Lawyer Marketing Using Google Adwords

Law Firm Marketing Expert Qamar Zaman Explains How to Get the Most Out of Your Pay per Click Ads / Google Adwords

As competition among law firms get tighter, the need to stand out and create more visibility especially in the SERPs is of utmost importance if you want higher possibility of getting more leads.  Pay per Click (PPC) is quite useful if you don’t want your spot in the SERPs getting occupied by your competitors through paid search.  Here is a clear scenario.

For example, you are already doing great in organic search but your competitor got the top spot in paid search, this could lead to decrease in clicks which could end up in decrease in traffic and leads because your prospects are already clicking your competitor’s paid search ad.  See example below.




In the screenshot above, you can see that if you are optimizing for the keywords “new york lawyer” and even though you are doing well in organic search (see second marked SERP result), your competitor still has the chance to steal your prospects through paid search ads (see first marked SERP result).  This is the very reason why you should not forgo PPC as an important part of your online marketing strategy.

But, before you jump into the PPC bandwagon, you should make sure that you get the most out of your campaign by creating a strategy that can help you gain a better turnaround.  Let’s discuss a few important tips that can help you get the most out of your PPC campaign without employing an expensive marketing consultant.

Tips on How to Get the Most Out of Your PPC Campaign

Let’s remember that Google is one of the biggest (more than 95% of their income is from their PPC Service – Google AdWords which provided them a total revenue of $33.2 billion from the 3rd quarter of 2010 to the 2nd quarter of 2011) companies that offer PPC services for any types of businesses who wanted to gain visibility in the SERPs (as sponsor ads).

According to WordStream (http://tinyurl.com/3o7exdc), lawyer keywords are among the top 4 most expensive keywords in Google AdWords Advertising.  This means that attorneys and law firms have to set aside a considerable amount of budget in order for their PPC campaign to run.  If your budget turns out higher than your expected turn-around, then there’s no use doing any PPC campaigns.  Here’s a detailed and easier to understand example analogy by Kristi Kellogg (http://tinyurl.com/prpl6st).

“If, for example, you are operating on a daily budget of $1,000 dollars and your average cost per click is $50, you are only going to receive 20 clicks.”

Are those 20 clicks worth the $1,000 daily spend? That depends – even with a limited budget, in some cases, the cost is well-justified. If, for example, your site has a (very healthy) five percent conversion rate and you authorize a daily spend of $1,000 on keywords with an average cost-per-click of $50 … you can expect 1 conversion a day. If that single conversion (in this case, signing on a new client) is worth less than $1,000, the PPC campaign doesn’t make sense. However, if that single conversion is worth far more than $1,000, the PPC spend can make a lot of sense. If the desired conversion for a law firm is signing a new client and the worth of that conversion over the life the client is, say, $50,000, that initial $1,000 PPC spend had an ROI of 4900% (!).

Kristi’s analogy is definitely a spot on.  Make sure you know your business goals.  If you think the visibility you get from organic search is enough and you gain more clients through it, then you don’t need to spend on paid search anymore.  But, if you find out that your competitor has been attracting the prospects that are supposedly yours, then you should do something about it.

Important Things to Remember When Setting Up PPC Ads

Getting the most out of your PPC ads includes the process of carefully selecting the keywords that you will use.  Make sure that they are highly converting keywords (search terms that are used by prospects who are really looking for lawyer services).

Next, you need to create a landing page that can easily convince your prospects that the legal services they are looking for can be found on your webpage.  Take note that you can create as many landing pages as you like as long as they are highly relevant to your campaign.
It is also important that your ads be served in different formats.  This is to find out which ones are more effective in attracting clicks.  From text ads, image ads, to banner ads, you have to find out which format garner more interests from your prospects.

Whether you use Google AdWords, Facebook Adverts, or any other PPC programs, these services have automatic reporting tools that can help you figure out if your campaign is running and working well.  These tools can help you determine which ads have high or low click-through-rates or which ones are driving more traffic to your landing page/website.

Lastly, from the reports you get, you can refine your PPC strategy to improve the performance of your campaign.  For example, if your reports show that a few keywords are not performing well, you can remove them from your ads and replace them with better ones.  This can help you get rid of unnecessary spending that doesn’t have much turnarounds.

