Killer ads aren’t enough for a successful pay-per-click (PPC) campaign. You also need landing pages that convert. This means capturing and keeping your visitors’ attention immediately on arrival, directing them to your desired action and then minimizing frustration during conversion. Do yours do all that?

An Oregon auto accident attorney with Susak & Powell, P.C. has assisted the CaseDetails editorial team in identifying topics of importance to readers of this blog.

Salar Salahshoor covers six easy-but-important steps to consider before going live with any ad campaign in 6 Essential PPC Landing Page Optimizations. His tips for optimizing your PPC landing pages include:

1. Put the cursor in your conversion form: It seems silly, but Salahshoor says his tests show conversion rates increase significantly when visitors don’t have to click in the form’s first field.

2. Direct your visitors’ eyes: Humans naturally look at what everyone else is looking at, so any people you depict on your landing page should be looking at the most important information. This is usually your call to action.

3. Use Testimonials: Prospective customers love to know what others are saying about you. Tell them by including at least one testimonial on the page.

4. Appear trustworthy: Those seals of approval and award icons displayed on websites increase visitors’ trust in those sites. And the closer to the call-to-action button they are, the more likely people are to click.

5. Match your headline to your ad: Customers want to know that the page they’re on is offering what they saw in the ad they clicked. Use the headline to tell them it is.

6. Use only one call to action: Your customers have enough decisions to make, so don’t give them more. Once they’ve chosen to click on your ad, just direct them to your one desired action.

No single landing page design will fit all campaigns, but these basic concepts can help you understand the mind of your visitors and guide them toward taking action.

Even though it’s summer, most things still could use some spring cleaning. Along with the physical clutter, set aside time to tackle the digital clutter, too. It may be less noticeable on a daily basis, but it’s no less important and just as draining of time and energy. It’s smart to de-clutter your pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns. Between test groups, finished campaigns and bright ideas you never implemented, you’re probably wasting a lot of time finding the campaign or ad group you need to work on.

Information and data within this post gathered in association with a Miami divorce attorney at Isenberg & Nabat.

In 3 Sure Signs Your PPC Campaigns Need Spring Cleaning, Matt van Wagner covers some areas that are easy to tackle, but can help you put a spark back in your PPC efforts.

Ditch inactive campaigns and ad groups: It doesn’t matter why they’re not running, their presence bogs you down. Unless they’re brand-new campaigns you haven’t activated yet, clear them out. The last thing you want to do is accidentally reactivate a campaign with a name similar to your current one.

Speaking of names; if, after clearing out anything that’s not current, you have campaigns and ad groups with names that aren’t clear, fix them.

Analyze your keywords: They might have been a brilliant inspiration to you, but if nobody’s searching or clicking on them, they’re useless. Purge them. It’s okay to keep backups in case you find a use them for someday, but they don’t belong in your current campaigns.

Re-evaluate your ads: Are they dated? Has your conversion rate dropped off? People tire of seeing the same ad, especially display ads, so you may not be getting the same bang for your buck as when it was new. Consider reworking any underperforming ads.

That’s it: you’ve cleared the clutter. Now you will have a much easier time analyzing PPC campaign performance and brainstorming new ideas. Read more about PPC campaigns for law firms on CaseDetails.

As campaigns get larger, actively managing negative keywords becomes an even more important aspect of PPC campaign management. It’s difficult to test and refine creative copy when the campaign consists of hundreds of thousands of keywords.

In his article, “Case Study: How Negative Keywords Can Pump Up Paid Search Performance,” Matt Lawson states, “In a high-volume world, actively managing negatives is possibly the single most impactful opportunity you have for increasing conversions and decreasing costs.”

He goes on to explain that not maintaining a negative keyword list usually results in “bad impressions” on paid search ads. A bad impression is when your ad shows up in the results for a search term that won’t lead to a conversion for your business. By listing these irrelevant and non-converting terms as negative keywords, you reduce the number of bad impressions.

