If you are running Google Ads for your Law Firm professionally, the chances are that broad match modifier match type is playing a critical role in running your campaigns efficiently. But with Google’s recent announcement that this match type will soon be gone for good, are your law firm’s campaigns ready for the transition?
Liel explains why the new Phrase Match type’s arrival can improve your campaigns, providing that you have reliable data for your ad accounts and an impeccable campaign configuration.
From your negative keyword list to your campaign’s quality score, this will all now be essential to beat your competition as Google Ads becomes more of an AI-driven platform. It is now more than ever critical for campaign managers to get their campaign optimizations right and start treating bids as the third and potentially least vital factor to determine a campaign’s success.
Resources:
- Why your quality score matter for your law firm’s Google Ads Campaign
- June Summit for law firms in June 2021
- Google Is Moving on From Broad Match Modifier
Send us your questions at ask@incamerapodcast.com
Enjoy the show? Please don’t forget to subscribe, tell your coworkers, and leave us a review!
Liel: [00:00:00] One of our predictions for 2021 was that Google will continue its transition from a keyword-based search to intent search. And in their latest announcements of Google, let’s update our predictions materialize. I’m Liel Levy, co-founder of Nanato Media, and this is In Camera, a podcast where we are ready to plus signs with inverted commas.
Liel: [00:00:52] Welcome to In Camera Podcast private legal marketing conversations, Grace. Welcome back. What an exciting week this has been.
Grace: [00:00:59] It’s been a crazy week Liel, thank you for walking me back.
Liel: [00:01:02] Yes, it’s been quite a week. So let’s recap a little bit. Today is the last day of AAJ. We’re recording this on Thursday, the 11th. And so we’re coming out of three days of American Association for Justice Winter Convention 2021, which again has been held virtually and Grace, I hope. I mean, who knows? Maybe the summer one, maybe the annual the big gathering is going to happen in person. I heard rumors that say that it may happen in Chicago. So I don’t know. That will be fantastic, wouldn’t it?
Grace: [00:01:34] It would be nice. It would be nice. Hopefully we can manage that safely.
Liel: [00:01:38] That, I think, would be kind of like a priority for it to take place. But obviously we will see because there are already things lined up ahead of that conference. We have a national trial lawyers which is still scheduled to be held in person in Miami in May. So we’ll see how that goes. But I don’t know if you heard Crisp announced a new conference, remote one on June. So it’s going to be interesting because it looks like they’re trying to do something that will profile itself kind of like similar to what they do with their a game changing summit every year. Got suspended last year because of covid. And he’s going to be happening this year in November. So they’re adding, I think, kind of like a virtual conference that it’s the equivalent to the game-changing summit. It’s going to happen in June and it’s going to be virtual. And they’re aiming to gather not just lawyers, but actual whole teams. And I think it’s an actually interesting approach. So this is going to be a two-day convention, I’m sure will drop here. The link on the bottom of the episode notes, just for those who are interested and haven’t heard about it, can have a look.
Liel: [00:02:50] So, Grace, let’s get us started in our conversation today, because there is one topic I want us to cover. But first, I know you got a question for a topic that we discussed last week and possibly other listeners had had the same dilemma or kind of troubleshooting thing to deal with maybe as a result of last week’s conversation or they were just having it even before we had this conversation. So why don’t you tell us a little bit about what the question was and what your answer is?
Grace: [00:03:24] Certainly. So the question kind of always starts with I have a phone system and I don’t like it. Right. So that’s kind of how it usually starts from that kind of pain point, right? It’s always what’s my issue and how can I fix this issue? So the inquiry kind of came through when they were asking. They were like, you know, I’m looking at all these different phone systems. And, you know, I’m I’m looking at, you know, RingCentral. I’m looking at Vonage. I’m looking at I mean, name one. And they were probably looking at it and comparing all the different options with call routing and porting their phone numbers. But, you know, a lot of these firms already have a phone number that they are used to having. Right. And so it comes from that. Should I change my phone system? What’s the best idea? How do I put my phone numbers? So all of this is kind of related to our last conversation. And my answer to them was, what do you have right now? That was my first question in response to their question.
Liel: [00:04:23] Right. Which is the same thing that you’ve said last time. Right, exactly. Start with what you already have.
