Ever since the Overture keyword tool went offline, everyone I know in the SEO industry has the same question, “What are you doing about keyword research?” It’s a good question. For all the faults of the Overture tool, it was a quick and easy way to get actual, monthly search occurrence numbers. Now that it’s gone, what’s the average lawyer to do to find good legal keyword research? This isn’t about suggestions for keywords – we’re looking for quantified, actionable search numbers.

The bad news: no matter what tool you use, there are problems. I’ll mention those in my summaries below.

• Google Keyword Suggestion Tool – the best place to start your information collection. Enter a keyword and it will show you the competitiveness and search volume for that and related keywords. The “problem”? Keyword research returns non-quantified comparisons: the equivalent of a bar chart with no numbers.


Google’s keyword research results

• Trellian’s KeywordDiscovery Tool offers a free trial but, ultimately, you’ll need to pay around $50/month for full access to their service. Once you’re a member, there are a number of keyword databases they have available for researching your topic. The Global Premium and Historical datasets are the most useful, but there is often search “noise” (bad or spammy results, obviously outside a normal searcher’s use) and I seriously question the cited period for their results. Meaning: their Global Premium database will tell you there were 25 searches for “baltimore attorney” in 2007. To me, this nullifies the advantage of this service having quantified results. I do find the historical database has good comparative results.


KeywordDiscovery

• SEOBook.com’s Keyword Tool (based on WordTracker) – this site was formerly based upon Overture data. Now, they’ve developed a relationship with WordTracker to take their data, apply search engine user volume to it and deliver a daily count of searches for a given keyword and related terms. Overall, this is a very good FREE keyword research tool that lawyers and non-lawyers alike will find useful. The numbers appear to be (roughly) accurate. There is often search “noise” returned with relevant results, but a discriminating eye can easily spot and ignore these.
• DigitalPoint’s Keyword Research Tool has always been a good place to check but the data returned is not comprehensive. The site says it uses/used Overture and WordTracker data, but a search for “baltimore attorney” shows no results.
• Wordze.com is new on my radar. You must pay for membership but, once inside, they offer a comprehensive set of tools. The Keyword Research Tool doesn’t do much to offer related keywords, but the quantified search count numbers appear to be accurate, citing over 600 searches for “baltimore attorneys” in a 30 day period.


Wordze’s keyword research interface

Thank you to the article at SEO Round Table for the motivation to put together this comparison. Anyone with any other suggestions? I know I’ve GOT to be missing something…

[tags]keyword research[/tags]

Pay per click (or “PPC“) advertising is familiar to most people as those tiny ads that show up along the top and right column of Google and Yahoo sponsored search results. As little as 2 years ago, money ruled the paid advertising marketplace – he who had the most $ got the number one spot. More recently, Google AdWords has added a Quality Score or “QS” to how paid ads are ranked. This makes sure the ad and landing page both talk about the keyword being bid upon. Money + Quality = better placement within the sponsored results. So, what are the top PPC management tips in this new age of “QS” if you’re going to maximize traffic and minimize cost?

1. Base your paid advertising keywords on your website’s copy – if you don’t talk about it on your site, don’t bid on it. Conversely, if you want to break into a new area of practice, add content to your site first.
2. Segment your ad groups based upon your site’s available landing pages. The search engines like to see that you’re delivering visitors to a page appropriate for their query.
3. Make sure you use your target geography and as many keywords as reasonably possible in your advertisement itself. State that you are Ft Lauderdale lawyers or an Ohio criminal lawyer
4. Create multiple ads per ad group. Hey, let the search engine test and choose the best copy.
5. Turn off Content Match. Too often, this is nothing but a moneypit.

These five things alone can significantly improve the performance of most legal, paid advertising campaigns. Of course, if the website you’ve built to receive these visitors is of poor quality or without clear contact methods, even a huge volume of traffic will result in little business for your firm. These recommendations assume your website is able to convert PPC traffic to leads.

See Also:

• AdWords help center
• Yahoo! Sponsored Search guidelines
• SpyFu.com – find out what the competition is doing

[tags]PPC Management[/tags]