Let’s look at an example: Assume you practice real estate law. A consumer searches for “real estate law school” and gets your ad set for the keyword “real estate law.” Since he isn’t looking for a lawyer, chances are slim that he’ll convert, even if he clicks on the ad. Using the negative keyword “school” would have eliminated that bad impression, cut unnecessary cost and improved ROI. The benefits for PPC campaign management don’t stop there.

Regularly updating your keyword list should significantly improve campaign performance by generating the same number of conversions for fewer clicks.

Eliminating irrelevant searches will also boost the click-through rate, which should increase quality scores. Improved quality scores will reduce cost further as well as improve ad position, which in turn drives more traffic and conversions.

You can then reinvest the money you save from bad impressions into higher bids and new keywords.

Which leads us to the biggest reason to utilize a negative keywords list: It’s free. While most other ppc campaign management techniques require more investment, negatives are a way to decrease costs while increasing profits.

The best way to identify possible negatives is the raw search query data. Review this report regularly for searches that don’t apply to your business. Then add these terms to your negatives list to eliminate bad impressions.

Now you’re ready to start identifying negatives and making them work for you. For more information on PPC campaign management, keep returning to CaseDetails.com.

PPC Advertising Tips

We gave a brief overview of social media in Day 29 and suggested a few sites to start on. We’re concluding the SEO in 30 Days series today with another brief overview, this time of pay-per-click advertising.

PPC advertising, or pay per click advertising, can be hard for a small law firm. Competing against large corporations with massive marketing budgets can leave your firm at the bottom of the list. Learn the basics of paid search marketing and make it work for your firm.

The way PPC advertising works is that you pay for your firm’s ad to appear in a search engine’s sponsored listings. Every time a customer clicks on your ad, your firm pays for that click. The price of a click is often determined by a bid-based system where advertisers specify how much they are willing to spend for a given keyword. Read more about PPC advertising in the PPC section of CaseDetails.

PPC advertising is a great way to drive traffic to your site without having to optimize for natural listings. Incorporate the following tips into your PPC campaign and your firm will remain competitive.

1. Choose the time and day. Google actually lets you choose when your ads will run. Determine when potential customers are most likely to search, and advertise during those times.

2. Do your research. Keyword development is vital to the success of your PPC advertising campaign. Expand past broad keywords (like “firm”) into local and specific keywords (like “Boston divorce firms”). This way, you will zero in on potential clients who are further along in the search process.

3. Use geo targeting. Most potential clients expect their searches to be within 15 miles of their location. Target your business accordingly.

4. Use exact matches. Broad matches don’t do your budget any favors. Google has several matching tools. Using the exact match tool will control costs and the searches that are displaying your ads.

5. Keep it relevant. Make sure that your link is 100% relevant. Don’t link to just the home page of your firm. Link to the practice area or lawyers who can help. Otherwise, customers may click away from your site and never come back.

Following the SEO in 30 Days series will give your law firm an advantage over your competition in the search engines and in your marketing efforts. For more detailed information on search engine optimization for law firms, search the CaseDetails site. Remember, SEO is a work in progress; come back often to read about the latest SEO techniques that could bring more business for your firm.

In PPC Ad Management: Cost-Effective Campaign Settings, Part 1 we discussed the basic Adwords campaign settings, and gave you tips on how to use them to your best advantage. We take the process a step further today and talk about two of the advanced settings, Ad Serving and Networks. Adjusting and monitoring these settings can save you a bundle on your online advertising.

PPC or pay per click is a type of advertising in which web publishers generate revenue each time a visitor clicks on an ad. In terms of searches, the first two or three ads at the top of the results page, along with the block ads down the right side of the screen, are PPC ads. The other listings are termed “natural” or “organic.”

Why are PPC listings popular when organic search is free?

• PPC campaign management is quicker and easier than SEO (search engine optimization), which is used to boost listings in organic search.
• PPC accounts are easy to set up and immediate traffic boosts are almost certain.
• PPC landing pages are easy to test.

If you are interested in creating a PPC marketing campaign, you need to understand the advanced settings on your user interface. The following are settings you can’t afford to overlook.

