Moderators Kindness Posted October 13, 2009 Moderators Share Posted October 13, 2009 I'm playing with some free money and am looking for experienced guidance as to using the system to its highest value. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members zachoff Posted October 13, 2009 Members Share Posted October 13, 2009 It's been over a year since I've done this, but there's a lot to know and I managed ~$1000/mo budget for a couple of my employers... First thing is how to write an ad that doesn't sound spammy and is informative in the limited space they give you and matches a person's expectations of a result when they enter certain keywords/phrases. Second is to research the keywords/phrases you want to use, third is to figure out which keywords/phrases to use (some cost more than others), fourth is to track the performance of the ads. I'd usually give new ads/keyphrase combos two weeks to bake & take a look at the data after that. The biggest thing to keep in mind is that click throughs do not equal success... Click thrus equal a waste of money if the user leaves your site as soon as they get there. You want them to stay and do something... You can set up goals in adWords to track this. IIRC, they call it a conversion path. Google cares about cost per click... You care about cost per conversion. 5 click thrus at $2 for 1 conversion is better than 400 click thrus at $.10 for 1 conversion ($10 vs $40 spent for the same result). For starters, figure out who you aim to be in the google world. For example, if you're a bookstore, look at what Barnes & Noble have listed as their meta keywords. Chances are they're bidding on the same keywords in adWords (sort of a bad example as B&N probably don't need adWords to get #1 rankings but hopefully you get the picture). Email me if you have any questions... It really is an exercise in trial and error but after a while you'll see what works and what doesn't. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Super Bass Posted October 13, 2009 Members Share Posted October 13, 2009 I'm playing with some free money and am looking for experienced guidance as to using the system to its highest value. I use it on the website of my Dad's company. What do you need to know? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Kaesh Posted October 13, 2009 Members Share Posted October 13, 2009 This probably doesn't apply to everything, but I think it should be correct in your case, as I am doing it for a business services thing (a HR agency) as well: First thing, the thing that says it will automatically help you get the most clicks lies - in my experience it just jacks up the CPC for no good reason. When choosing a patent law firm, the customer is going to do a decent amount of research anyway, so being at the very top doesn't really seem that important. Another tip: limit your locations - while you may handle customers from all over the states, prospective clients will probably prefer someone within driving distance. Also consdier getting a full blown positioning service, they get huge premiums for google adwords resale, and you may essentially get 2 for the price of 1. Obviously clickthroughs don't unconditionally translate to customers, but if someone comes to your site and leaves, the fault is probably not with the AdWords Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Kindness Posted October 13, 2009 Author Moderators Share Posted October 13, 2009 Obviously clickthroughs don't unconditionally translate to customers, but if someone comes to your site and leaves, the fault is probably not with the AdWords No doubt. I guess my best question is to anyone with experience, what would you use as the starting point to begin the trials and errors? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members bluedogaudio Posted October 13, 2009 Members Share Posted October 13, 2009 I'm playing with some free money and am looking for experienced guidance as to using the system to its highest value. I manage Adwords at my job, so if you have any questions, feel free to shoot me an email. Zachoff pretty much nailed it. I'd also make sure you have a really good landing page, just linking to your homepage doesn't always produce the best results. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Kindness Posted October 13, 2009 Author Moderators Share Posted October 13, 2009 I manage Adwords at my job, so if you have any questions, feel free to shoot me an email. Zachoff pretty much nailed it. I'd also make sure you have a really good landing page, just linking to your homepage doesn't always produce the best results. I appreciate your input and everyone else's above. I have a services page and an FAQ page that I could link up to specific keywords/phrases (my website is in my signature). I could provide a more 1:1relationship with the search terms. I could experiment to find out which gets more conversions, but that seems like stage 2 of my trials, which I can't get to until I get through stage 1, which is actually getting clicks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members bluedogaudio Posted October 13, 2009 Members Share Posted October 13, 2009 BTW, nice website. Thought about adding some testimonials? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Kindness Posted October 13, 2009 Author Moderators Share Posted October 13, 2009 BTW, nice website. Thought about adding some testimonials? Thanks. Testimonials are dangerous and potentially violate ethics rules. The specific rules vary from state to state and, since I potentially serve clients in each state, the cautious approach is to not do anything that violates any of the strictest rules. You'll see at the very bottom of my bio page I have links to third party websites, some of which host reviews/testimonials which they can do without violating the rules since it is not possible for me to edit the content. There are lots of restrictions on advertising as an attorney - which makes the marketing side of things even more fun. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members chunky-b Posted October 13, 2009 Members Share Posted October 13, 2009 Thanks. Testimonials are dangerous and potentially violate ethics rules. The specific rules vary from state to state and, since I potentially serve clients in each state, the cautious approach is to not do anything that violates any of the strictest rules. You'll see at the very bottom of my bio page I have links to third party websites, some of which host reviews/testimonials which they can do without violating the rules since it is not possible for me to edit the content. There are lots of restrictions on advertising as an attorney - which makes the marketing side of things even more fun. Oh for the old days when you ambulance chasers could not clog up media with your ads!!! :poke: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Kindness Posted October 13, 2009 Author Moderators Share Posted October 13, 2009 Oh for the old days when you ambulance chasers could not clog up media with your ads!!! :poke: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members zachoff Posted October 13, 2009 Members Share Posted October 13, 2009 Great site, btw... Lots of text, but not too much, clean, good use of white space. Cookie crumb navigation is well-placed and the directory structure is very search engine friendly. One thing I noticed is you have no meta keywords or descriptions. You pretty much need those for SEO. This is a touchy thing because you don't want to saturate... You're best off taking keywords/phrases that appear in the text of the page. A quick search for 'patent law' gave me this:http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=&=&q=patent+law&btnG=Google+Search Looks like a lot of other link farm type places so I'm not sure that's where I'd start. 