Grace: [00:04:28] Right. So they kind of went through it and then they were telling me that, you know, we have these phone numbers that are super important to us and their business phone numbers. And I don’t know if putting them in we’re going to have problems when we put them into the new system that we’re looking at. I don’t know if they can do that. And they have multiple locations. So they have three different phone systems that they’re ready we’re using. What do I do from here? My answer to them was actually quite simple. Do you use Google G suite products or do you use Microsoft Office products or something else? It’s usually one of those two, right, Liel?
Liel: [00:05:04] Yeah.
Grace: [00:05:06] OK, so I know for us we use Microsoft Office 365. So there’s teams, right? Well, people, I think forget that teams is actually a cell phone and it’s a phone system. So my response to them was you use teams? You currently use it, right? Yes, we do. All right. You already have the mechanism with which you can use your entire phone system if you have an enterprise agreement. An enterprise agreement is just usually if you have a large enough base of users or people that use the office or Microsoft Office products, that’s what you usually pay for an enterprise agreement because you get all of these extra programs with it, right, Liel?
Liel: [00:05:48] 100 percent.
Grace: [00:05:49] OK, good. So that’s. Where I went with it, with them, and they’re going to go take a look at this moment to see if their Microsoft team has an enterprise licensing, because it will give you the IDs, meaning, individual phone numbers for your agents or users. You can manage call routing. You can do all of the things that you want from a phone system with your current provider. And most of these people don’t know that. I think most people in general, not just lawyers, not just general business people, they do not understand or know all of the options that are out there, much less what they already have, that they can be utilized for their purposes. So that was my answer to them. And they’re going to go take a look at Microsoft teams and they’re going to make sure that they have an enterprise license and see what the capabilities are already out of the box with the system that they currently use and that integrates with persist. So that to me is like the most important thing I tell people all the time and like persist is not here, it can replace your phone system if that’s what you so choose. But it can also use the phone numbers that you’ve had for 20 years. So you don’t have to put them anywhere. You don’t have to, you know, create new phone numbers and connect it and forward it from one number to the next. Because as we all know, the moment you start moving numbers, the moment you start forwarding numbers, something can happen.
Liel: [00:07:14] Yeah, Grace. We had that. We mentioned that last week. And so it’s great to hear that you’re able to help someone. And for those listening that have specific situations with specific scenarios and you’d like to speak to Grace. So you could actually possibly find a good solution or at least a path to a solution. There you go. Here’s a great example of why it’s worth reaching out. So Grace, thank you so much for sharing that. And hopefully that will help some other law firms who, again, I mean, that’s what their whole takeaways are for. Right. Start from where you are standing, what you already have and dig there. What are your recurring opportunities, Grace? And these are scenarios that happen every day and they’re happening to us as well. Right? I don’t know. Just trying to think of a scenario a few weeks ago, recently that we’ve been kind of like trying to research potential software that we have or that we need to order service providers. We have recently had we were discussing whether we need to add a new SMTP for our email deliverability. Right. So we first started to entertain. OK, can we do it through MailChimp? That already gives us SMTP, but, you know, with certain limitations. And so you start from there. And then if you cannot find a solution already with something that you have builtin, then is when you start the research has to OK, what would be the ideal solution? But also keeping in mind light, not just what’s happening right now, but what’s the next two or three stages? Because again, that’s another problem. Sometimes when choosing solutions and software is that you go after something that seems like the right solution for right now, but then the scalability of it is just not the right fit, because the moment that you outgrow or that your, it doesn’t any longer meet your current needs because they’ve just changed, you’re going to end up yourself having to either change again or start paying considerably more than you thought you were. And so that’s always something to keep in mind. Don’t just limit yourself to what your needs are in this precise second to see how that can scale with you and if it’s still feasible. So great. What do you think?
Grace: [00:09:23] Oh, thousand percent. That’s actually part of what I told them. And it exactly to your point that, you know, it’s not just a consideration of now, it’s a consideration of later. And scalability is the perfect term for that, because if you lock yourself into something that doesn’t have growth potential in and of itself, we all know that Microsoft is going to be around. We all know that Google is going to be around. So that’s why I pointed them towards that as opposed to what we used to actually use was Avaya and Avaya honestly is was is a hardcoded engineered system that can be very difficult to manipulate or change. And you need Avaya hardware engineers to do that with the phone system. So we moved from that to Microsoft teams because we had an enterprise license. So scalability is a thousand percent the most important thing that you need to look at besides what you currently have.
