Google AdWords

Google Removes Right Hand Sidebar Ads

General Search Engine News, Google AdWords, Google Search Engine, Legal Internet Marketing /

GOOGLE NEWS FOR LAWYERS – PPC MARKETING Starting on February 19th, Google began phasing out sidebar ads from their search engine results pages. They will now show one to four ads before the organic search results, and the rest will be pushed to the bottom of the page. SO This only effects Pay Per Click advertisers, because now there is less ad space. No more ads on the right side seems like a waste of space, so who knows what Google is doing here, yet you can bet it has something to do with MOBILE. Google is all Mobile, all the time. The update – which is described as “global and permanent” will only apply to desktop searches, which may affect the traffic you see from desktop devices. According to Search Engine Journal: “High volume and general search terms have been most severely affected by the update so far. Long-tail and niche terms will begin to see their right hand ads disappear in the coming weeks.” This change hasn’t yet rolled out to mobile, so it remains to be seen if/when that will happen and what the results will be… Search Engine Journal

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Time to Go Mobile is Now Lawyers!

Google AdWords, Mobile for Lawyers, Mobile Marketing, Mobile PPC /

3 Essential Mobile Ad Extensions to Get More Clicks from Mobile Devices With the recent announcement of Enhanced Campaigns, Google has made mobile advertising much easier for the average advertiser. Previously it was much harder and Google had advised marketers to create separate campaigns targeting different locations and device types in order to ensure ROI on mobile advertising. This quickly became too complicated and time-consuming for most advertisers, especially small law firms and solo lawyers. Now, with Enhanced Campaigns, AdWords users can target mobile users with the same campaigns they use for desktop search. It’s just a matter of checking a box that tells Google you want a given ad to run on mobile. The best way to optimize the ad experience for mobile users is to take advantage of ad extensions – essentially enhancements that will make your ad more compelling and clickable for mobile users. (These are really big deals) Here are the top three new or completely overhauled ad extensions you should use in your mobile campaigns to increase clicks and conversions. 1. Offer Extensions Offer Extensions are a brand new feature, one which wasn’t publicly available until this week! This exciting new extension type allows you to attach a redeemable offer (such as a coupon, rebate, or discount) to your AdWords ad. On a mobile device, it looks like this: When a user clicks on the offer extension link users will be taken to a Google-hosted landing page. From there, they can print out the offer or save it by sending it to the “My Offers” section for later in-store use.  (Now for lawyers you could put a Free Consultation, Free 1/2 hour meeting or some other kind of creative enticement to get them to visit your site) 2. Location Extensions At least 1 in 3 mobile searches have local intent, so if you’re the type of businesses that can benefit from local searches on mobile, you need to take advantage of location extensions. Location extensions allow you to add location data about your business to your ad, like a phone number and address. When combined with click to call extensions, that phone number becomes clickable, so mobile users can call you with one click. The advantages for you, the advertiser, include: A bigger, more noticeable ad: Location information, at a basic level, adds more lines to your ad, so it will stand out more from the competition that isn’t using location extensions.  (This is HUGE) Giving the user what they need now: Mobile users tend to be further down the funnel than desktop searchers. They’re on the go, in your area, and they want something now. Making your physical location or phone number available immediately, without them having to search around on your site for it, increases the chances that they will call you. 3. Click to Call Extensions Click to call extensions make your phone number clickable so a mobile user only has to click the number to make an appointment at your law firm. Again, since mobile users tend to be “hot” leads, in the sense that they are ready to convert immediately, it’s crucial to make the pathways to conversion as smooth as possible, or you could lose those leads to a competitor. According to Google’s Surojit Chatterjee, Group Product Manager of Global Mobile Search Ads, “When an advertiser uses click-to-call ads with call extensions and location extensions, we see an average CTR increase of 6-8%.” Mobile Campaigns Are Easier, More Measurable Enhanced Campaigns are a game changer because they make it much easier for small, local businesses to get ROI from mobile search ads – these are the types of businesses that stand to gain the most from mobile search, but (due to time and budget constraints) were least likely to advertise on mobile under the previous system. Does your law firm have a mobile advertising strategy yet? If not, now is the time! Contact Mobile for Lawyers for more info on creating a mobile version of your lawyer site. *  Professionally Done Mobile Design *  Custom Mobile Logo for site *  Custom Mobile Site Backgrounds *  Setup of Call To Action Buttons (Click to Call, Email & Maps) *  Conversion & Setup of Main Pages to Mobile *  Inclusion of firm images and other professional legal images *  Setup of Firms Blog RSS Feeds, YouTube Videos and other Social Media *  Custom Mobile Domain Setup – M.YourDomainName.com *  Mobile SEO Setup ; Custom Titles & Descriptions setup for mobile pages *  Mobile Web Hosting, Maintenance, Updates & SEO Included in monthly fee

