Search Engine Marketing Blog|SEO, PPC, SMM, LPO Blog

Top PPC Campaign Management Tips

July 8, 2011 By Frank Pipolo 1 Comment

If you are running any PPC (Pay Per Click) management campaign you must be aware of Quality Score and the effects on your PPC campaign performance it has. The main purpose of Quality Score is to award those advertisers who are providing the best experience to searchers from keyword query to landing page and not those who have the deepest pockets. If you provide a positive experience for searchers, you will find they, along with Google will reward you.

Quality Score is dynamic and is assigned to both the keyword and Ad Group level. It essentially affects your cost per click which in turn will affect your overall profitability. So for a higher Quality Score, you can achieve a paid search higher ranking at a lower cost per click than your competitors. There are three major factors that we know about that Quality Score is determined by:

Click Through Rate (CTR) – I don’t care what anybody tell you, CTR is by far the most important factor in your PPC bid management! If you were to pay two people to advertise to for your brick and mortar store. One had a great flashing sign and did magic tricks or another one that just brought people into your store which one would you reward?
Relevancy – What you PPC ad is related to the keywords with in that Ad Group- So many people confuse this with the keywords you bid on that are within the landing page but that is not what relevancy is about. Let’s use our brick and mortar example again, If one of our people advertising for us has a sign that says “free hamburgers – come on in” how relevant would that be if we do not serve hamburgers or food in general?
Landing Page – this one you can spend all day with and never come up with a true answer for. I have had many of discussions with clients on this and I can tell you that having a landing page that is on topic with the Ad Group is all you need. Google is the only PPC search engine that even cares about this and their main goal is to make sure that an advertiser has little grounds to claim click fraud. If you are bidding on running shoes make the page about that and other related items such as running clothing and you will be fine.

So with all that said, let’s look at some PPC bid management tips:

Smaller Ad Groups The Better

Keeping your Ad Groups to twenty five keywords or better has always been my sweet spot. Now I know some of you might be cursing me out when you read this as you might have a hundred thousand keywords you are bidding on but the facts are that smaller, targeted Ad Groups will do wonders for you. Your relevancy will be higher and you can offer more landing pages. Examples of typical Ad Groups I use are branded, non-branded, singular, and plurals.

Dynaminc Keyword Insertion Is Your Friend

One of the relevancy factors is relevance of the ad copy to the search query. This is a real time analysis and is not completely reflected in the number that is shown inside your AdWords account.

For DKI to be effective, there are a few things that need to occur:
The ad needs to stand out (if the ads blend into each other, CTR suffers).
The ad has to be attractive to the searcher (poor DKI usage often lowers CTR)
The ads need to be related to the search query (DKI does this automatically by adding the keyword).

Therefore, the use of DKI is more likely to affect you via the CTR factors and not the relevancy factors; however, DKI can definaetly improve QS as well now due to that change in the QS factor.

With DKI, it is useful to write two ads and test them out to see which does better.

Filed Under: Paid Search Marketing, Uncategorized Tagged With: Ad Group, Ad Groups, PPC, Quality Score

Law Firm SEO – Attorney Internet Marketing Services

July 8, 2011 By Frank Pipolo Leave a Comment

attorney internet marketing services - findlaw.com growth

There are many ways to categorize a services such as Lawyer SEO, Law Firm Search Engine Optimization, or Attorney Office SEO but the question is why do lawyers need Internet marketing services? The answer can be extremely easy or complicated to answer but the bottom line is that your competitors are taking it away from you!

The number of people on line is continuing to grow every day – to get information, comparison shop, and research important life issues. More than 70% of all Americans are online, 90% of college graduates are online, and 90% of web users are researching while 80% of them are making purchasing decisions. It only makes business sense to be ranking in the top ten for your keywords where they can find you.

Attorney SEO Services

According to a study done by findlaw.com, 25% of all users to their site are looking for an attorney while 50% of those visitors are ready to take the next step and contact a law firm. Below is a graph of findlaw’s traffic over the past year and you can see how it continues to grow giving a great indication of how more people are looking for attorney services.

