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"How To Avoid The Top 10 Google Ad Mistakes Made By Law Firms"

MISTAKE #1 - Choosing The Wrong Keywords

If you bid on the wrong keywords, you'll waste money driving the wrong kind of visitors to your Law firm website and it will be the kind of people who have no interest in the services you provide. An obvious and extreme example would be if you were a Personal Injury Lawyer and you were bidding on keywords that have to do with Accounting Services. That would clearly not get you good results. But there are more subtle mistakes Law Firms can make when choosing their keywords.

For example, suppose you a business to business lawyer that deals with more than just one law practice area. You might be tempted to bid on the keyword "lawyer near you" or “city name lawyer” because if someone searches for that on Google there's a chance they want to hire you because you are a lawyer in their local area. But there's also a good chance that they are looking for a very specific type of lawyer, for instance for immigration, or personal injury, and are thus looking for a specialist in the area. This probably also means that a landing page that talks generically about your various law practice areas, would not be as attractive as a landing page in which the content speaks exclusively to your credentials and experience in that specialization.

 Further more, if your landing page does not have some strategic method to capture the contact information of your prospective clients or website visitors, you risk losing the opportunity to nurture those leads through email marketing automation. If your prospective client is not yet ready to make a buying decision today, you want to still be able to remain top of mind either through Email Marketing Automation, or Google Remarketing Ads. This way, when they are ready to make a choice, since you have been communicating with them directly either through Email, or indirectly through Google and Social Remarketing, your Law Firm or Law Firm Practice will be their clear choice.

MISTAKE #2 - Using The Wrong Match Types

Each keyword in your Google Ads account has to be set to a particular match type. The match type determines whether the search phrase that someone types into Google will be considered similar enough to the keyword that you are bidding on to trigger your Law Firm’s Google Search or Google Display Ad to be displayed.

For example, if you are bidding on the keyword “immigration lawyer” and I search on Google for “immigration lawyer near me” then you’d expect your advert to be shown to me. But what if I searched for “canadian visa” or “american visa”. Would I see your advert for any or all of those searches? The answer depends on what match type you used for your keyword.

If you don’t specify anything different, all your keywords will be set to broad match by default. 

With broad match, your ad will potentially appear for any search that Google thinks is related to your keyword – even if the relationship is very weak. For example, “canadian visa” as a broad match could cause your ad to appear for useful searches like “Visa Credit Cards” or “Visa support groups” and many other combinations far more bizarre. 

By doing away with broad match keywords and instead using a combination of exact match, phrase match and modified broad match, you can greatly reduce the number of irrelevant clicks you get and hence cut your costs dramatically.

MISTAKE #3 - Not Using The Search Terms Report

Negative keywords are just as important as keywords. They tell Google that phrases that contain them should not enter any of your ads into the ad audition. This is especially important if your campaigns contain broad, broad match modified, and phrase match keywords as you can potentially show your ads to search terms not directly specified in your keyword list.

For example, if you are lawyer that deals predominantly or exclusively with commercial litigation, you would need to include business to consumer keyword phrases such as “personal injury lawyers”, “immigration lawyers”, “divorce lawyers”, etc.

Having dealt with all the obvious negative keywords you should be reviewing the Search Terms Report in each of your Google Ads campaigns, to find out the actual searches that have caused your ad to appear each day. You should be doing this on an ongoing basis at regular intervals, ideally once a week.

MISTAKE #4 Not Understanding Google Ad Rank

A lot of Law Firms (including some who have been using Goole Ads for a while) think that the position of your ad on the search results page is determined purely by how much you bid, and that the more you bid the higher up you’ll appear. But in reality, Google calculates your Ad Rank score and positions your ad accordingly against other ads that are bidding on the same keywords. Ad Rank is calculated with your bid and your ad's Quality Score.

Every keyword in your Google Ads account has a Quality Score from 1 to 10, with 10 being the best. To improve the score of a keyword you need to:

• Make sure the ad copy is highly relevant to the keyword; rewriting your ads and restructuring your account so you
• have a Make your ads more compelling and eye-catching; by doing this you’ll get a better click through rate (CTR), and
• the higher your CTR the better your Quality Score will be
  
• Ensure the landing page your ad points to is highly relevant to the keyword;
  
• Make sure the page gives a good user experience in terms of providing useful content, 
  
• Have a clear privacy policy, and limit annoying things like pop-ups or lots of ads on your site.