Ad serving:

Ad serving describes the frequency and manner in which your PPC ads are presented. The default setting is “Optimize” which means the ads within your campaign will be served up depending on their past click-through popularity. If one ad is getting more clicks, Google will serve it up more frequently. This makes is difficult for you to determine which ad is actually providing better leads for you, since one ad is generally being offered up significantly more than the others.

By changing the Ad Serving setting from “Optimize” to “Rotate” you will have a more accurate idea of which ad is the best performer in terms of generating quality leads for you. Each ad will be served up in turn, no matter its past click-through popularity.

Networks:

By default your PPC Adwords ads are set to show up not just on Google, but on its partner networks (currently including Ask and AOL, and AdSense publisher websites). Your cost-per-click setting carries over onto all these sites, again by default. A savvy PPC advertiser knows to change this setting so that the ads carry different (usually lower) cost-per-click amounts for the AdSense publisher sites and other partner search engines. Closely monitor the ad performance at these lower rates, and adjust your cost-per-click amounts as needed to get the most bang for your buck.

By adjusting these two advanced settings and then closely monitoring the results, your PPC Adwords campaigns will run more efficiently, save you money, and more than likely result in higher quality leads. Find out more about how to get the most out of your website in our SEO in 30 Days series.

Pay Per Click marketing, also referred to as PPC, is a relatively inexpensive solution for marketers to reach consumers online. While banner ads may require you to pay by impression, PPC advertising allows marketers to pay when their ad is clicked. The most common type of Pay Per Click marketing is completed on search engines. Paid Search Ads are typically displayed on the top or right hand side of a search engine result page. Most search engines require advertisers to bid on specific keywords in order to appear in the paid search results.

Paid Search Advertising has many benefits. Some of these include: the ability to see immediate results, its low budget opportunities, and the ability to measure its success. In order to have a truly successful PPC search marketing campaign, there are several “Campaign Settings” that you should take advantage of. Some of these include: Conversion Tracking, Geographic Settings, Automatic Matching, and Rotate Functions.

Tip #1
Double-check your conversion tracking settings because this can be confusing. If your campaign was created years ago, it may be out of date. Look over your conversion tracking settings very carefully, and be sure that your tracking the right thing.

Tip #2
If you have an online advertising campaign in multiple countries, regions, or states, be sure to adjust your geographic settings. There are many options to consider, so don’t rush through these. If you are working with a campaign that is being run in multiple countries or regions, it may make sense to separate each country into its own campaign or Ad Group. This will allow you to eliminate excess spend as each region often has a different cost for a keyword.

Tip #3
Be careful with “Automatic matching” settings. Seofaststart.com said it best: “Don’t fall for this.” This setting can cause you to bid on keywords unrelated to your actual campaign.

Tip #4
Test multiple ads by using the “Rotate Function.” The “Optimize” function can be helpful, but it will not allow you to get a strong picture of what ads are performing the best. Set up 4-16 ads in one Ad Group, and find out which ads are really doing the best.

By paying attention to the details of your ad campaigns and being mindful of your campaign settings, pay-per-click advertising can be a cost-effective and financially rewarding experience. Stayed tuned for Part 2, a discussion of more advanced PPC campaign settings and how to leverage them to the benefit of your business.

PPC copywriting can be a daunting task if you are just starting out. Through our experience in PPC, we found that there are several basic things that can be done to boost click through rates on your ads. We will walk through five steps that can help improve your ads and increase your return.

Tip #1: Sell the unique benefits of your product or service.
SEO expert Bryan Eisenberg, in his recent article entitled “Why I Won’t Buy From You!”, recommends highlighting in your ad copy why someone should buy your product over someone else’s. As Mr. Eisenberg says, a common and crippling mistake when writing PPC ads is “companies failing to position their value relative to their competitors.”

Before even writing your ad, type the primary keyword phrase you’ll be targeting into the search field in Google and read the existing PPC ads on page one. What aspects of their business are they promoting? What are their claims for that product or service? To make your ad stand out, stay away from promoting your products or services in the same way.