SEO for lawyers and attorneys will help create brand identity and drive more traffic to your site which in-turn generates more leads. By providing Attorney office SEO you are also proactive in online reputation management which is extremely important for any service including law firms. People will search for attorneys by name and law firm so this helps to bring potential client towards him/her with positive reputation over internet.

Why FP Internet Marketing For Your Law Firm SEO?

We have been providing Internet marketing since 1995 and we have the expertise and a proven track record in law SEO services. If you are a single attorney or law firm, multiple attorneys, or multiple law offices national or regional we have the perfect SEO plan & strategy for you. Our strategy is centered around providing quality traffic that produces business for you and your law firm. Being #1 for “attorney services” is great and produces lots of traffic that will most likely give you zero business but being #1 for keywords that geo targeted such as “Atlanta personal injury attorney” will drive much less traffic but give you more business. Usually Lawyer SEO is geographical based SEO, as specific lawyer works in specific city or state and law varies from state to state or even city by city . So, Our lawyer SEO plans are always created with targeted local SEO. We focus on specific keywords on which targeted visitor will search and work accordingly.

How To Start Your Law Firm Internet Marketing

Very simply fill out our form to right or give us a call. Every “attorney SEO or law firm search engine optimization” company offers free consultation or audit of you SEO health but if you want a true assessment of your site and what needs to be done in order for you to make that site a big contributor to your revenue, we love to have the opportunity to work with you.

Filed Under: Search Engine Optimization Tagged With: optimization, search engine optimization, SEO

Performance Based SEO – IS It Worth It?

June 28, 2011 By Frank Pipolo Leave a Comment

One of the great things about paid search marketing is that you only pay for the clicks you receive and some in the industry promote SEO as a performance based service as well with the hopes of selling you search engine optimzation services that you only pay for when it produces results.

How Does Performance Based SEO Pricing Work?

Most firms will charge typically 15-20% of the revenue that is produced from their work and look to commit you to 1-3 years via contract. Now the revenue part is not really that far off as any search marketing firm is going to charge you 10-20% to manage your PPC Account but the extended commitment is where you can feel trapped. Most agencies will say that they need the longer than usual contract because optimizing a site generally takes around 3 months of full time work, and then part time work to get keep you ranking. Getting a site to the top results in Google, Bing, or Yahoo, usually takes around 6 months. Oh, yeah they want this to be profitable for them too. Basically, if they are going to commit to doing all that work for free at the beginning, you have to be willing to stay with them for long enough to make it worthwhile for them.

I guess somewhat valid in theory but the realty is that within six months you should see some movement in your SEO and if you have not by then I would think you will not see much then. If you go down this route make sure you have an out around this time in your contract.

What If You Want To Reduce The Contract Time From A Performance Based SEO Company?

This is where you are going to get nailed as by doing this you really are putting yourself in a typical agreement that you would for any true search engine marketing firm. The catch is that you are going to pay top dollar for this “retainer”. Somewhere in the ballpark of $5,000-$10,000 a month for every month you try to shorten the contract. The question you have to ask yourself is “does this really make sense for me to pay an over-inflated price for these services”?

What Will Be The Performance Based SEO Company’s Response?

At this point you are going to get some answers similar to these:

“We” are the experts in a industry of snake oil salesmen and so called “experts”.
“How much additional revenue will my company bring in if I rank 1st for a certain keyword” is actually a very difficult question to answer before getting that ranking and requires a ton of insight into conversion rates, clickthrough rates, search volume, etc.
Fee based SEO still requires you to have the capital to pay for a placement before you have received the financial benefit from the search engine ranking.
Paying for unclear results doesn’t make much business sense.

So Why Not Go With A Performance Based SEO Company?