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Google AdWords Has New Enhanced Campaigns

Google AdWords, Pay Per Click Marketing /

GOOGLE PPC FOR LAWYERS Google announced an upgrade to AdWords called Enhanced Campaigns that will allow advertisers to target consumers more efficiently with ads based on context like location, device type, and time of the day, in a single campaign. Enhanced Campaigns have three main features: Campaign and budget management: An advertiser with a local presence could increase bids based on context, such as the location of the user or to adjust for device (e.g., “if this query is from mobile device, increase bid by 10%”). Bid adjustments will be found in the campaigns settings tab. Ads Based on Context: Advertisers will be able to differentiate mobile preferred creative where an ad would appear if the query is from a mobile device. This would take into consideration the capabilities of the device – such as whether the device can download apps or make phone calls. Mobile preferred creative will be a type of ad selection in AdWords. New conversion types: This will integrate phone calls from click-to-call and app downloads in AdWords reports. It will be easier to see the full value of campaigns across actions and from new platforms. Phone calls and app downloads will be additional columns as a conversion in reporting. Why enhanced campaigns? (From Google Blog) People are constantly connected and moving from one device to another to communicate, shop and stay entertained. In fact, a recent study of multi-device consumers found that 90% move sequentially between several screens to accomplish a task. There’s also a proliferation of new devices — PCs, laptops, tablets, smartphones, hybrid devices, mini-tablets, televisions, and more. And there are many more digital screens and devices to come, with the lines between them continuing to blur. For example, as devices converge, consumer behaviors on tablets and desktops are becoming very similar. This creates great opportunities for businesses, but can also make marketing more complex and time-consuming. For example, a pizza restaurant probably wants to show one ad to someone searching for “pizza” at 1pm on their PC at work (perhaps a link to an online order form or menu), and a different ad to someone searching for “pizza” at 8pm on a smartphone a half-mile from the restaurant (perhaps a click-to-call phone number and restaurant locator). Signals like location, time of day, and the capabilities of the device people are using have become increasingly important in showing them the right ad. With enhanced campaigns, instead of having to cobble together and compare several separate campaigns, reports and ad extensions to do this, the pizza restaurant can easily manage all of this in one single place. Enhanced campaigns help you reach people with the right ads, based on their context like location, time of day and device type, across all devices without having to set up and manage several separate campaigns. This all sounds good but it does seem like you can’t control certain things as well. Also this is a big thing for MOBILE because the ads will be shown to people on mobile devices by default. Also there are new ad extensions you can use that seem pretty exciting, like offers you can put with your ads and many other things.  This means for one you better have a mobile version of your site setup!

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Pay Per Click and Mobile For Lawyers

Google AdWords, Mobile Advertising, Mobile for Lawyers, Pay Per Click Marketing /

PAY PER CLICK MARKETING AND MOBILE I see it all the time, lawyers who are advertising with Google adwords or other pay per click programs and they do NOT HAVE A MOBILE SITE. So unless they go in and change the settings to not include mobile devices, then anyone on a mobile device will then see the ad, and possibly click on it, and then they will be led to a NON MOBILE FRIENDLY Site, which is hard to read and has to be tapped in to navigate. People might leave if it’s hard to navigate your site and are less likely to continue on your site.  SO if your paying for these visitors, then it might be like throwing money away.  Example of Desktop Site on Smartphone                  Non Mobile                                        Mobile Friendly   CHANGE YOUR PPC CAMPAIGN SETTINGS If you do not have a mobile friendly site, then its probably best to change the campaign settings within Google Adwords so that you uncheck the box for mobile devices. This way your ad will NOT be shown to people on smartphones. YET that then means your losing out on all that valuable mobile traffic. SO the better idea is to first off get a mobile site for your law firm, one that is easy to read, navigate and contact you.  Then after you have a mobile site, it makes sense to create a Google adwords campaign that just focuses on mobile devices. Then you would make your landing page your mobile friendly site home page.  So now the visitors that come from these Pay Per Click campaigns will see your mobile friendly site and have a much better experience. LEGAL MOBILE WEB DESIGN So make sure you create a mobile friendly version of your lawyer site and then utilize it in your PPC campaigns.  If your not doing this, your possibly throwing money away and also losing potential clients.   Visit MOBILE FOR LAWYERS For assistance with both legal mobile design and Google Mobile PPC Campaigns.