'Patent Lawyers' and 'Patent Attorneys' gave me similar results. Seems there are a ton of directory sort of sites for this type of thing so if you can get hooked up on some of those you'd be better off... Links in from other sites and links out to other sites help SEO. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members bluedogaudio Posted October 13, 2009 Members Share Posted October 13, 2009 searching for "patent law" is a little too vague. I would concentrate on terms like "patent law chicago" and "patent lawyer chicago". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Kindness Posted October 13, 2009 Author Moderators Share Posted October 13, 2009 searching for "patent law" is a little too vague. I would concentrate on terms like "patent law chicago" and "patent lawyer chicago". I just got off the phone with my design team and we discussed that specifically. It seems that a good starting point might be upping my bid and limiting my terms, rather than lowering my bid and adding more terms. The terms I will target (and this was an easy choice) are the terms that people are likely to search when looking for a patent attorney, specifically a patent attorney around Chicago. I'm also going to attach separate ads to separate ad groups focusing on different terms. For example, lawyer and attorney are interchangeable, but the group that uses lawyer based keywords will get an ad using the term lawyer and vice versa. That's going to be my starting point when I can get in and adjust things tonight. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Kindness Posted October 13, 2009 Author Moderators Share Posted October 13, 2009 A quick search for 'patent law' gave me this: http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=&=&q=patent+law&btnG=Google+Search Looks like a lot of other link farm type places so I'm not sure that's where I'd start. 'Patent Lawyers' and 'Patent Attorneys' gave me similar results. Seems there are a ton of directory sort of sites for this type of thing so if you can get hooked up on some of those you'd be better off... Links in from other sites and links out to other sites help SEO. I'm all over that. Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members bluedogaudio Posted October 13, 2009 Members Share Posted October 13, 2009 It seems that a good starting point might be upping my bid and limiting my terms, rather than lowering my bid and adding more terms. Another thing you can do, and you may want to do this anyway, is set the location of your ads, which is in the campaign settings. This way, you can have terms such as "patent law", but they'll only appear in the Chicago area. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Kindness Posted October 13, 2009 Author Moderators Share Posted October 13, 2009 Another thing you can do, and you may want to do this anyway, is set the location of your ads, which is in the campaign settings. This way, you can have terms such as "patent law", but they'll only appear in the Chicago area. I'm have been and will continue doing this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members bluedogaudio Posted October 13, 2009 Members Share Posted October 13, 2009 I was under the impression that building my site in WordPress helped take care of some of those issues for me, but I might be mistaken. I would make sure you have this.... http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/ I've used this on a lot of websites. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Kindness Posted October 13, 2009 Author Moderators Share Posted October 13, 2009 I would make sure you have this.... http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/ I've used this on a lot of websites. Excellent. I will check when I'm back in the office. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Kindness Posted October 13, 2009 Author Moderators Share Posted October 13, 2009 The word is meta keywords are no longer needed and they haven't been used in determining search engine rankings in quite a while. However, the meta description can influence the description shown in search engines when a query brings up that given page (but has no influence on ranking). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members zachoff Posted October 13, 2009 Members Share Posted October 13, 2009 The word is meta keywords are no longer needed and they haven't been used in determining search engine rankings in quite a while. However, the meta description can influence the description shown in search engines when a query brings up that given page (but has no influence on ranking). Interesting... Just read a few articles & now I know. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Kindness Posted October 13, 2009 Author Moderators Share Posted October 13, 2009 Thanks to the experts on that one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members bluedogaudio Posted October 13, 2009 Members Share Posted October 13, 2009 The word is meta keywords are no longer needed and they haven't been used in determining search engine rankings in quite a while. However, the meta description can influence the description shown in search engines when a query brings up that given page (but has no influence on ranking). Agreed, but I still use meta keywords, and I wouldn't say that meta description has no influence on search results. Google may, or may not, use either of them, but you also need to think about other search engines. If you haven't already, check out seomoz.... http://www.seomoz.org/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Kindness Posted October 13, 2009 Author Moderators Share Posted October 13, 2009 If you haven't already, check out seomoz....http://www.seomoz.org/ Thanks for the link. Lots of good resources there. I would quickly spend my day learning SEO rather than lawyering if I dove in head first. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Kindness Posted October 14, 2009 Author Moderators Share Posted October 14, 2009 I just got off the phone with my design team and we discussed that specifically. It seems that a good starting point might be upping my bid and limiting my terms, rather than lowering my bid and adding more terms. The terms I will target (and this was an easy choice) are the terms that people are likely to search when looking for a patent attorney, specifically a patent attorney around Chicago. I'm also going to attach separate ads to separate ad groups focusing on different terms. For example, lawyer and attorney are interchangeable, but the group that uses lawyer based keywords will get an ad using the term lawyer and vice versa. That's going to be my starting point when I can get in and adjust things tonight. Implemented and the clicks are rolling. Now where are the conversions!? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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