I have been in this industry for over 15 years and these types of performance models have been around for the majority of my time. They have never worked then or now.
Money! Yes,I said money! But how can that be as I am not paying for anything until it works? Well, yes you are and it is called opportunity time. The time you are wasting with a firm like this is going to put you real SEO that much further away.
More opportunity to get your site banned – assuming that after a few months, lets say six or so, your firm is going to cross over to the dark side to get the results they need to start making some revenue to cover costs that they have not gotten since the start of the contract. Things like buying links, producing thin (non-authoritative content) or server based “spoofing” or “redirecting” will get your site banned. They can walk away (or be fired) but you can not and you will have a near zero chance of getting your site back in the good graces of the search engine gods.

Filed Under: Search Engine Optimization Tagged With: conversion rates, Money Yes, search engine marketing, SEO

Keyword Discovery Targeting For B2B Businesses

June 26, 2011 By Frank Pipolo Leave a Comment

I like to talk about how performing SEO for a B2B client is different than a B2C client. Like all good starting points in a successful search engine optimization campaign, keyword discovery is the heart of it and performing this discovery for a B2B client is much different. I am going to use a client of mine Hire Velocity, a Tampa, Florida based recruitment process outsourcing company as our example.

Keyword Discovery Challanges

Most keyword discovery is based around finding the most relative keywords that are used the most. From a B2C perspective this is something that works very well. Our example site if it was a B2C site we would target terms such as recruitment agency, professional recruiters, or hiring agency. In a B2B environment the terms are different as the “searcher” will be a corporate professional such as a CEO, president, or executive staff member. One of the rule of thumbs that I use when developing my keyword lists for a B2B company is that I look for industry specific than shear numbers. You will be far better off with a #1 ranking for recruitment process outsourcing (which yields 1,000 exact match searches a month) vs. recruitment agency (which yields 100,000 exact match searches a month).

Get As Long Tail As You Can

Some experts have said that the long tail is dead. I totally disagree with this statement and will go to my grave optimizing for the long tail keywords. My philosophy on the long tail keyword is simple. I would take a keyword that gives my 5 visitors and 3 convert than a keyword that gives me 100 visitors and 3 convert. These terms can be product based such as applicant tracking system or solution based such as employee screening.

Tie Into Your Assets

So your you have done a great job of achieving a top page placement for “employee screening”! Great job but what do you have to offer them that will get them to fill out your lead form or call you? You need authoritative assets that will give the potential client the real sense that your company knows their business and that confirms the keywords you have optimized for. These types of assets are:

Videos
White Papers
Guides
Webinars
Infographics
Surveys/Polls
Case Studies

Industry Specific Pages

My client provides recruitment solutions for many different types of industries such as IT, Sales, Engineering, Insurances, etc. You need to have pages created specifically tailored to these industries. You need to speak their language as they are looking for terms that are related to their specific needs. Start off with pages that are the most popular industries you currently work for and cross link them to industry specific demos, evaluation tools, and technical documents.

Conversion Optimization Is A Must

Like any lead generation sites, conversion optimization is a must in order to increase the opportunity to obtain more leads. Most B2B sites are lead generation sites so perform these basic optimization tactics:

Always have a lead form or call to action on each page in the “above the fold” area.
Test headlines, images, colors, button shapes and button wording.
Make sure phone numbers are present on all pages.

Filed Under: Search Engine Optimization Tagged With: Hire Velocity, optimization, search engine optimization, SEO

Tampa SEO Service Provider

June 25, 2011 By Frank Pipolo Leave a Comment

Does it matter if you are a local SEO service provider in the Tampa Bay area? It really all depends

on your personal preference. Some companies feel more comfortable than others by having an Tampa Internet marketing company that lives and breathes within the same local area. One that can schedule a meeting and be at their client’s office within a few hours while others feel that search engine optimization services are about just getting the results. No matter what your thoughts are about Tampa, Florida SEO services, FP Internet Marketing is here to help your online marketing succeed.

We provide Tampa, FL Internet marketing services to clients in Tampa, FL, and nationwide. Our primary focus is optimizing websites so that they can be found at the top of the search engines & increase their web visibility, but most of all drive highly qualified traffic to your website that will be looking for the products or services that you provide? SEO is not rocket science or brain surgery really as any mid-level SEO firm can provide traffic to your site but is that traffic ready to purchase what you have to offer? This is we feel the difference that makes us stand out.