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Getting Top Listings at Google AdWords

Google AdWords, Google Search Engine, Pay Per Click Marketing /

Everyone wants to be at the very top of the search engine listings, both in the organic results and also at the Google AdWords pay per click program. When someone does a search at Google, depending on the search, the paid ad results which come from Adwords are listed at the very top of the screen and then on the right side.  In order to be listed at the very top of the screen in the first 3 results, your ad must have a good QS (Quality Score) and you also must bid higher then the other people bidding on the same keyword. Google Bid Simulator The bid simulator doesn’t predict the future, but it can estimate what your advertising results could’ve been on the Search Network over the last seven days, if you’d set different bids. So it shows you how many impressions you might have gotten and how many TOP Impressions. If you look at the graphic below, this bid simulator is for the keyword “Personal Injury Attorney” and its for a geographic location campaign.  It shows that at teh current $3.25 bid, we would have only receieved 11 impressions and no top impressions.  Yet if we had increased the bid to $34.20, we would then have gotten 170 impressions and 34 of those would have been at the very top. So you can see it can be hard to always have your ad at the very top of Adwords results, especially if you have a lot of competitors who are also bidding high. Yet if your goal is to be listed at the very top, then first off you need to make sure you have good ads and good Quality scores on your keywords, then you need to bid higher then you have been bidding and use the Google tools to get an idea of what it costs to be at the top, it isnt cheap, especially with personal injury keywords! Google AdWords for Lawyers If you need assistance with your Google Adwords campaigns, contact us at 630-393-0460 or fill out the online form below. [si-contact-form form=’1′]

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Create a Mobile PPC Campaign at Google AdWords

Google AdWords, Google Search Engine, Mobile Advertising, Mobile for Lawyers, Pay Per Click Marketing /

What is Google AdWords? Google AdWords is Google’s main advertising product and main source of revenue. Google AdWords offers pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, cost-per-thousand (CPM) advertising, and site-targeted advertising for text, banner, and rich-media ads. Google Adwords MOBILE Interested in showing ads on mobile devices? AdWords allows you to target high-end mobile devices, WAP-enabled devices, or both. High-end mobile ads look like desktop ads and can show on high-end mobile devices, like smartphones. WAP mobile ads are shorter than normal ads and can show only on WAP-enabled devices (sometimes called “feature phones”). High-end mobile ads High-end mobile devices, such as smartphones, have full Internet browsers and can display websites similar to the ones you’d see on a desktop computer. To compensate for the smaller screen size, these devices typically allow you to zoom in and out to more easily navigate around a page. High-end mobile ads come in two varieties: text ads and image ads. High-end mobile text ads: These ads look like normal text ads that you’d see on a desktop computer. The main difference is that we can show more ads per page when someone’s searching on a desktop computer, and fewer ads per page when someone’s searching on a mobile device. High-end mobile image ads: These ads are similar to normal image ads that you’d see on a desktop computer. However, the most common size for ads on mobile devices is the 300 x 50 banner. Learn more about mobile image ad sizes. To have your text ads run on mobile devices, just select the “Mobile devices with full browsers” device option when creating your campaign. To have your image ads run on mobile devices, make sure your campaign is opted in to the Display Network. To run on mobile apps and sites that are designed for mobile devices, your image ad size should be 300 x 50. WAP mobile ads WAP-enabled devices let people browse mobile websites that are specifically designed for small mobile devices. These websites are typically much simpler than the full-fledged websites you’d normally see on a desktop computer. WAP mobile ads come in two varieties: text ads and image ads. WAP mobile text ads: These ads have two lines of text, with as many as 12 or 18 characters per line, depending on the language you use. Your website URL appears on the third line, if you want to enter one. You can also add a “Call” link that allows customers to call you directly from your ad. WAP mobile image ads: These ads look like whatever image file you’ve uploaded. See our guidelines for WAP mobile image ads. Google Mobile AdWords Pay Per Click Marketing for Attorneys Pay Per Click Marketing (PPC) is one of the best ways to market your legal site. Its a way to control when your ads shows up, how often and you can also set a budget per day or per month. Its a great way to drive focused and qualified traffic to your site. Google Adwords MOBILE is a really good idea because right now the cost per click (CPC) is lower typically on mobile search vs. normal search. We can help your lawyer practice succeed via Google Adwords for Mobile. We have helped many lawyer clients market via Adwords and have driven a steady stream of qualified visitors that have turned into new clients. Google Adwords is one of the best ways to market your lawyer site online and it can give you immediate results. MOBILE is getting bigger and bigger and now is the time to get in and this is one way to do it and an easy way, do it! Contact us at 630-393-0460 or visit our Google Adwords for Attorneys page.  