Final Thoughts

Doing a PPC campaign is not a run-of-the-mill marketing strategy.  You should carefully consider your budget first and then make sure that you make the most out of it.  Picking the right keywords, creating an effective landing page, selecting the best ad format, analyzing your ads performance and applying what you discovered to refine your strategy are important if you want to make the most out of your PPC marketing.

How about you? How do you make the most out of your PPC campaign? What PPC program are you using? Which PPC programs are more effective in driving traffic to your website?  Leave your answers in the comment section below.

Hire Qamar Zaman for your next Lawyer Marketing using Google Adwords

http://tinyurl.com/8xbmsto T:972.437.8942

Qamar Zaman
Chief Visionary at One SEO Company. An Internet Entrepreneur SEO & lawyer Internet marketing professional & Starbucks Lover.

from Dallas Internet Marketing Blog

Thumbtack Debacle – 5 Important Lessons To Learn

Earlier this month, the online marketing industry has once again been stirred by the latest casualty of Google’s manual action penalty for spammy links.  Every expert and enthusiast’s attention has been temporarily focused to Thumbtack.com, an online marketplace for local services.

A report (http://ift.tt/1RZ5Trg) from The SEM Post, discussed in details why Thumbtack.com just suddenly vanished from the SERPs and can’t also be found using their brand name.  Jennifer Slegg reported that the website received manual action penalty from Google for link spam.

“If you do a search for “Thumbtack”, you will not find them anywhere in the Google search results… nor will you see them for any of the estimated 25,000 keywords they were previously ranking for. They have been hit with a manual action penalty courtesy of Google. Thumbtack does not rank for their own brand name, which is usually the first sign to SEOs that something in their SEO has gone awry.”

It is important to note that before this report has been published, there were already complaints against Thumbtack regarding their snaky link building tactic that had somehow violated Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

Slegg further reported that Thumbtack have asked their customers to link back to them using a pre-formatted badge code in exchange for a profile points.  This type of linking scheme, although doesn’t involve direct money, still violated Google’s link spam policy.  It was also discovered that most of the links from those badges are dofollow, thus everyone who noticed it before the report came to Google, has been wondering why the search giant haven’t detected such huge link scheme earlier.

Good news for Thumbtack.com though, as of this writing, the manual penalty has already been lifted off already by Google and everything goes back to normal except for the fact that the former has been aggressively asking their customers to remove the badges or make their links no-follow.
From a sudden debacle to lightning speed of a comeback, let’s discuss what we can learn from this incident that left a lot of experts and enthusiasts frowning and sighing in frustration.

Top 5 Lessons We Can Learn from Thumbtack.com’s Debacle

Before we’ll proceed with the “morals” we can pick up from this incident, let’s refresh ourselves a bit and remember that Google is one of Thumbtack’s main investors.  Last year Bloomberg reported that the search giant has invested $100 million to the latter.  Really shocking, right?
Now, let’s proceed to the important messages or lessons we can learn from this fiasco both from the incident itself and also Google’s intentional message to all those who are trying to game or manipulate their system.

1. No matter how discreet your link building scheme in gaming Google, you still can’t keep it a secret forever.

Of course, getting all hyped up to build more and more backlinks without considering its future implications is definitely a bad strategy.  As for Thumbtack’s case, despite the earlier warnings they received from concerned personalities in the industry, they still kept on denying that they did something wrong.  This only makes them look worse and has decrease whatever online credibility they have in the industry.

When it comes to gaming Google’s algorithm, nothing can be hidden that long.  Either automated filters detect what you are doing or you will get reported by your competitors.  You really have no other choice but to stick in producing highly valuable and relevant content.

2. Any kinds of incentive in exchange for getting a dofollow backlink means a violation of Google’s policy against link spamming.

Thumbtack kept on denying at first that they have violated Google’s linking policy.  Their main defense was there’s no money involve when they asked their customers to link back to their website by embedding their badge on their webpages and telling them they get profile points in return.  In reality though, it is quite obvious that they committed a violation.  When their practice has reached Google’s ear shot, their website automatically vanished from the SERPs.  Here’s the exact words lifted off from the search giant’s Webmaster Guidelines for Link Schemes.

