Our Blog

Since we’ve recently discussed Facebook advertising for attorneys, let’s talk about the online advertising giant: Google’s Adsense.  To do that, we need to define what keywords are, and why lawyer keywords are especially important.

Keywords are the words that you type into a google search bar.  Internet marketers usually look at two major factors for a keyword: The number of people searching with that keyword and the number of websites that have that keyword.

Some keywords like “how to lose weight” will have a lot of searches and a lot of competition.  “How to Tame a Wild Kangaroo” will have less.

And when it comes to advertising on these pages, companies will fight tooth and nail to get their ad seen by (and hopefully, clicked by) the most people possible.  The more revenue a click can produce, and the more competition there is among similar companies, the more expensive those ads will be.

Take Attorneys, For Example

If an attorney makes a “sale” from his advertisement, that can mean thousands in revenue.  And with the hyper-competitive small firm legal market in many cities, a few clicks can mean the difference between a good year and a GREAT year.  Let’s look at the most expensive single-word keywords to advertise for, courtesy of the site wordstream:

Attorneys are willing to pay top dollar for advertising.  And as you can tell from the other members on the top 10, the most lucrative industries are the ones that are willing to shell out the most for clicks.  Now take a look at the list for general keywords, not just single-word keywords, thanks to the report from searchenginewatch.com:

Local small firm lawyers dominate the field.

If attorneys are willing to spend hundreds of dollars per click, there must be something to it.  Especially in personal injury law, the right client could bring the firm hundreds of thousands of dollars, so attorneys are willing to spend thousands on their online marketing budget.  These firms are marketing big, but they’re not necessarily marketing smart.

These keywords cost so much because everyone wants to advertise on the top websites with their search results.  The better strategy, however, is to be on the top search results.

Work on Your Website, Save Your Advertising Budget

When we talked about the basics, we mentioned that you should have a good website.  The design should be intriguing, but it should also have continuous new content coming through.  If your website has a blog post every couple days about the practice area that you work in, Google is going to rank it higher.

If you don’t believe me, try this experiment: Run a Google search for “[practice area] attorney in [nearest city]”  For example, I used “Personal Injury attorney in Washington DC”

Now go to the first attorney’s page you see.  Their website will probably have a blog or news section that is constantly updating, bumping them up to the top of Google searches.

Wouldn’t you like your firm to be on the first page of Google for your practice area?

That’s why we at Small Firm Legal Marketing recommend that attorneys spend their time and money on their firms website, updating it frequently to bump up their Google rankings.  It’s free advertising, and it’s more permanent.

Of course, not every attorney has all the time in the world to update a blog.  That’s why I highly recommend sites like upwork.com to find a writer who will do the work for you.  It’ll be a lot less expensive than paying $300.00 per advertising click.