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Google Adwords Tip for Lawyers

Google AdWords, Pay Per Click Marketing /

GOOGLE ADWORDS MARKETING TIPS Marketing your site with Google Adwords is a very good idea, but theres a lot of different things to keep in mind when setting up a new campaign. By default a new campaign will show ads on the search AND display networks. These are two very different networks and should be handled separately. Search is based on what the user actually typed and indicates a user that is actively involved in looking for something. Display is placing ads next to content on various sites around the Internet. These people are not actively looking and you need to pull them away from what they’re reading. This means different ad copy and different targeting. Most people might not even know what the display network is or how it works. It might not be a good idea for your business and can cost you more money. I dont know why Google opts people into the network, I mean you have a choice when setting up campaign but some people might miss it. SO either way, the bottom line is that you should when setting up an initial campaign OPT OUT of the Content network and just setup your initial campaign for Search only. THEN if you do think you might want to use the content network and try advertising on it, then setup a separate account and this way it can be less confusing. Also you should probably setup different types of ads on each. The main reason to setup different campaigns is because if you ahve them on both, it will effect your overall CTR (Click through rate) and that could have a negative effect on your Google adwords quality score. CONTACT GOOGLE ADWORDS MARKETING EXPERTS If your law firm needs assistance with marketing with Google adwords or doing any kind of pay per click (PPC) marketing, contact us today at 630-393-0460 or visit our Google adwords for lawyers page.  

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What is the Bid Simulator, and How Does it Work?

Google AdWords /

The bid simulator enables you to see the advertising results you could get if you used a different maximum CPC bid for your keyword or ad group. The bid simulator doesn’t predict the future, but it estimates the click, cost, and impression data that your ads would have received over the last seven days had you set different bids. For example, suppose you have a maximum CPC bid of US$1.00 for your keyword, and you wonder what results you’d get with a bid of US$1.50 or US$0.75. The bid simulator shows the clicks, cost, and impressions you would have seen with these other bids over the last seven days. To generate data, our system analyzes the auctions on Google and the Search Network from the last seven days. The bid simulator uses internal auction data, such as Quality Score information for you and your competitors, to estimate where your ad would appear and how frequently it would have gotten a click. The bid simulator keeps everything the same except for your bids. For example, it uses the same values for your competitors’ bids, traffic on Google, and Quality Score. The bid simulator only applies to the Search Network (Google search and search partners), not to the Display Network. How do I view a bid simulation for my ad group or keywords? To view bid simulator estimates, follow these steps: Sign in to your AdWords account at https://adwords.google.com. Click the Campaigns tab. Navigate to the Keywords tab or the Ad groups tab. In the Max. CPC column, click the bid simulator icon next to the bid. Important: The bid simulator doesn’t attempt to predict or estimate future performance. The historical information in the bid simulator can provide insight into how to set your bids. However, if you have reason to believe that next week will be significantly different from the last week, such as for seasonal reasons, then it’s a good idea to incorporate that information when you choose your bids.

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Google Adwords For Lawyers

Google AdWords /

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.

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Google Adwords – Adding "Negative" Keywords

Google AdWords, Pay Per Click Marketing /

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? I. Definition Negative keywords are a core component of a successful keyword list. Adding a negative keyword to your ad group or campaign means that your ads won’t show for search queries containing that term. By filtering out unwanted impressions, negative keywords can help you reach the most appropriate prospects, reduce your cost-per-click (CPC), and increase your ROI. II. Example The negative keyword –free trial would prevent your ads from showing on any search queries containing the terms free and trial. It wouldn’t prevent your ads from showing on variations of these terms, however. It also wouldn’t prevent your ads from showing on search queries that only contain one of the terms. For instance, the search queries one-day trial and free test could trigger your ads, while free one-day trial could not. III. How to use them The process to add negative keywords to your ad group is just like adding any other keyword. The only difference is that you put a negative sign (–) before the term. You can also add negative keywords at the campaign level. The bottom line is that when most people add keywords to their Google adwords campaign, they add a broad match keyword and that means many different variations of the keyword can trigger your ad, this can mean more traffic but it also can mean a lower click through rate and maybe people clicking on your ad that aren’t really interested in your service. You could always add an Exact match, which means the term of [New York Lawyers] would only trigger your ad if that exact term was typed in.  Yet that would then limit the amount of times your ad was shown. So adding negative keywords is a way to get more traffic but limit certain terms that you know for sure don’t make sense to your business. Google Adwords has a couple of great ideas to generate the lists of potential negative keywords, below is one way to find them and add them to your campaign. ******************* To use the Keyword Tool to generate potential negative keywords: Sign in to your AdWords account at https://adwords.google.com. Click the campaign and the ad group that you’d like to edit. Select the Keywords tab. Click Keyword tool. Enter a generic term related to your product or business (generally a one-word term) in the available field. Click Get Keyword Ideas. Check the Keyword column for any search queries that are irrelevant to your product or business and that you wouldn’t want triggering your ads. Click the downward-pointing arrow in the Match Type column for each keyword that you want to add as a negative match. Select Negative, and the term will be added to your list as negative keyword. Click Save to Ad Group when you’re done. 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.   

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