Any links intended to manipulate PageRank or a site’s ranking in Google search results may be considered part of a link scheme and a violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

•         This includes any behavior that manipulates links to your site or outgoing links from your site. The following are examples of link schemes which can negatively impact a site’s ranking in search results: Buying or selling links that pass PageRank. This includes exchanging money for links, or posts that contain links; exchanging goods or services for links; or sending someone a “free” product in exchange for them writing about it and including a link
•         Excessive link exchanges (“Link to me and I’ll link to you”) or partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking
•         Large-scale article marketing or guest posting campaigns with keyword-rich anchor text links
•         Using automated programs or services to create links to your site

Read the rest of the guidelines here (http://tinyurl.com/mhye639).

3. Link variety is the key.

When Thumbtack’s backlinks were evaluated by a few experts, they found out that most of them are do-follows.  Lack of link variety is a major indicator that a website is engaging in some sorts of shady practices, thus the importance of building different types of links should not be forgotten if you are aiming for your strategy to last and not get penalized.

This is not actually the first time that I talked about diversity in organic link-building but it is worth to mention this again so that everyone can keep in mind its importance in creating authoritative and credible link profile.

4. Google favors no one?

When Google hammered their penalty against Thumbtack, it is easy to conclude that they don’t favor anyone even those websites of businesses wherein they invested millions of dollars into.  But, a lot of personalities in the industry are quite skeptic because while it would take a few months for an ordinary website to recover, Thumbtack was out of their misery in just a week.  This has been raising the eyebrows even those people who are closely following Google.  We can’t blame Google, right? I mean they already penalized their very own, it’s enough already.  Do you agree?

5. If Google can’t detect your scheme, your competitors can!

Of course, Google’s algorithm is not perfect, thus it is expected that every now and then some people can bypass their system and can get away from getting penalized.  But, you should not rely on that fact alone.  You should remember that you cannot hide anything online.  Your competitors are bound to investigate your website more especially if you are on top of your game.  Thus, it is definitely not a good strategy to use spammy or black hat tactics to rank well on the SERPs.

Final Thoughts

Getting a manual penalty from Google is not a very uncommon occurrence in the online marketing industry but what happened to Thumbtack is rather an interesting case.  They’ve been implementing their questionable link building strategy for quite a while and it only takes a few “concerned” individuals (who reported their practice to Google) to dissolve their stand that what they are have been doing violated Google’s linking policy.
It is also worthy to note that despite penalizing Thumbtack (for one week), we can never really conclude that Google is always fair.  Put yourself in Google’s shoes and penalize the website wherein you invested millions of dollars for a few months.  They are always bound to expedite the process because it involves their very own money.
How about you? Do you think Google is completely unbiased in implementing the manual penalty for Thumbtack? Kindly share your opinions in the comment section below.
By: Qamar Zaman. Qamar is a Dallas based SEO Expert and can be found on http://tinyurl.com/nq4jlaq

Qamar Zaman
Chief Visionary at One SEO Company. An Internet Entrepreneur SEO & lawyer Internet marketing professional & Starbucks Lover.

from Dallas Internet Marketing Blog

Google Analytics Tips: Analyzing Visitor Personas

Analyzing website visitors including the task of determining who they are, why they come to your website and how you can improve their experience as users are among the most challenging parts in creating visibility for your brand or business on the web. Good thing is, there’s one very useful tool that has become the ultimate solution when it comes to analyzing online customer and prospect’s personas. It’s no other than Google Analytics.

Google Analytics and Small Businesses

Google Analytics is particularly popular among small businesses. Aside from the fact that it is free, it also has powerful and compelling features that enable marketers and entrepreneurs alike in gaining insights not only about the number of visitors their websites receive but also in identifying their intent and background. According to BuiltWith.com (http://tinyurl.com/d2j6ott), as of May 2015, there are 496,424 sites that are using Google Analytics.
Demographics and Affinity Signals are two of Google Analytics features that can help you create personas to group website visitors with the same background, intent, and want. To learn more on how to do this, continue reading below.

What is a Persona?

