Your Website: Use Google Adwords to Grow Your Accounting Firm
The fact you can buy your website a good listing in the search results of Google is not by any means a very well kept secret.
Having one of our expertly crafted accounting websites is a good start towards using the world wide web to grow your practice, but it doesn't matter how outstanding your site is if nobody knows about it. There are lot's of ways to publicize your site, but one of the most cost-effective is advertising using Google Adwords.
You have probably seen the sponsered listings on Google's search results the last time you executed a search. They appear on the right side of the search results page, and often up to the first three positions on the left side. These listings are being displayed through Google Adwords pay-per-click (or PPC) marketing platform. An impression is incurred when Google displays the ad. When you click a sponsored listing you are taken to the advertisers website and that advertiser will incur a charge from Google. In other words, that advertiser pays Google per each click their ad receives.
The quality score of the landing page, impacts the final cost of the click that is ultimately payed to Google. Quality score is dictated by many different factors, including the relevance of the content on the landing page to the search term, and the Click Through Rate, or "CTR".
Click through rate is the rate of clicks to impressions. If your ad has 200 impressions, and receives 100 clicks, then your CTR is 50%. The higher your CTR, the more relevant Google will think your ad is for the search phrase. This will improve your quality score for that keyword
The higher the quality score is of the landing page, the lower the actual cost per click will be. Adwords is essentially an auction. You bid on keywords. In very simple terms, the higher your bid, the higher your ad will be displayed.
Now there are a number of valuations and specific calculations Google makes to define where your ad will be placed. These calculations occur in real time when the search is being conducted. We'll explain the specifics of these calculations in a future article. For this article, it is just important to realize that your bid, is not what you will ultimately pay for the click. If you bid $5.00 for a click, and your quality score is 4, you will pay more for a click then if your quality score is 8, and you will never pay more then your bid, or $5.00, for a click.
Remember Google’s 1st priority is to showcase relevant search results, even for the sponsored listings. Certainly they could just give the first spot to the highest bidder, but that would only ensure the advertiser willing to spend the most money would be listed first. The highest bidder however, may not be the most relevant search result.
The best example of this is your company name. Let’s say you are Adidas, and you want to bid on the keyword “Nike”. The most relevant search result for the keyword “Nike”, is obviously the Nike website. Google is going to give Nike a higher quality score for that keyword, in effect rewarding them for their relevancy for that keyword.
Before we look at tips to improving your quality score, it’s important to also understand match types. There are three match types you can and should bid on for each keyword. They are exact, phrase, and broad match types.
- Exact Match: Exact match is the best keyword to bid on. An exact match means the search phrase being searched on is an exact match for the keyword for which you are bidding. For example if you are bidding on exact match for “Accounting Firms”, your website's ad will be displayed only when someone searches for “Accounting Firms”.
- Phrase Match: Phrase match means your keyword is a phrase within the search string. For example, if you bid on a phrase match of “Accounting Firms”, you ad will be displayed when someone searches on things like “small accounting firms”, or “accounting firms and CPAs”.
- Broad Match: Broad match essentially let’s the search engine decide if the search phrase is a match for your broad match keyword or not. It is crucial that you bid on broad match keywords, but it can also be dangerous. It’s important because a broad match for “accounting firms” might be triggered when someone searches for “accounting services”. It also can be triggered when someone misspells a word, such as “acounting firms”. The danger is that Google may decide that “Accounting Supplies” is a close enough match to “Accounting Services”, and trigger your broad match keyword. This is why Google allows advertisers to declare "negative keywords". We'll talk more about negative keywords in a moment.
Now that you have an understanding about your website's quality score and keyword match types, here are some tips on how you can improve your quality score and click through rates.
Ad Copy
The copy in your ad should reflect the search phrase, or keyword you are bidding on. The person doing the search will be more apt to click an ad that includes their search string. For example, if you bid on “CPA Services”, you want the headline of your ad to be something like “Quality CPA Services”. If your ad title says “Bob's Financial Consulting”, the searcher then has to stop and think... if they click your sponsored link, are they going to find what they are looking for? Their decision is often made within a split second, so you don’t want the prospect to have to stop and think. Show them exactly what they are looking for. If that means having 25 different ad titles for 25 different keywords, so be it. Your work will pay off in the end.
Landing Page
The landing page is the page on your site that the searcher is taken to when they click your ad. Normally this should not be your website’s homepage. If someone searches for "Strategic Business Planning”, they should be taken directly to the page on your website that explains your business planning services rather than a generic accounting related homepage. If the ad goes to your homepage, and they have to search through a big pile of CPA related content just to find what they are looking for, they'll probably just click the back button and go to the next advertiser.
If your website doesn't have a suitable landing page for the keyword, add one. It really is that important.
Just like the ad copy, you want to remove as much of the decision making out the process as possible. Make it as straight forward as possible for the searcher to find what it is they are looking for. Your quality score will be rewarded for having a landing page that is specific to the keyword, because it improves the search experience for people who find you through their search engine.
Negative Keywords
Just as important as knowing what keywords to bid on, is knowing what keywords you don’t want to trigger your ads. Phrase and broad matching make this valuable. If you bid on the broad match of "accounting services", you probably do not want your ad displayed if someone searches on “accounting supplies”, so you would want to have "supplies" added as a negative keyword.
Your ad will not be displayed, when a search phrase has one of your negative keywords.
Location Targeting
I've saved the best for last. For firms that provide services like accounting or CPA service, location targeting is extremely important. If you provide CPA services you will want to be able to meet with your client, and more importantly the client is very likely looking for a accountant close to home. Having propsects more then 100 miles away clicking on yoru ad is going to become a big waste of money.
There are two ways to target a location. The first is to target your ads to only be displayed within a certain radius, such as 10 to 20 miles from your business location. You can bid on more general keywords, like "accounting firm", within a very specific location.
The second way to target location is with very specific keywords in a more general area. For example, you might display your ads to anyone in California, or even the country, if they type in the specific keyword “Los Angeles CPA” or "Los Angeles Accounting".
Keep these basic principles in mind while you're setting up your websites with Adwords campaigns and you'll find the learning curve a lot easier and your initial results will be a lot more profitable!