Why Allow Us To Be Your Tampa Bay SEO Provider?

There are over 175 SEO companies in Tampa as we speak with the majority of them being only a few years old. 10% of those companies have been around for 3+years, the rest are new to the business. My team has been providing search engine optimization and Internet marketing services since 1995 while having the track record to prove it! Very few SEO specialists, yet companies can say this. We believe that having industry longevity is the key to success. We have seen everything that the world of Internet marketing has thrown out there and we are ready to handle what is going to happen in the future.

The SEO Tampa Service Provider Challenge

We are so confident that our search engine marketing services are that good we are throwing down the ultimate challenge, a Tampa SEO throwdown! Below are some of the best rated SEO firms in Tampa, Florida. Visit their sites, call them, get a quote for their services then come to us and let us quote you the same services. If you feel that they can provide you the level of expertise and service that we can not and you sign a contract with another firm I will provide one month of Tampa link building services for free! No strings or fine print!

Local Motion SEO, LLC

(813) 907-828327535

Kirkwood Cir, Wesley Chapel, FL 33544

http://www.localmotionseo.com

Trilufix

(813) 885-50727908

W Hanna Ave, Tampa, FL 33615-3325

http://www.trilufix.com

Leverage Digital Media, Inc.

Phone: (866) 611-6267

400 N Ashley Dr Ste 2600, Tampa, FL 33647

http://www.leveragedigitalmedia.com

W3Evolutions LLC

Phone: (941) 371-7929

PO Box 52881, Sarasota, FL 34232-0324

http://www.w3evolutions.com

Mimcorporate

(941) 580-72101400

10th St W, Bradenton, FL 34205

http://www.getfound-online.com

Filed Under: Local SEO Tagged With: FL, optimization, search engine optimization, SEO

SEO Las Vegas Criminal Defense Attorney Review

June 21, 2011 By Frank Pipolo 1 Comment

using the keyword difficulty tool from SEOMOZ we can see the top ranked pages for the term las vegas criminal defense attorney

In another SEO on page review I would like to explore the term Las Vegas criminal defense attorney and the website of The Law Offices of Paul J. Adras, PC located at http://www.gotdefenseattorney.com/. Currently the site is ranked on the top half of page 2. The goal will be to first get this page listed in the top 10 and move it’s way up to the top 3 where 60% of all clicks are obtained.

Keyword Competitive Analysis

Using the SEOMOZ keyword discovery tool, we can see that our showcased term, Las Vegas criminal defense attorney, is a moderately competitive term. Google “says” that this term is used around 300 times a month in it’s exact match but who really knows? Only people who are performing paid search management and have included this paid search keyword in their campaign. Either way, it is a very authoritative term that will bring quality traffic. At the end of the day, it is about traffic that converts not traffic that does not.

Our showcased site does come up a little short in terms of the websites authority in comparison to the top 10 listings. What this shows us is that we need to do some aggressive link building to bring that authority higher to the pages that are ranking in the top 1o per our screenshot. The site lacks the shear number of links that these others have but also from other authoritative domains. So we know we need more links but let’s look at the on-page SEO factors.

On-Page SEO Review Factors

The site does a really good job of optimizing it’s on-page factors. Let’s look at the pros and cons:

Pros:

Broad usage of keywords in the title and content
Exact keywords in the title and content
No keyword stuffing in the title
Only one title tag being used
Good alt tag usage
Sufficient body copy content
No keyword stuffing in the URL
Uses a static URL
Uses heading correctly
Good meta description usage
No extensive internal or external links
Uses external links
Only uses 1 H1 heading

Cons (more like improvement opportunities)

More usage of Las Vegas criminal defense attorney throughout the content of the page
Use the exact term more on page
Exact term in URL of page – this is a tough one really as the only true way to do this is to create a new page that has these terms in the URL of the page
Exact term in H1 headline
Page title a little to long – currently is ”Las Vegas Criminal Defense Attorney | Las Vegas Defense Lawyer | VegasDUI Lawyer” – at 66 characters this will truncate the title to “Las Vegas Criminal Defense Attorney | Las Vegas Defense Lawyer | Vegas”
Using bold or italic versions in the body copy of the site for our showcased term
Meta description needs exact match term within it – currently is “”Expert criminal defense lawyer specializing in DUI, drunk driving defense, felony and misdemeanor charges. Serving all of Southern Nevada and Las Vegas.”
Avoid using meta keyword tag – overall this tag is dead and should not be used.