Liel: [00:10:20] Yeah, exactly. Grace. So Grace, I want us to move on to our next topic for today, which I think a lot of our listeners can potentially relate to it from the standpoint that last week Google sent out to everyone, without exception, that has a Google ads login notifications saying, hey, just so you know, we are starting the process of sun setting match type that you probably are using in your Google ads campaign, and it’s called Broad Match Modifier. Grace, do you recall getting an email like that on your inbox last week, maybe Monday, Tuesday?
Grace: [00:11:07] I do. I have to be truthful. I did not read through it. So I’m interested to hear what you have to say about it.
Liel: [00:11:13] Fair enough grades. I can tell you that we went through it and we got a bunch of awards from existing clients sending us their email notifications and like, what does this mean? Right. And I totally understand why they would, you know, be alarmed or concerned or just curious. Right. What this all means, because really it’s not that frequent that Google makes these kind of announcements, particularly not in Google ads, specifically. Google it’s an ongoing and changing platform, but there’s all the time changes happening. We just don’t know about it. We’ll just go and push forward with it in an attempt of improving the user experience and such. And they’re just kind of like keep it a little bit under the radar of the community. Right. Are just improvements they’re constantly making to their platform. But this one is amongst those that they cannot just, you know, not have certain level of transparency about because they’re literally taking a function out of Google ads and one that is quite important, very, very remarkable.
Liel: [00:12:19] So, Grace, listen, I don’t want to make this a technical conversation, right? I know probably most of our listeners don’t necessarily even know what is a much type when it comes down to Google ads. But I think we can explain what this change means in terms of the overall impact and the strategy behind Google. So let me try to explain it, Grace. And if you have any question that you feel that our listeners are going to have or that you generally have, feel free to make it so I can dig a little bit deeper. So let’s start with what is it that it’s being taken away? Right. So I just said braod match modifier, which is the match type that’s going OK. What is a match type, Grace? What is Google Ads? In the search network is type of campaign that lets you target what keywords. Right. That’s what you’re after. You’re actually targeting particular keywords that you feel or you’ve researched or you actually have evidence that are likely to bring you the type of user that’s going to convert and get signed into an actual real case. That’s kind of like really what the process is. And so obviously there’s going to be keywords that, you know, that are so valuable to you that you’re going to be willing to bid high and there’s going to be keywords that you are willing to bid a little bit lower because they’re not always bringing type of quality that you care for. And there’s going to be keywords that you’re actually going to want to avoid. Right. And so those you are going to drop into your negative keyword list because you want to explicitly let know Google, hey, I don’t care.
Liel: [00:13:58] And I don’t want to show my ads to users who are searching for these. So far, so good.
Grace: [00:14:04] So far that makes sense to me.
Liel: [00:14:06] OK, so then that’s good enough for me to continue. Now, Google doesn’t just start by saying, OK, what keywords you want to target, because if that was the only way that the campaign would be configured, then every single campaign would be run with exact match keywords. What does that mean? So if you’re telling Google, well, I want to target personal injury lawyer near me. And so if that was to be your strategy, you’re to have to configure that keywords to be exact match. So only users who are exactly searching for those keywords would actually see your ad. Now, here’s the thing. Over time, everyone who’s been running Google ads, we’ve learned that exact match is not flexible enough. Why? Because sometimes users make typos. So you don’t want to miss out on a potential good lead just because they’re misspelled or mistyped one of these keywords that is still the type of query that you want to serve you’re out for. Right. So because of situations like that, Google used to have what we know as different match types. So exact match would be when you have no flexibility at all and you want 100 percent sure. Only for that type of search queries. Now, on the other end, we had broad much. Right now brought much is the entire opposite then exact match. What does it mean Grace? Exact match. It’s specifically targeting a phrase. Now, here is what’s important to mention about exact match. Exact match will actually also take into consideration the order in which the search query is being typed, so if somebody searches for the same thing with a different order, same keywords, different order wouldn’t show up. Right. That’s how exact match is to work now. That’s obviously, as we’ve just mentioned, not great, because then you’re really a really, really, really, really limiting your impression share to something that may not necessarily have enough search volume to make the campaign feasible and productive.