In a marketing perspective, a persona is a kind of a pseudo or fictional character. It is created to give a representation for a particular type of users. This is quite helpful if you want to categorize the users who are visiting your webpage to further refine your targeting strategies. Here’s how Wikipedia (http://tinyurl.com/nc8fn97) exactly defines it.
“Personas are fictional characters created to represent the different user types that might use a site, brand, or product in a similar way. Marketers may use personas together with market segmentation, where the qualitative personas are constructed to be representative of specific segments. The term persona is used widely in online and technology applications as well as in advertising, where other terms such as pen portraits may also be used.”
Learning to create personas out of your website visitors through the use of Google Analytics is the first step in gaining more and deeper insights on how you can improve user experience and answer the needs of your target audience.

Tips on Creating and Analyzing Website Visitor Personas

Checking the Demographics and Affinity Categories

Two of Google Analytics features you need to check first if you want to create and analyze the personas of your website visitors are the Demographics and Affinity Signals. To see the Demographic reports, you only need to enable it so that it can be easily accessed every time you log in into your Google Analytics account.
The first report you will see is about the ages of your visitors.

In the screenshot above, it is apparent that most of the visitors of the website are of ages 25 to 34.

The next report under the Demographics section shows the Gender of most of your website visitors.

In the screenshot above, we can tell that most visitors of the website are females.
So far, there are two main things we know about most of the website’s visitors – they are mostly females ages 24 to 35. These data are very important in creating their persona but these are not enough. We need more information, thus we need to check another set of reports in Google Analytics called the Affinity Categories. This report can be found under the Interests section.

Taking a Closer Look at the Affinity Categories

The Affinity Categories reveal a lot more about a website’s visitors. In the screenshot above, the data show that most of the visitors are Movie (6.29%) and TV lovers (5.79%).
The data we have so far revealed that most of the traffic received from that website are from women who are in their middle twenties to early thirties. They are mostly movie buffs and couch potatoes. These data should be enough but Google Analytics provides another in depth data that can help you see what these visitors are looking for.

The In-Market segment under the Interests section (see screenshot above) shows that most of the website visitors have been actively looking for information about employment, travel, and gadget phones.
With these additional information, you can now create a persona of a target audience that are mostly composed of movie buffs and TV-loving millennials who arrive at your website while they are actively looking for information about employment, travel, and gadgets.
Looking at these data, we can create another slightly different persona. They are young women professionals who are either working in the office or actively seeking for a job. If they are working, they are probably looking for information such as reviews of the latest gadget phones or information about travel destinations that they are planning to visit. This group of young women professionals are also the type who frequent in online Movie or TV sites such as Netflix and Hulu.
With these highly detailed information, website owners and marketers can have a better understanding of what are the needs of their target audience and how they can serve them to improve their user experience.

Questions You Need to Ask to Build Your Personas

According to Bryan Eisenberg (http://tinyurl.com/y9mp4nm), an online marketing pioneer, there are some important questions you need to answer to build your personas. They are as follows.

• What are the daily activities of this persona?
• What is this persona’s life motivation?
• What this persona’s unspoken questions about your product or service?
• What are his/her expectations from your product or service?
• What kind of information this persona needs to be convinced to take action?
• What is she/he motivated to this this action?
• What actions you want this persona to do, and how you will convince her/him to do them?

Read more tips on how to create personas using Google Analytics here (http://tinyurl.com/y9mp4nm).

Final Thoughts

Creating personas to learn more about the needs of your target audience is definitely a very important step every online entrepreneur should not miss doing if they want to improve their online marketing strategy. Learning how to create personas through the use of Google Analytics is an essential skill that can help you not only understand the behavior of your website visitors but also what your current marketing platform needs to change or modify to improve their experience while consuming your content.
If you are still confused or haven’t absorbed well how creating personas is done, then it is high time you contact a seasoned digital marketing consultant to guide and teach you how the whole process is being done. Good luck!
Also watch my Video Tweets in Google Search Results

Qamar Zaman
Chief Visionary at One SEO Company. An Internet Entrepreneur SEO & lawyer Internet marketing professional & Starbucks Lover.

from Dallas Internet Marketing Blog