Podcast Ep. 16 How Google AdWords Helps to Increase Qualified Leads for Law Firms with Alan Schneider

Alan Schneider is the Director of Paid Search at Good2bSocial. He is a 14-year search engine marketing (SEM) veteran and the former co-owner of Mr-SEO.com. Alan manages paid search on the AdWords and Bing Ads platforms for all of Good2bSocial’s clients.

Podcast Shownotes

What is Google AdWords and how does it work?

Google AdWords is an advertising platform that allows advertisers to place ads anywhere they are willing to pay to position them. It enables law firms to gain qualified leads by high placement on the search results page.

The platform works on a market principle. In other words, what you pay is based on what the market will allow – more competitive keywords requires higher bids. Google will give you a Quality Score based on an algorithm that looks at the relevance between the keywords you’re bidding on, the ad you wish to show, and the landing page you’re trying to send people to. The lower your Quality Score, the more you pay to rank. If you’re able to increase your Quality Score, your cost per click will be lower.

When you start bidding, see where you’re positioned in comparison to others. Then, you can raise your bid incrementally until you’re in the position you want to be in.

The key elements of your Google AdWords campaign

• Ads that reflect your law firm
• Individual landing pages for each ad
• Keywords

Four types of keyword match:

1. Exact match – searcher must type exact key phrase for ad to show in search
2. Phrase match – searcher must type the entire phrase, but can include additional words
3. Modified broad match – searcher can search any of the part of the key phrase in any any order and the ad will show up
4. Broad match – searcher can type key phrase in any order and google will determine and allow for substitution words

What are ad extensions and do they make sense for lawyers?

Ad extensions are additional links or information you can include with your ads; this can be hit or miss for lead generation. Whether or not ad extensions are appropriate should be determined on a case by case basis as it may be effective for some law firms and not others.

How do you track conversions?

Tracking is essential in order to understand what is working for your law firm and what isn’t. AdWords is exceptional at tracking anything with a page via a cookie based tracking code, but lacks in ability when it comes to phone tracking. This is why a combination of AdWords and third party phone tracking services may be best.

Takeaway

Google AdWords can be a reasonable cost for advertising as it is priced based on the level of competition for your keywords. Unlike other SEO strategies that can take months for significant results to be seen, a firm can tell if AdWords is working after about a week. This is why Alan recommends companies experiment with the bidding and ranking process to see if it proves to be an effective way for your law firm to generate leads.