Liel: [00:16:19] Now to the other extreme, we have broad and what broad as a modifier is, is it basically lets Google serve your odds to anyone who they think is actually searching for something that is similar, kind of like in the same around the same lines of your keyword, right? Well, let’s go back…
Grace: [00:16:44] To intent like we were talking about before, I guess, including that?
Liel: [00:16:49] Theoretically. OK, theoretically, yes. Right. But here’s where it becomes a little bit tricky, because the way broad can actually get back at you is if you’re targeting personal injury or let’s put it this way, you car accident lawyer. Right. Right. So you have car accident lawyer. And you also go ahead and add the exact match and then add to it the broad, the broad match. Right. Now, you are also giving Google the opportunity to show your ads to people who may be searching for something like property damage lawyer for car accident, for instance.
Grace: [00:17:29] I understand.
Liel: [00:17:30] And so Google sees that there are some similarities in the intent, but not exactly the same keywords. And then things may start. We can potentially start going to a different direction. But again, it may still be relevant. And so it serves the ad. And what happens when you do broad strategies, Grace, is that you may end up generating a lot of trash that you just cannot convert. And so you’re wasting money on clicks that are not going to transform into actual clients. But again, what broad match Modifier was allowing advertisers to do was have that middle point right, not going completely broad, but also not having to stick to the exact match. But you had the possibility of say, well, you know what, as long as a search query includes certain keywords, it doesn’t matter in which order. It doesn’t matter exactly where. But as long as specific keywords were in, I’m happy to have it, to have my ad show up. Now, here’s the beauty of it, is that you could also narrow down that strategy by also having a very strong negative keyword list. So you could actually, because as I’ve just said. Right, if you’re, if you’d be running your strategy with the exact match keywords that you care for and then put also those same keywords on broad match modifier and then have a strong negative keyword list, you could still be getting in front of the type of leads that you’re interested in because they’re searching for the keywords that you care. They’re just formulating their search query in a slightly different way than your exact match is structured. Does that make sense Grace.
Grace: [00:19:21] A little look, could you give me an example? Because, yeah, I just want to see it visually.
Liel: [00:19:26] So perfect. So if you’re targeting personal injury lawyer. Right. And I’m putting personal injury lawyer as much modifier, I can also show up for when somebody is searching for a personal injury lawyer in Austin, Texas. Right. Austin, Texas are not part of the search query that I’m targeting for. But because I have these set up and broad match modifier and I’m telling Google, hey, as long as the search query comes up from these keywords, I’m fine to show up and the user search for personal injury lawyer in Austin, Texas. And so the Austin, Texas, I’m not targeting them, but I’m fine with my ad showing up because the other keywords, I am targeting them. Does that make sense?
Grace: [00:20:09] Yes, it does.
Liel: [00:20:09] But here’s why the rest of the campaign, Beeld is going to be super critical. Am I in Austin, Texas? So if I’m in Austin, Texas and I actually want to target people in Austin, Texas, then I need to make sure that the targeting of my campaign is actually relevant to the geographical area, that my campaign is configured to show ads in, of course. And then the other thing is having the negative keywords because going back to my previous example, if I don’t want to be called out for property damage type of cases, then I need to make sure that, for instance, property damage is on my negative keyword list. So that way, when somebody searches for a car accident lawyer for property damage, Google will understand. OK, I cannot show this ad to this particular user because even though car accident lawyer fulfills the criteria of the keywords that are being targeted, there is a blocking rule on the negative keyword list that he’s telling me I cannot serve the ad because it includes the keywords property damage. Does not make sense Grace?
Grace: [00:21:18] It does. So, like, I’m going to put out another example, because, you know, I work by examples. So basically in the change, let’s say they put, you know. Car accident lawyer, once to update happens if they put a car accident lawyer in Arizona and they maybe haven’t specified that, you know, I’m just using a state, but they did put that in their broad match. Is that now going to work? Still the same way.