If you put in the effort to improve Quality Scores across your Google Ads account you will potentially be able to still achieve a high Ad Rank, even if you bid less money on your keywords.

You can check the Quality Score of any keyword in your account by going to the Keywords tab and then hovering over the speech bubble next to each keyword. The pop up that appears will tell you the score for that keyword and highlight what needs addressing to improve it.

MISTAKE #5 - Having Poor-Quality Ads

As already discussed, the better the click through rate (CTR) of your Law Firm ads, the better your Quality Scores will be. There are lots of ways you can make your Law Firm ads more eye catching and more engaging. Doing this will increase your Click Through Rate and hence improve your Quality Score, which means you pay a lower cost per click. Here are just a few examples of things you can do to your ads to make them more clickable:

• Make your ad content more relevant to what people are searching for 
  
• Use title casing - i.e. capitalize the first letter of each word in the ad 
  
• Include clear benefits and USPs to show why you are better than the competition
  
• Include a call to action such as "Book a Free Consultation” 
  
• Mention any awards or endorsements that you or your Law Firm has received 
  
• Experiment with different wording or styles of language 
  
• Quote figures in your ads such as your settlement totals, or numbers of cases won   
  
• Mention any discounts or special offers people can get 
  
• Include relevant keywords in your Display URL

Also, make sure you are using all the Ad Extensions that are relevant to your Law Firm. Ad Extensions are extra bits of info which can be displayed underneath your main ad copy. They give searchers more information and also make your ad larger and more prominent. All of this increases the chance your ad will be clicked in favour of another Law Firm’s ad.

Green

Call Extension (on a mobile device this would show as a Call button that the searcher could press to phone you) 

Purple

Callout Extension (these are not clickable but do allow you to put extra USPs and benefits into your ads) 

Blue

Review Extension (useful if you have reviews from independent websites) 

Orange

Sitelink Extensions (these are clickable links pointing to other pages of your website and giving you further space to include additional benefits and calls to action)

MISTAKE #6 - Having a Poor Account Structure

An account is split up into Campaigns and Ad Groups. If you don't structure your Google Ads account properly with the optimum number of Campaigns and Ad Groups you will miss out on valuable visitors and end up paying too much for the clicks you do get.

AD GROUPS

An Ad Group is a container for one or more keywords and one or more ads. When a keyword in Ad Group A is triggered, Google will display one of the ads from Ad Group A. If a keyword from Ad Group B is triggered, Google will show an ad from Ad Group B. And so on. 

By using Ad Groups to group similar keywords together you can ensure that the ad that someone sees is always one that is relevant to the keyword they triggered with their search. That’s important because, as mentioned earlier, a highly-relevant ad will help improve your Quality Score, thus resulting in a higher Return on Investment and lower Cost Per Click.

QUALITY SCORE

If you simply follow the default options and put all your keywords and ads into one Ad Group you won’t get that degree of control. That means that if, for example, you were running a personal injury Law Firm or Law Practice, someone who searches for “slip and fall accident” could end up seeing an advert for “Personal Injury Lawyer”. On the other hand, if you put all your keywords that were related to “personal injury” in one Ad Group along with ads about car accidents, work accidents, brain injury and all your “personal injury” related keywords and ads in another Ad Group, people would then always see an ad that was well matched to what they had searched for. And that means you’d get a better Click Through Rate– which is another thing that will improve your Quality Score.

CAMPAIGNS

A Campaign is a container for one or more Ad Groups. By splitting your account up into multiple Campaigns you can make it simpler to manage your account because it is easier to find your way around it. You also get better control over things like location targeting and budgets. 

MISTAKE #7 - Not Bidding On Your Law Firm Brand

This tactic has been debated by many marketers – some believe bidding on your own Law Firm brand name services is a waste of budget, while others would rather spend the extra bit of money to protect their Law Firm brand’s search presence and keep competitors away. A few years ago, dirty tactics such as bidding on a competitor’s term were squashed by Google adding Quality Score to ads.

Having as much of your brand offering visible on Search Engine Result Pages is vital if you want to increase the likelihood of click-throughs. Research shows that ad rank positions are directly related to percentage click-through.