Las Vegas Criminal Defense Attorney Search Engine Optimization Suggestions

Here is what I would suggest to get the on page Las Vegas attorney SEO at it’s peak:

Get our exact match term in the body copy at least 5 times – implement the terms in both bold and italic versions if possible
Implement a H1 Headline that excludes our term – a good place would be to replace the current area labeled “The Law Offices of Paul J. Adras, PC” to “Las Vegas Criminal Defense Attorney – Paul J. Adras, PC”
Use exact match of term in description
Shorten title tag
Remove meta keyword tag

Final Verdict

Overall this site has done a very good job of performing Las Vegas attorney SEO on page. I give it a sold A-/A. I think this suffers more from a weak link profile more than anything else. This will require link building services more so than SEO on page optimization.

Filed Under: Search Engine Optimization Tagged With: Final Verdict, Las Vegas, PC, SEO

Paid Search Ad Copy Optimzation

June 20, 2011 By Frank Pipolo Leave a Comment

paid search ads for atlanta home builders

Paid search marketing is a very “hands on” search marketing strategy and having a firm or a in-house person work on your PPC campaign is so much more profitable than allowing the search engines to do it for you. I am a big believer that the keywords you bid on and the ads you use are a key factor in conversions. I will go far and say that your business will not succeed in paid search if your keywords and ads are not optimized to their fullest. Today I would like to talk about ad reads in the home builder industry specifically for the Atlanta new homes term and how to optimize them for great click through rates.

So let’s start off by showcasing a few ad reads that have popped up when I do a search for the terms “atlanta new homes” and see how they can be optimized:

Ad Copy Strategy Using Atlanta New Homes

Use discounts or pricing – of course this can be great for any retailer but a great way to use this strategy for our example is to showcase home prices “from”. Something like “Atlanta new homes starting from the low 100′s” or ” Covering up to $10,000 is closing costs”.
Using the brand name – this is something that all home builders do very well as they are doing a tremendous amount of traditional and online advertising. The question comes into play when a builder who is not very well known is using their brand within the ad.
Google site links – if you are a premium advertiser, the ads that appear above the natural search results, not alongside them on the left, you can choose up to ten links to appear underneath your main ad – Google will automatically choose four and the settings are applied at campaign level. Many have seen an increase of 30% in their click through rates because of them.
Google extended headlines – as I talked in a previous post, Google has been implementing longer headlines in their premium ads. Ultimately Google will make the call on whether your description line #1 will be moved into the headline of your ad. While you can’t explicitly opt into (or out of) this, you can influence the probability of your ad displaying as such. By crafting your ad so that each line of copy appears as a distinct sentence that ends with proper punctuation, you’ll at least be in a position to have your ad appear with the extended headline.
Urgency/Expiration- I love using this one! Look at every infomercial you see on tv and notice the time remaining or items sold counter? This is exactly what they are doing by relying on your sense of urgency. Reads for our example can be:
1. Atlanta new homes – communities are 90% sold out!
2. We cover all closing costs till July 6th!
3. Over 4,000 new homes sold in Atlanta!

