last week. You should also read the first of those articles, How to Optimize Your #PPC Campaign for Phone Calls, to round out your CTC research.
Google Brings YouTube TrueView Campaigns Into The AdWords Fold
Research suggests that integrating video into your law firm’s website won’t bring you a rankings boost. This is because YouTube so dominates video delivery on the internet that they gobble up all the points available for that medium. Google owns YouTube and now wants to make more money from it. To that end, they introduced TrueView. This is a way you can pay to have a video link shown in YouTube search results, or have your video inserted into another video, like a TV ad. You can now manage TrueView ads through the Google AdWords environment.
New Interactions Reporting In AdWords Follow On Video Campaigns Integration
Here is an explanation (with illustrations) of how you can use the AdWords site to manage TrueView campaigns. This avenue for advertising is well worth exploring for a legal expert. You could make a video of yourself giving a short explanation of a legal term that your practice area covers and then insert that into searches for that term or in YouTube videos that cover related situations.
The James Attorney Digital Marketing blog gives you lots of tips on how to organize your law firm’s site to attract clients by getting to the top of search engine results. However, there is one fail-safe way to get on page one of Google results – pay them. One of the main income streams for search engines comes from those special entries to the side of search engine results that guarantee the buyer space on the first page.
Over the past week, Bing has been releasing enhancements to its Bing Ads service and there has been lots of news in the SEO news community this week on this topic. Google clearly saw this development coming and they have also been releasing changes to their Ad Words system.
Explore this topic with the following articles from Search Engine Journal, Search Engine Watch and Search Engine Land.
Improving Your Ad Campaigns with Advanced Metrics: An Interview with John Gagnon
Here is a video interview with a key member of Bing Ads staff. In this interview, John Gagnon gives some pointers on how to assess a paid search ad campaign. This information is useful if you have been drawn into a paid search campaign for your law firm, but don’t really see what benefits it is bringing you. If you master these aspects of your campaign, you can work out how to tweak your ads to get a bigger bang for your buck.
Bing Ads Enhances Geo-Targeting for Increased Relevancy
This article covers one of the enhancements to its Ads service that Bing has announced today. As a small legal practice, you are more likely to get your customers from your local area than from overseas or in other states. Therefore, this refinement to the display of advertisements only to searchers in your immediate vicinity will better use your advertising dollar. Remember you pay a fee for every time your ad is shown, so limiting impressions to local searchers will better utilize your budget.
AdWords Will Drop 2nd Line of Ad Text for Ad Extensions on Mobile
Google has been focusing on its presentation to mobile searchers this year and this alteration to Google Ad Words ties in with this push. Google will now only show one line of description for an Ad Words advert to enable it to squeeze in an app. In the example given in this article, that app is a mapping tool. This sort of development is particularly important if your law firm relies on emergency room work, or any kind of immediate crisis. Someone looking for a lawyer right now is likely to do a quick search and then walk or drive to a nearby office. So this development is good news.
7 Hidden Features In AdWords To Make Your Life Easier
If you are still finding your way with Google Ad Words in your legal practice’s digital marketing strategy, this article will give you some pointers. This Search Engine Land article outlines some tricks to give your AdWords placement a winning edge.
Facebook Is Using User Feedback To Show Better Ads
Facebook is another outlet for advertising campaigns and, like Bing and Google, they are brushing up their algorithm to show ads relevant to the particular likes and activities of the viewer. The social media site now enables members to effectively “complain” about the ads they are shown. Therefore, be careful that your ads are visually pleasing and informative, otherwise, you may find your adverts eventually blacklisted from the site.
The James Attorney Digital Marketing blog gives you lots of tips on how to organize your law firm’s site to attract clients by getting to the top of search engine results. However, there is one fail-safe way to get on page one of Google results – pay them. One of the main income streams for search engines comes from those special entries to the side of search engine results that guarantee the buyer space on the first page.
Over the past week, Bing has been releasing enhancements to its Bing Ads service and there has been lots of news in the SEO news community this week on this topic. Google clearly saw this development coming and they have also been releasing changes to their Ad Words system.
Explore this topic with the following articles from Search Engine Journal, Search Engine Watch and Search Engine Land.
Improving Your Ad Campaigns with Advanced Metrics: An Interview with John Gagnon
Here is a video interview with a key member of Bing Ads staff. In this interview, John Gagnon gives some pointers on how to assess a paid search ad campaign. This information is useful if you have been drawn into a paid search campaign for your law firm, but don’t really see what benefits it is bringing you. If you master these aspects of your campaign, you can work out how to tweak your ads to get a bigger bang for your buck.
Bing Ads Enhances Geo-Targeting for Increased Relevancy
This article covers one of the enhancements to its Ads service that Bing has announced today. As a small legal practice, you are more likely to get your customers from your local area than from overseas or in other states. Therefore, this refinement to the display of advertisements only to searchers in your immediate vicinity will better use your advertising dollar. Remember you pay a fee for every time your ad is shown, so limiting impressions to local searchers will better utilize your budget.
AdWords Will Drop 2nd Line of Ad Text for Ad Extensions on Mobile
Google has been focusing on its presentation to mobile searchers this year and this alteration to Google Ad Words ties in with this push. Google will now only show one line of description for an Ad Words advert to enable it to squeeze in an app. In the example given in this article, that app is a mapping tool. This sort of development is particularly important if your law firm relies on emergency room work, or any kind of immediate crisis. Someone looking for a lawyer right now is likely to do a quick search and then walk or drive to a nearby office. So this development is good news.
7 Hidden Features In AdWords To Make Your Life Easier
If you are still finding your way with Google Ad Words in your legal practice’s digital marketing strategy, this article will give you some pointers. This Search Engine Land article outlines some tricks to give your AdWords placement a winning edge.
Facebook Is Using User Feedback To Show Better Ads
Facebook is another outlet for advertising campaigns and, like Bing and Google, they are brushing up their algorithm to show ads relevant to the particular likes and activities of the viewer. The social media site now enables members to effectively “complain” about the ads they are shown. Therefore, be careful that your ads are visually pleasing and informative, otherwise, you may find your adverts eventually blacklisted from the site.
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