Liel: [00:21:48] So, Grace, here’s where the change is going is going to come. Broad match is going to continue to just experiment in the sense of we’ll just try to reach as many people as possible and some people some advertisers like that because it just gives them some cheap clicks. Right. The problem is that it becomes expensive when you start having to deal with all of these inquiries that are actually not yielding any type of a result. Now, what is the change that Google is doing here? So it says, well, you know what? We feel that we’ve gotten much better in understanding intent. Like our algorithms have become so smart that we feel that there is no need for us to tell us which particular keywords we should keep on the search queries. We can make that decision by ourselves. So what they’re doing now is they say, OK, you can still do exact match, you can still do the exact specific keywords that you want to target as a phrase. Right. Again, if the user here changes and shifts and so it may affect the performance of the campaign, you may not necessarily start seeing your see your ad.
Liel: [00:23:06] And then there is going to be the broad match for those who want to experiment. I don’t want to trash out broad match completely. There are some times that broad match can be an interesting tool to have around, say you you’re launching a new campaign potentially on a mass tort. Right. You don’t know exactly how the market right now is searching about search queries that relate to Zantac. Just as an example, Unpicks been here for quite some time, but let’s use paraquat, right? Quite new, quite recent, very low search volume. So you actually want to learn what the market is searching on the topic that may relate to paraquat. So you may target paraquat as a broad much to see whether people are searching about this particular topic in a way that you may have not thought of that could be relevant to your Mostert. You get ideas right and then you start building more specific strategy and start creating your different keyword list that you’re going to be targeting. Does that make sense?
Grace: [00:24:05] It does. It does, because I’m thinking to myself, so like, I’ll use a non-legal example. I actually saw it on Google’s website or actually, a search engine Land is where I’m seeing it, where they said, you know, it used to be the keyword would be moving services, New York City to Boston, right. Where before I guess with the broad match, it could flip it. And it would also give you New York, you know, instead of just Boston to New York City. Or it would give you excuse me, instead of just New York City to Boston, it would also give you people that might be looking for Boston to New York City, which is the wrong direction. Right. So they said with the phrase match update, it will no longer give you the wrong direction. You know, it will give it to you in the way it was requested or the information, the way they asked, which is in a phrase I want to know, get me moving services from New York City to Boston, not Boston to New York City.
Liel: [00:25:02] Exactly. And this is Google. I mean, this is Google being extremely clever as using a super-specific example where it actually is going to solve a problem.
Grace: [00:25:11] Right.
Liel: [00:25:13] But here is the thing. And the thing is now with phrase much, you’re not going to be able to tell Google. I need you to make sure that these specific keywords are actually showing up on the search query.
Grace: [00:25:28] I see.
Liel: [00:25:30] Google is going to take the entire search query and they’re going to then match it to a different search query potentially that may not necessarily include any of the words whatsoever that you’re actually targeting, but that they feel that the intent is the same. Right. And so, for instance, just for the sake of giving an example that would again put Google on the right, that would make Google’s intent valid, right. Let’s say that you’re targeting with broad match modifier, car accident Attorney, Los Angeles.
Grace: [00:26:07] Right.
Liel: [00:26:08] Now, let’s suppose that somebody search now for motor vehicle lawyer North Hollywood. Your ad gets shown. Why? Because although none of the keywords have anything to do with the ones that you actually set up as phrase match, the intent actually is there lawyer, attorney, car accident, motor vehicle, and North Hollywood to Los Angeles. Well, because North Hollywood is near in Los Angeles. Right. So that’s when we are seeing Google kind of like doing their A.I. algorithmic work and saying, well, you know, I mean, this person is not searching for the keywords that you specifically chose, but it’s still searching for exactly the type of search query that you care to show up for. Does that give you a good understanding of what is what Google is doing here?
Grace: [00:27:03] Yes, especially as it relates to legal directly. So thank you for the explanation.