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: conversions, paid search, PPC

Social Media Facts and Myths

June 14, 2011 By Frank Pipolo Leave a Comment

learning about social media myths and facts

Many people have asked me about social media myths and what are the real facts when adapting social media into your marketing strategy. The answer is pretty simple in that your need to be interacting with your customers. Social media myths have the ability to stop your taking the leap into implementing this necessary marketing strategy, but which myths are fact and which are fiction? The truth may surprise you. Here are some of the top myths:

Social media is not where my customers are:
False. This is the biggest myth out there as all online customers are online. Your customers are on social media but you have not tapped them yet. According to Socialmediaexaminer.com, roughly 80% of females surfing the internet say they have become fans of a product or brand on a social network site. At least 72% said they discovered a new product through social media. Social networking and media can greatly influence your customer base, if you’re out there making an effort to reach them.
Social media isn’t Measurable
Difficult? Yes, but not measurable is incorrect. Social media marketing and other Internet marketing strategies have different interaction mechanisms, so trying to evaluate and determine potential customers and purchase intent is a new skill for many marketing specialists. Things like shares, likes, mentions, and follows are extremely important to gauge your social media marketing and with recent updates by Google and Bing it will actually help you in your search engine optimization. It is possible to track the impact social media is having on your bottom line.
Social media marketing will take to much time
I say 1 hour a day. Custom content is the key and it takes just a little time to engage with your customers. Social networks are easy to be a part of as all you have to do is simply talk with users about interesting topics. You’ll quickly understand that interaction through social media is very similar to carrying on a conversation offline. There are a variety of tools that can make interaction much easier such as TweetDeck for Twitter interaction and Ping.fm to post updates to multiple profiles from a single place. It is important to remember to implement a social media policy within your business and to encourage employees to engage with customers as well.
Negative comments/reviews will kill my business
Don’t worry about negative comments on your social media sites. Matter of fact a few negative comments is not a bad things as there is nothing in the world that everybody likes. While nobody wants to see negative feedback about their company or product, bad reviews actually establish authenticity, help promote your customer service standards and act as a public platform to “wow” the masses through a rapid response. Social marketing instills transparency into business operations – if a customer chooses to post negative feedback, you’re given a big opportunity to make the situation right. Your efforts won’t go unnoticed; people observing the dialogue are more likely to admire your efforts to right the situation, rather take to heart the angry customer’s complaints.

Filed Under: Social Media Marketing Tagged With: optimization, search engine optimization

Dentist Fort Lauderdale, Florida – SEO Review

June 13, 2011 By Frank Pipolo 1 Comment

Dr Gegati - Dentist Fort Lauderdale SEO Review

For my search engine optimization on page SEO review, I am going to use the term dentist Fort Lauderdale with the example site – cosmetic implant dentist, Marcel Gegati located in Fort Lauderdale, Florida located at http://www.confidentsmiledesigns.com/. This is another great term to perform dentist SEO for local dentist that are within the Fort Lauderdale, Florida area as this terms has low competition in Google, is a very popular term used, and will produce extremely high quality traffic. Currently, the example website is ranked 13 th for the term and with some of my suggestions we should see a top 5+ positioning after performing my suggested attorney search engine optimization tweaks. So let’s do this shall we?

On-Page Keyword Usage For Term Dentist Fort Lauderdale

The page that ranks in the top 20 (http://www.confidentsmiledesigns.com/) really does a pretty good job on keyword usage. Like anything else, it can always be better so let’s look at how we can make it better.

Dentist SEO Suggestions – Title Tag

Currently the title is “Cosmetic Implant Dentist in Fort Lauderdale – Ft. Lauderdale”. Currently the site is breaking the #1 golden rule in SEO which is not having the direct keyword phrase within it. I do like the fact that they use the term “in” within the title tag as most people are going to use that within their search but it becomes a numbers game as to the amount of searches that visitors are performing. My recommendation for the title tag should be – “Cosmetic Dentist Fort Lauderdale Specializing in Implant Dentistry”.

Body Copy Keyword SEO Usage

Overall the site does a good job in optimizing the body copy for dentist Fort Lauderdale. It uses bolding, keywords in the H1 headline, and using the keywords in the body copy.