Well you might be wondering, what has this got to do with bidding on your own Law Firm brand name or services? The aim is to use as much real-estate on Search Engine Result Pages as possible to ensure click-through – even if you are organically positioned first or second. Having an ad at the top of Search Engine Result Pages will also help your Law Firm to direct users to designated landing pages, thus ensuring higher engagement, higher conversions and ultimately new business.

MISTAKE #8 - Not Measuring Phone Calls

If you’re paying money to drive people to your Law Firm website or Landing Pages via Google Ads, it’s really important to know which of those visitors end up making a decision to retain your services or submitting an inquiry, and which ones don’t. It’s only when you have that information that you can start to optimize your campaigns by cutting back on the keywords that don’t produce conversions and putting more money into those that do.

Tracking conversions in the form of form submissions is pretty easy, either with Google Ads itself or by coupling it with Google Analytics. But for many Law Firms, a lot of the inquiries or sales will happen over the phone. These conversions via the phone are just as important as online ones but, by default, you won’t get any data about them in your reports.

The way around this is to use a call tracking system. Google provides a call tracking service free of charge to Google Ads advertisers and this does a perfectly good job of tracking how many people call your Law Firm or Law Practice after visiting your website or landing pages via Google ad.

There are also various third-party providers of call tracking software and these systems will help you track calls not just from Google Ads but from other traffic sources too. There are, however, monthly charges involved with these services.

Call tracking works by displaying a different phone number on your Law Firm website to people who visit it via Google Ads. The number is changed automatically by some simple code that you or your web developer can add to your Law Firm website or Landing Pages. If the visitor, then rings that alternative number the call routes through to you as normal. But details of the call are logged in the call tracking system along with information about what Google Ad keyword they triggered with their initial Google search. This information can then be viewed within your account.

This means you can get the full picture about which of your keywords generate business for your Law Firm and which ones don’t, so you can reduce the wasted spend on ineffective keywords.

MISTAKE #9 - Not Optimizing Mobile Separately

With the ever-increasing rise in the volume of searches carried out on mobile devices, we have now passed the tipping point in many consumer categories where there are more searches done on smartphones than there are on desktops.

So, particularly if budgets are severely limited, it may improve profitability to use mobile bid adjustments to reduce the amount you're prepared to pay per click if the search is happening on a mobile device.

On the other hand, you may find that for your Law Firm website or Landing Page visits from mobile users are more valuable to you because they convert better than average. In which case, you can use mobile bid adjustments to increase your bids on mobiles by up to 300% compared to your standard desktop bid.

As with all Google Ads recommendations, some detailed analysis and testing, particularly of cross-device behaviour, will be essential to confirm this. Although new smartphone visits may well be less likely to convert than new desktop visits, you have to use cross-device tracking to consider the whole customer journey. That is because visitors might fail to convert on a first smartphone session and yet return later via a desktop visit and then convert.

MISTAKE #10 - Outbidding Yourself

This is a deceptively easy mistake to make. It is one of the results of not understanding match phrase types. Google wants to deliver the best possible results to the user’s needs, but it needs to make money. Bidding in the Google Ads auction makes that money.

You need keywords in ad campaigns that are targeted but also reach the maximum number of users online. This is why, when setting up ad groups, less-experienced PPC marketers tend to add the same keyword with different match types, which inevitably leads to a bidding war with yourself. We also find this happens the most when the structure of campaigns aren’t optimized to match your Law Firm’s or Law Practice’s services. Having the same keyword in different ad groups will result in each ad from different groups trying to outbid one another to be featured higher. Each keyword should be unique to each ad group.

Although it is important to set Google Ads up correctly at the outset, the work doesn’t stop there. Even the most perfectly configured account will need optimizing and adjusting in the light of the real-world data that your campaigns will be gathering on an ongoing basis.

Here is a short list of things that you should be doing each week to review, optimize and maximize your Law Firm's Google Ad campaigns. 

• See what new negative keywords need adding 
  
• Pause, or reduce the bids on, any keywords which have proven not to generate a positive return on investment 
  
• See if there are new keywords you should be adding to exploit new opportunities 
  
• Pause any ads which have proven to have a lower CTR than others 
  
• Test out whether revised ad copy can be used to increase CTR 
  
• Make sure you are comfortable with the overall level of spend 
  
• See whether some parts of the country or parts of the world are performing better than others and adjust
• your location targeting accordingly 
  
• Look at whether certain days of the week or times of the day are proving unprofitable and, if so, pause your ads at those times. 

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