Let’s not beat around the bush here… 2020 has been rather hellish, centering around COVID-19, a global pandemic. As the nation shut down and families hunkered down, spouses began to realize that maybe they weren’t as in love as they thought they were. Some law firms were able to stay ahead of the curve by identifying early on complications that would arise from quarantining and the insane jobless rates.
You know that reaching online searches as a Divorce and Family Law firm is no easy task in the best of times. You either need to rank on the first page for hundreds of various keywords or use PPC (Pay Per Click) ads to essentially accomplish the same thing.
But what has actually been happening in the internet search realm is truly fascinating to us marketers. Were people even searching divorce, child custody and support keywords under quarantine? We can answer that. Using our data models below, let’s take a long look at what was happening in New York City, the hardest by COVID back in March. On March 15th, the world in NYC stopped on a dime. The entire city shut down, and so did internet search for Family Law.
But before we look at this data, we understand how it’s laid out. You will see we are only showing 5 keywords, but searchers may have used many other keyword searches to end up on these keywords. In simple terms, we are lumping data into these key word terms on purpose. In addition, they are the top 5 converting keywords when folks are searching for a divorce lawyer. In fact, a client of ours with a 5 figure PPC budget converts about 75% on these keywords directly; so, they are pretty important.
But why should you care? Aside from the obvious interested divorce law firms, if you are doing ANY PPC marketing on these keywords, you need to take note of the below. Pay particular attention to the CPC changes we have seen recently. Okay here we go.
Dem Trends, Yo!
Take a look at the graphic below to see some of the trends. Here we’ve looked at how those five different keywords have fared over the last two years at the national level. The top two keyword here are “divorce lawyer” and “divorce attorney” - no surprise there. Those keywords will not only be harder to rank for organically referred to as keyword difficulty), but also would cost more per click in PPC advertising. I digress.
Do you see that big spike in January followed by a dramatic dip? You should know that we here at Precision Legal Marketing internally refer to January as divorce month. That dip occurs on March 22nd, with a steady decline just before that. That coincided with the nation coming to a screeching halt thanks to COVID-19. What do you notice shortly after that dramatic dip? The steady incline, right?! Our first big spike after that steady incline would come as early as the first week of June. As of this week (August 16 - 22) the term “divorce lawyer” has topped the charts for the entire two years.
Let’s take an even closer look and see how New York in particular is faring through these trends.
As you can see from this graphic, the term “divorce lawyer” is trending like a wildfire in New York right now. See that dotted line at the end of the chart? That’s this current week (ending tomorrow) and it’s already up to 100 percent.
See that nice dip there? That dip is the week of March 15th, again, when the nation shut down over COVID-19.
Device Trends
What we can also identify here is what types of devices the individuals querying keywords related to divorce law in New York were using. Adjusting your device bidding strategy is an important part to managing your PPC ads, especially right now. If you are using Google Ads, you can view this data now yourself, and make adjustments based on the below.
In the second quarter of 2020, approximately 68% of those querying keywords related to divorce law were using mobile devices. We can also identify here that despite the fact that mobile dominates the search, the number of computer users has also grown slightly. We have yet to figure out what is going on with tablet usage. But we could attribute the growth in computer searches to people getting back to work. I would bet if you could look at this data broken up by computer use at work or at home prior to Q2, the trends would show a dramatic shift.
Search Trends – All Devices
Those experienced with Google Ads will recognize the data below. But, what can it teach us about what is happening right now with these keywords?
The first thing you probably notice here again is that sharp drop in March. Yep, that’s why your phone stopped ringing and as a Divorce Attorney you probably thought about becoming an Estate Planning Attorney. Take a look at the relationship between queries (searches), clicks and impressions. You can clearly see that in the past, there was a lot of folks who may search for a Divorce Lawyer, but not take immediate action. That is NOT the case now. If you look towards the right of that chart, you can see the much tighter relationship between searches, impressions and clicks. People who are searching are contacting lawyers.
But what I really want to draw your attention to here is the Ad CPC and Ad CTR in the chart on the right. Click Through Rate (CTR) is the ratio of clicks to impressions (the number of times your ads are shown). See how the CPC has taken a nosedive? This is the direct result of less bidding competition for these keywords. Think of this like the stock market, and right now the stock prices are WAAAAY down. What should you do? You guessed it. If you are a divorce attorney in the united states, you need to be using Google Ads to put yourself in a position to capture the attention of these searches. The time has literally never been better.
It’s Divorce Season, again! And Again!
Again, look at the massive spike in clicks for these main divorce keywords! This is literally incredible. Keep in the mind unlike some parts of the country, New York courts were actually totally closed to new filings. For a time, only the direst emergency cases were being heard. It’s interesting to see the trend of search follow what was happening on the ground. But more shockingly is the cost per click decrease. With more traffic to show ads on, it’s simply cheaper to run ads. With that comes all kinds of benefits including stretching a smaller budget over time, using bid adjustments to maximize impact during the busy search hours and more.
In summary, 2020 appears to be the year of divorce. And if you’re an attorney looking to get a piece of the action, PPC with Google Ads is the way to go. If you were on the fence regarding Google Ads before, there’s no better time to dive in. These numbers are hard to dispute.
If your law firm is ready to take the next step in Pay Per Click advertising, Precision Legal Marketing is ready to take your firm to the next level. Get in touch today to learn more.