SEO Dentistry Suggestions For Dentist Fort Lauderdale Term

Exact keyword terms in title
Keyword placement in the title – put our term, dentist Fort Lauderdale should be in the first part of the title.
Exact keyword phrase in the body copy – use the term at least once (but I suggest at least a few times).
Optimize image names and ALT information with targeted keywords. Use Google & Bing Images is my friend!
Keywords in URL. This is a great place to start prior to writing content.
Remove over optimization of hypertext – “dentist in Fort Lauderdale” and “implant dentist in Fort Lauderdale” are both going to the same page. The goal would be to have them to their own unique pages.
Use exact match keywords within description.
Cut down description tag to around 150 characters. I would cut it down to – ” Need a dentist in Fort Lauderdale, Florida? Let Dr.Gegati help you in your implant and cosmetic dentistry needs ”.
Remove keywords from keyword tag. Search engines do not read this tag anymore and no real reason to use it.
Move the exact keyword phrase to the front of the H1 tag.

Dentist Fort Lauderdale – Current On Page Grade

In it’s current state, I would grade the page a B. Again, the page has a solid page two ranking and with just a few SEO tweaks this example site can make it into page one results and gain some real qualified traffic.

Filed Under: Search Engine Optimization Tagged With: Fort Lauderdale, keyword phrase, optimization, SEO

Paid Search Review|Phoenix Personal Injury Attorney|Arizona PPC Marketing

May 18, 2011 By Frank Pipolo Leave a Comment

using spyfu results-a snapshot of the term phoenix personal injury attorney

Paid search marketing is such a crucial element to many companies internet marketing plan and allowing someone or an agency to handle it is a very important part of the success of it and the success of the business from a Internet marketing perspective. I would like to do a quick paid search review using the term Phoenix personal injury attorney using the The Gillespie Law Firm.

PPC Marketing Landscape – Phoenix Personal Injury Attorney

I am a big fan of the the tool SpyFu as it really gives you a greater level of detail in terms of competitive analysis in the paid search arena. Using Spyfu, you can see that our example term is pretty expensive, around $12-15 bucks a click and the competition is heavy. Expect around 600 clicks a month if you are in the top spot and figure each position you are in after the number one position cut that in half. Their are nine major competitors in the space so making every click you get from this highly relevant term is a must.

Paid Search Review – The Ad

Given our example term here is the ad that was showing up:

As you can see this ad is way off the mark! Yes, they have searched for “Phoenix Injury Attorney” and have gotten an ad is about a law firm in Phoenix that could be about helping you with a personal injury case but this is causing a big waste in budget and due to the lack of clicks, will also impact the quality score of the account making this example pay more for a click. Here is a perfect example of letting Google manage your account. Here are a few things to do:

If you want to bid on this term, get an ad that speaks to it. I would suggest setting up a “personal injury” ad group and having all of those keywords reside in there with the appropriate ads.
Use negatives – tell Google that you do not want to show up for this term. If you set your match type to broad match Google is going to server your ad to what it feels is relevant or related to your term.
Use keyword insertion – even though the ad will still not talk to the visitor the right way at least the headline will match. I would consider this the last attempt should you not have the resources to do number 1 or 2.

Paid Search Review – The Landing Page

Here is the landing page that this ad goes to:

I have got to tell you that I really like this site. It is nicely laid out with some really nice conversion element baked into it. For the right terms (Phoenix based DUI attorney terms) I give high marks. For the terms that are not so targeted towards that, there is such a disconnect that it is just throwing money out the window! Let’s assume that somebody did click on the example ad and they land on this page. Is there way that they would call or fill out a form to inquiry about personal injury services? Slim to none and given this is a 15 dollar click, you can now see what I am talking about!

Here a few things we can do about this – 1) create a landing page that is specific to personal injury. Along with an ad this can be a very profitable keyword strategy. 2) If #1 is not an option-do not bid on these terms. Not to sound like a jerk but why even do this if you have no chance of succeeding.

Wrap Up

What it really comes down to is how bad do you want to be bidding on these terms and be part of this keyword market? For me, I do the following:

1) The site is so highly geared towards DUI attorney services that you are better off creating a new domain.

2) You to learn Google AdWords and the system. This is a perfect example of allowing Google to run your bid management and having them put you in places you have no right to be in. This creates multiple issues such as a lower quality scores and waisted budgets with little hope to achieving a positive ROI.

Filed Under: Paid Search Marketing Tagged With: paid search, Using Spyfu