Tip #2: Include a Call to Action.
A call to action is a simply phrase such as “Click here for [specific info]“. This helps users understand the information that will be found once they click on an ad. The key to this step is including a call to action that is relevant to the service or product being offered. If it is not relevant, users will stay on the page for a second and then leave. Nothing will make your ad as ineffective as empty or vague copy.

Tip #3: Boast about your awards – specifically.
If your company has the “best” product, talk about it in your ad. When doing this it is important to have evidence to back up the claim, not just for ethical reasons but because, as recommended by Mr. Eisenberg, “superlatives and hyperbole don’t help your visitors choose.” The whole point of a PPC ad is to be the ad that gets that click. “Best law firm in town” won’t be as attractive as “95% of cases won.” Just make sure you can substantiate the 95% success rate on the landing page.

Tip #4: Be creative.
In most instances, there are many competitors that do PPC within your industry. Writing unique copy that differentiates your ad from competitors is one great way to improve click through rates. One example of this could be to make your add funny. For a law firm (or other professional, service-based company) for example, an effective approach is to build your ad copy around the unique benefits of using your New York City personal injury law firm versus the hundreds of competitors.

But what are the unique benefits of using your firm? Mr. Eisenberg suggests the following:

“Write down every possible reason you can find why someone should want to do business with your firm. Afterward, review the list and eliminate everything that is also true of your competitors. Nothing should be allowed to remain on the list that can also be claimed by a competitor.”

Once you’ve completed that exercise, you’ll be left with a few benefits that are uniquely yours. Build your ads around those and stand out amidst the competitors’ ads.

Tip #5: Focus on your headline.
The headline is the first thing that search engine users are likely to notice. If a headline is crafted around a specific keyword phrase that you are targeting, and one you know potential clients are using, you have a much better chance of winning a click. We discuss keyword research in detail in our SEO in 30 Days series.

To produce PPC ad copy that will bring in clicks from the type of client you most want, take the time to write a strong, unique, keyword-focused ad. By following the steps above you’ll get a huge head start in the PPC ad game.

The online market place is changing every day. To stay up to date on your PPC and SEO tactics, be sure to read some of our latest articles on topics such as local SEO and Reputation Management.

In PPC Landing Pages, Part 1 we defined pay-per-click advertising and discussed the importance of landing pages. In Part 2 we’ll cover the elements of an effective PPC landing page.

A well-designed landing page is important to the success of any law firm pay-per-click advertising campaign. These pages engage your visitors and prompt them to take immediate action, increasing your conversions.

What is a well-designed PPC landing page? It’s one that visitors can immediately identify as related to the ad they clicked. Web surfers have a very short attention span, so without that initial recognition, they are likely to leave without trying too hard to find what they are looking for.

Successful PPC landing pages tend to have:

• A headline that mirrors the ad: If your PPC ad promotes your services as a Napa family lawyer, the first thing your visitor should see, at the top left of the page, is the words “family law,” not something about, say, incorporating a business. Many law firms practice more than one area of law. Keep your landing pages focused on just the area highlighted in the PPC ad.
• Bullet points: Visitors who click on your PPC ad are busy and want to quickly figure out what you can do for them. Instead of long, tedious paragraphs, use short, snappy phrases presented as bullet points to draw the eye and get your point across efficiently.
• A prominent call to action: Place it “above the fold,” that is, make sure it is visible without having to scroll down the page. Present it as a big button or bold, oversized words that grab your visitors’ attention and tell them what to do next, whether it’s “Ask us now” or “Request your free consultation.” Avoid the generic “click here,” which is boring and unclear.
• Graphics: A page of plain text is dull, even with ample use of bullet points. Graphics can create a more pleasing presentation, just don’t overdo it. Keep images small and related to your service: happy people signing a contract, for example.
• Limited off-page navigation: Visitors click a PPC ad for a specific reason, so don’t encourage them to browse your site at this point. Other than the call to action, include links only to a privacy policy and either an About Us page or a Contact Us page, for people who need more information before committing. These links should be significantly smaller than the call to action, but still easy to find.

Remember to keep each ad campaign tightly focused to a single message. Since lawyers often provide multiple services, PPC for law firms might involve several ad campaigns, each spotlighting a different service.