Personal injury law is one of the most expensive and most competitive industries when it comes to the cost per click of a pay per click (PPC) search ad on Google. Generally speaking, law-related ads tend to have a higher cost per click as it is, but personal injury law firms in particular are still going to face an even higher cost per click.
Depending on your PI law firm’s budget, a single click from a prospect could result in depleting your advertising budget. This means it’s really, really important to have the right people clicking on your ads. But having a good Google Ads quality score can help with some of the cost as well as helping the right clients find your PI law firm.
What is a Google Ads Quality Score?
A Google Ads quality score is a score that is meant to give you a sense of your PPC ad quality. The score works on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being the lowest score and 10 being the highest.
The quality score has 3 components:
- Landing page experience: Rates how relevant and useful your landing page is
- Expected clickthrough rate: Estimates how likely a prospect is to click on your ad (does not take ad position or ad blocking extensions into account)
- Ad relevance: Rates how closely your keywords match the message in your ads
The better the above components are, the higher your quality score will be.
How Can My Google Ads Quality Score Help My PI Law Firm?
Because personal injury law is an expensive industry for PPC, you want to make sure your ad is being shown to the right person while making sure the CPC is within your budget.
Having a higher quality score can help your PI law firm have better ad placement and lower your ads’ cost per click, which will decrease your cost per conversion.
How Can I Improve My Google Ads Quality Score?
Use Relevant Keywords
The more specific you can be with your keywords, the better. General keywords can lead to your ad being shown to prospects who aren’t in need of your services, or are seeking something entirely different.
Pay attention to the keyword match types you’re using in your ad campaigns. It’s possible to have your ad displayed for searches that aren’t relevant if you’re using the default match type setting. The 4 keyword match types are:
1. Broad Match
Broad match is Google Ads’ default setting, and it can be used to reach the widest possible audience. With broad match, your ad can appear when any word in your keyword phrase, in any order, is searched. This means it’s possible for your ad to be displayed irrelevant prospects — a waste of your lead generation efforts and marketing budget.
You can, however, create a list of negative keywords to ensure this doesn’t happen (we’ll discuss more about negative keywords later), though you’ll likely have to research and continue to add to this list.
2. Modified Broad Match
Modified broad match gives you a little bit more control than the default broad match. It allows you to “lock” individual keywords in a phrase, which tells Google that the search must include that specific word. With a broad match, the phrase car accident lawyer could bring up your ad for any searches involving the individual words “car,” “accident,” and “lawyer” in any order.
With modified broad match, you could lock “accident” and “lawyer,” which would display ads to any searches that include those terms. The order of the words can change, though. So you could end up with clients who searched for motorcycle accident lawyer or lawyer automobile accident and found your website through an ad!
3. Phrase Match
Phrase match, like the modified broad match, gives you more control over who sees your ads. It has a higher level of control than phrase match, as it requires keywords to be searched in an exact order. Phrase match can include search queries that add extra keywords before or after the phrase.
Using the car accident lawyer search as an example, you could set those three keywords as a phrase. Prospects could pull up the ad when they search for car accident lawyer near me or columbus ohio car accident lawyer because the phrase car accident lawyer is used in the search.
4. Exact Match
Exact match is the most restrictive keyword match type — and here, restrictive is not a bad thing. It ensures that people searching for the exact phrase find your ad. If they search for car accident lawyer, and those words are what you have set as an exact match, then your ad will likely be shown to them.
It’s worth noting that Google has made some adjustments to exact match keywords, which allows them to display your ad when there are slight variations of your keywords. This includes making a singular word plural (car accident lawyers instead of car accident lawyer), certain synonyms (automobile accident lawyer instead of car accident lawyer), and variations that involve the same intent, are paraphrased, or are implied.
With exact match, you can anticipate a reduction in unwanted costs and higher conversion rates. While these are positive things, there are still some downsides to exact match.
The downsides to exact match are a reduction in traffic due to lower search volume. But for PI law firms, exact match keywords can be very useful for filtering out unwanted traffic and bring in those who are most interested and likely to convert.
Organize Keyword Groups
The way you group your keywords matters. It can help keep your ads more relevant to prospects’ searches. Consider organizing keywords by more specific types of personal injury law, such as keeping all car accident-related keywords in the same group. That way, if someone searches for a car accident lawyer, they aren’t going to find themselves looking at an ad that will lead them to your PI law firm’s FAQ page. Be sure to keep your keyword groups up to date and don’t be afraid to see if there are any new search terms that might be effective to add to your keyword groups.
Write Effective Ad Copy
Ad copy is super important. It’s what catches prospects’ attention, and you need to do it quickly and efficiently. Don’t make the ad too complex. Keep it simple. Focus on what makes your PI law firm better than your competitors.
Don’t be afraid to change things up with your ad copy. Experiment with A/B testing to see which copy is more effective than others, then shift to the one that is doing better. A/B testing is a strategy in which you change only one part of an ad at a time. Too many changes at once makes it difficult to determine what exactly was effective and what was not. For example, you can start by changing the ad’s headline text. Google’s system rotates out ads within an ad group, so you’ll be able to determine which ad worked better. Then, you can use the same headline and change the body copy.
Last but most certainly not least, include a call to action. Do you want prospects to fill out a form? Call you? Make sure that your call to action is clear.
Optimize Landing Pages
You need landing pages that effectively align with what prospects are searching for. If prospects are searching using a phrase that might be on a Frequently Asked Questions page, then make sure your landing page is your law firm’s FAQ page. The content on the page should be useful as well as relevant.
Transparency is also important — your landing page needs to make it clear as to what it is you do. Share information about your services before going right to the contact form.
Your landing pages should load quickly and work effectively on all devices — desktop and mobile — and be easy for prospects to navigate.
Essentially, you need to make sure your PI law firm’s landing page follows Google’s landing page experience guidelines.
Add Negative Keywords
Negative keywords are not keywords that are inherently bad or… well, negative. It’s a term that refers to unrelated keywords that bring up your ad. For example, if you set up a broad search ad for car accident lawyer, your ad may be shown when someone searches for car accident on Main Street because both keyword phrases use the word car accident.
To avoid this, you can create a list of negative keywords on Google Ads to ensure that your ad won’t be displayed in searches containing those words. You’ll need to stay up to date on any possible queries that could include your keywords, especially in a broad keyword match type search.
Improve Your PI Law Firm’s Google Ads Quality Score with OppGen
OppGen is a highly specialized digital marketing agency located in Columbus, Ohio, that works with clients across the nation. We’ve worked with PI law firms and have lowered their PPC campaigns’ cost per click through our holistic, one-of-a-kind marketing strategies. All of our clients receive a different marketing plan based on their specific needs and goals. We will work with you to create that plan. Get started today by filling out our free digital audit or contacting us for more information.
