Common Google Ads Mistakes Affecting Your Law Firm’s Conversion Rates

Law firm Google ads are an expensive, yet highly effective ad type for lead generation and client acquisition. As Google is constantly making changes to its software and updates to its algorithm, the world of pay-per-click ads is becoming increasingly sophisticated. In this blog article, we point out some common mistakes that can hinder the performance of your law firm’s Google ads campaigns.

Lawyer related keywords are some of the most expensive to bid on when it comes to Google ads for law firms.  If your campaign is not set up properly, you may spend all of your marketing budget with little return on investment (ROI) to show for your expenditures.  Legal marketers can avoid this predicament and boost conversion rates by being aware of some of the following common campaign mistakes: 

Common Law Firm Google Ads Mistakes

Poor keyword choices

Irrelevant keywords and keywords with low search volume are bad news for your quality score. If you have not been getting relevant results, then it’s time to start revising those keywords.

Pause keywords that are irrelevant and/or not converting to avoid excessive spending. Then use Keyword Planner to add fresh new keywords with high search volumes. 

Lack of targeting

Targeting is extremely useful in directing your law firm’s Google Ads to the audience you want and drive conversions. This also ensures that you do not pay unnecessarily for clicks that won’t convert. Location, audience and device targeting are some ways you can narrow down your audience. Always base targeting strategies on your business goals.

Your bids are too high or too low

Make sure there is not a conflict between keyword bids and campaign budgets. Remember that your ad rank for a given auction depends on your quality score for the keyword you’re bidding on as well as the bid itself.

There is not enough keyword search volume

Do you know that the keyword you’re targeting does, in fact, drive traffic each month? If Google notices that you’re targeting an extremely low-volume keyword, they will make it temporarily inactive within your account. Use the keyword planner tools to find one with more volume. 

Negative keywords are cancelling out active keywords

For example, if you’re bidding on “divorce attorney” as a keyword, but have set “inexpensive divorce attorney” as a broad match negative, then prospects searching only “divorce attorney” may not be served your law firm Google ad.

Negative bid adjustments are too high

Negative bid adjustments—which allow you to automatically decrease your bids within a particular campaign under specific circumstances—can be set on a number of different parameters. If you set extreme negative bid adjustments, you might be taking your firm out of contention in some areas. 

Your Google Ad groups aren’t properly focused

If your ad groups are not composed of closely related keywords, you might start to see problems. You should create separate campaigns for unrelated keywords.

Poor Google Ad copy

Ad copy needs to be better optimized. Be sure that the copy you write for any ad contains the keyword you’re targeting. Try a/b testing two different ad copies to see which language performs better and resonates well with your firm’s target audience.  It is good practice to revise the copy monthly, particularly for low funnel campaigns, to avoid ad wear out.

Post-click landing page irrelevance

Google bots know to look beyond the relevance of your ad copy, and to assess the landing pages the ads are linked to. If your landing page fails to help users (determined by what they searched for in the first place), you’ll begin to do poorly in the ad auctions. The fix for this is being conscious of how prospects search and what keywords they use in the first place. Make sure not only your ad copy – but the landing page associated – gets to the heart of that query.

Takeaway

Don’t let these common Google Ads mistakes affect your law firm’s conversion rates. As a legal marketer, you should be privy to these common mistakes when setting up, optimizing, or troubleshooting your law firm Google ads campaigns. This way, you’ll be able to maximize the efficiency and ROI of your campaigns. Google is always changing the way their search algorithm functions so it is also imperative that you stay up-to-date on changes made to the platform in order to drive efficiencies.

Many lawyers and legal marketers do not have the bandwidth to take on the complexities of building effective law firm Google ads campaigns – and that’s why they turn to us. If you need help creating a stellar Google ad presence – one that always appears in front of prospective clients and generates quality leads – contact us!

Updated and republished from Sep 26, 2019.