Liel: [00:27:08] So here’s a few things, Chris. My point here is that we now need to get advertisers better at something, because here’s what Google is saying is, OK, you have your campaigns up and running right now. You still have broad match modifier there and it still are going to kind of like work until July of this year after July of this year. Boom, done. You can no longer use it at all. Right. The plus sign that used to be the way that you indicated a keyword was broad match modifier is no longer be an option. So what Google is telling us is you are going to have to start trusting us more. And the reason why Google is doing this is because they say we know the users better. You’re actually limiting yourself quite a bit by relying way too much on this. Right. We get it that much is way too extreme for some advertisers. An exact match is just not a solution. So the broad match is supposed to be kind of like the leveler between these two, whereas before Brud, much modified, was way more closer to exact match than it was to broad match. This is really more kind of like middle ground. Now, Grace, how do you take control over these other campaign configurations that you have? And that’s going to be, as I said, the geographical area that your campaign is going to be targeting, it’s going to get targeted to, in most importantly, your negative keyword list, because the negative keyword list that one needs to be, again, super-specific to block all of the search queries that, you know, can get confused with some of the assumptions that Google can make.
Liel: [00:28:42] So the way that you’re actually feeding back criteria to Google, to Google’s algorithm, is by actually telling them, OK, well, you want to take the liberty of choosing who is going to get my ad seen or not. I’m going to tell you some parameters that I have, which is you do not show my ads for these type of negative keywords. Right. Those are important for me. So here is the thing. Negative keywords also have much types. So right. If things weren’t complex enough, so great. I think here to summarize things because I think we’re ready for our takeaways. And as I said, I did not want this conversation to turn into extremely technical. A because I’m not an extremely technical person. Our head of marketing strategy here at Nanato would be the one who could give you very, very thorough explanations as to why this is great and at the same time, why you should be extremely alarmed about some other aspects. Right. It’s a great opportunity. And I think as we learn how to better integrate these to our strategies, we’re going to all see that it’s really for the best is just preparing ourselves to make sure that by the time this transition is happening and we’re reaching the end of the sunsetting period, by July, you actually have the right data in the right configuration in your campaigns, so you can feel confident that things are going to be smooth sailing even after it. Right. So, Grace, my take away number one, which is.
Liel: [00:30:08] Look into your campaigns as a whole, don’t just focus on the keywords you’re targeting and the match types that they have, look into all of the additional configurations that your campaign has, the type of ads that you’re using dynamic ads is a super, super powerful tool that it’s highly recommended now to be used in most of campaigns. Your negative keyword list cannot stress enough and at the same time start paying more attention to the recommendations that Google is making for your campaign optimizations because while none of them are going to necessarily work towards improving your campaigns the way that you would want to, many of them will. So I think it’s kind of like balancing out. Don’t take a hands-off approach now more than ever. You need to be on top of your campaigns and paying a lot of attention as to what are the new recommendations that Google is making. So you can actually better understand how Google wants to implement these new changes to your account. So that’s my take away no one Grace. What do you think so far?
Grace: [00:31:06] I think that’s great. And I want to add to your take away number one a little bit. Takeaway 1.2 or 1.a, you know, because now I really, truly understand what you’re saying about this change, right, the phrase match change. Basically, you have to look at everything that’s within that same group of ads and adjust it accordingly. Right. That’s basically because Google will now be the one to adjust it for you based on what else is in there. Is that what you’re saying?
Liel: [00:31:33] Yes. So everything that is that is a component in your campaign is going to become way more important than just the keyword itself. So, of course, you know, you need to have as much as a granular understanding and view of your campaign for things that up until now have been kind of like your priority. You need to kind of like now shift the overview of your campaigns and start focusing also in other aspects that you may have not necessarily been paying a lot of attention. And so that’s what I would say. Yeah, that’s what I would say is the mindset that we should have to these new changes.
Grace: [00:32:09] So that gives me takeaway no two Liel.
Liel: [00:32:11] OK. Yeah. Love to hear it.
Grace: [00:32:13] It’s back to what we talked about at the beginning and at the end of every single podcast we’ve ever had. Look at what you currently have and constantly test and split A/B test. Everything.
Liel: [00:32:24] Absolutely Grace.
Grace: [00:32:26] And that includes the ad copies. That includes your current setup, that includes your ad groups, includes all of the different parameters that Liel just talked about over this whole podcast. So that to me is takeaway number two. Look at what you have right now and adjust accordingly based on things that have been updated, including this current Google update to phrase match from broad match. Good?
Liel: [00:32:49] Yeah, I actually like that a lot, Grace. I think that’s a good reminder that nothing is really static. Right? You always need to be changing. You always need to be updating your campaigns and testing out things to see whether even when you already have good results, you can improve them. Right. And here I just want to make a little parentheses when sometimes people tend to over-optimize things. And I think, you know, this doesn’t necessarily apply when you’re just riding the wave. Right?
