Attorney Marketing: Effectively Using AdWords

One of the most common tactics that attorneys use to raise awareness regarding their practice is advertising on search engines like Google and Bing. The idea is simple, get yourself in front of a potential client who is searching for services you provide by paying to be at the top of the search results. For example, someone injured in a car accident would be searching for a phrase along the lines of “Car Accident Lawyer [City],” or “[City] Personal Injury Attorney.”

The potential client knows what they’re looking for, the search engine displays the answer, and for a fee, the attorney gets to show up at the top of the list. However, according to keyword planning tool SEMRush, the aforementioned keyword phrase costs, on average, over $44.50 per click.

That price tag is tame compared to phrases like “San Antonio car wreck attorney” ($670.44), “Accident attorney Riverside VA” ($626.90), or “Personal injury attorney Colorado” ($553.08). Even more daunting, 78 of the most expensive 100 AdWords keywords are for legal services, including 9 of the top 10 and 42 of the top 50.

Recent research from Webpage FX used SEMRush’s tools to find out exactly what keywords would set marketers back the most, finding the 100 most expensive keywords and the cost per click of each, compiling the information in the infographic shared below.


Created by WebpageFX

Improve Ad Rank to Lower Costs

Of course, there are factors beyond cost that go into a keyword’s success in a cost-per-click (CPC), including expected click-through rate, relevance, and landing page experience, all contributing to what Google calls “Quality Score.” Quality Score is one of the non-monetary contributors to something called “Ad Rank,” an algorithm that combines Quality Score factors with bid amounts to determine an ad’s price at auction, as demonstrated in the image below courtesy of Wordstream. 

 

Per Google’s Search Advertising Fundamentals course: 

“The 1-10 Quality Score reported for each keyword in your account is an estimate of the quality of your ads and landing pages triggered by that keyword. Having a high Quality Score means that our systems think that your ad and landing page are relevant and useful to someone looking at your ad and can improve an ad’s position. You can find out your Quality Score for any of your keywords.”

Wordstream provides even more relevant information, noting five critical steps to improving Quality Score, which will improve the return on your marketing investment:

1) Keyword Research – Discover new, highly relevant keywords to add to your campaigns, including long-tail opportunities that can contribute to the bulk of your overall traffic.
2)  Keyword Organization – Split your keywords into tight, organized groups that can be more effectively tied to individual ad campaigns.
3) Refining Ad Text – Test out PPC ad copy that is more targeted to your individual ad groups. More effective ads get higher CTR, one of the best ways to improve Quality Score.
4) Optimizing Landing Pages – Follow landing page best practices to create pages that connect directly with your ad groups and provide a cohesive experience for visitors, from keyword to conversion.
5) Adding Negative Keywords – Continuously research, identify, and exclude irrelevant search terms that are wasting your budget.

Also, per Google Search Advertising Fundamentals course: 

“We combine the components of Quality Score (expected click-through rate, ad relevance, and landing page experience), the maximum CPC bid, and the expected impact of extensions and other ad formats to determine Ad Rank. Ad Rank is then used to determine where the ad appears and what types of extensions and other ad formats will show with the ad (or whether the ad or ad format will appear at all).”

When marketing your law firm online, it’s all about spending your time and money intelligently. Do your research and make sure that the outlets you put time and money into will be the most effective. Legal Services Link allows you to create your profile in its directory for free and to connect directly with clients efficient and inexpensively. Learn more at LegalServicesLink.com and sign up today!

In addition to helping you get clients, Legal Services Link is working hard to provide you all of the advice you need to improve your practice’s return on its marketing investment. From our blogs about building a website to those about podcasting, infographics, and email marketing, we hope to provide you with the insight you need to go out on your own and find new clients.