Grace: [00:33:22] Right.
Liel: [00:33:23] There are just some periods in Google lives where you’re just killing it and things are really working as they should. So I’m not suggesting just go there and mess it up, but definitely pay attention what are the trends and prepare because they usually don’t last forever. These are periods and they come and they go. But you’re just going to have to continue making different tweaks and adjustments and optimizations until you get back on one of those waves. Right. And that’s really the way things work. Now, my last takeaway here is don’t forget about your Google quality score that is still there. And I think people tend to ignore it and they just say, you know what, I don’t necessarily understand how Google give me this quality score. So I’m going to focus on things that I can control and kind of ignore to Google quality score, because at the end of the day, I can leverage and influence through bids what it’s going to actually happen. The destiny of my campaigns, if you may, in in people who tend to think that way, you really underestimated the impact that quality score has. And the bottom line is that also Google has become better at actually telling you what actually is going to help you improve your quality score. So I think, you know, the main three components that people need to continue not forgetting of are relevancy. Right. Like is the ad you’re serving relevant to the keyword you’re targeting? And most importantly, is your landing page relevant to the keywords you’re targeting into your ad copywriting? And literally you need to think like a user here if you’re a someone who is searching for these. Is your ad speaking to your intent and then when you get into the landing page, does it actually give you a clear explanation as to how we can help you out and set up a path to that solution in a simple way that you can understand? Right. I think a lot of people, particularly Law Firms Grace, make the mistake of sending out users from Google Ads campaigns to their websites to super long, extensive pages just overwhelm the user. Right. People who are clicking on an ad tend to be someone who wants easy and simple paths to solve a problem and that water landing page is good at. And so I definitely think that people need to keep that in mind because the better you are actually thinking and optimizing your user journey, the better your landing score, your quality score is going to be and your click-through rate is going to improve as a whole, which is another third component of quality score, which is going to be very important. My final message here is remember what the Google business model is. Is giving users great results to their search queries. Big on organic search results or a paid search result. And Google will always favor putting up an ad at the top of the page that A, they know it’s likely to get clicked on, and B, they can tell it’s actually relevant to the search query that the user is searching for. Because if Google starts serving you ads that are completely irrelevant to what you’re searching for, Google as a platform as a whole is not doing what their mission is, which is delivering you great search results to your queries. So, Grace, that’s it. That’s my last takeaway. I think this conversation could probably go on for another two or three hours because there’s so much to say here. But we’re going to leave it here.
Grace: [00:37:09] And I think you’re right. And I do have one note about the quality score. That’s something that’s easily, easily fixed with very small things that have to be done like page speed. And again, as Liel very, very clearly said, Google tells you what you have to do to improve your quality score. And your quality score is a big deal because you will be served up first rather than last or not at all.
Grace: [00:37:35] 100 percent. It will impact your ad rank. It will also impact your cost per click.
Grace: [00:37:39] Yup.
Liel: [00:37:40] Because people think, well, as long as I’m paying a lot, I’m, I don’t care. I will bid as high as I need to. But you need to know that you can bid as much as you want. But Google may still override you and say these guys get first because they have a better ad and more relevancy than you have. And again, we’re a Google, right? I mean, how much you’re willing to pay for the cost per click or not? He’s not going to make or break us. We can afford showing someone who’s going to pay a little bit less. But that definitely is going to get clicked on and is definitely more likely to convert on that landing page then if they were to click on your ad. Right. So that’s Google’s mindset. And we need to understand that, right?
Grace: [00:38:15] That’s right. It’s for the user.
Liel: [00:38:17] It’s super important. Make sure that you start paying attention there.
Liel: [00:38:20] Grace, thank you so much.
Grace: [00:38:21] Thank you Liel. It was great.
Liel: [00:38:23] We’ll be back next week with another conversation.
Grace: [00:38:25] That’s right.
Liel: [00:38:26] If you like our show, make sure you subscribe. Tell your co-workers, leave us a review, and send us your questions to ask@incamerapodcast.com. We’ll see you next week.
Leave a Reply
Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *