October 2, 2025 • 21 mins
Missing negative keywords creates budget leaks most firms never see. Here’s the theme-based framework that stopped our $50/click waste on competitor names and celebrity searches.
Wasted ad spend happens when you lack keyword theme organization across account, campaign, and ad group exclusions. Search term reports reveal budget leak prevention opportunities through competitor keyword blocking and irrelevant click prevention. P-Max campaign problems multiply without systematic negative keyword architecture—the "moat and bridge" method that protects every dollar.
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---
📄 CHAPTERS
0:00 - Negative Keywords: The Hidden Budget Leak
2:18 - Why Wasted Ad Spend Happens Without Structure
4:20 - Sterling's Early Days: Avoiding Upfront Waste
6:18 - Think In Themes, Not Just Terms
8:41 - The $35-$50/Click Celebrity Name Problem
11:40 - Close Variant Matching Expands Budget Waste
12:17 - Search Term Reports: The Boring Dirty Work
14:47 - The P-Max Campaign Problem Exposed
18:03 - Ad Group Exclusions: Precision Traffic Control
19:41 - The Moat And Bridge Framework Explained
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
it addsup really fast. And it's a ton of budget.
(00:02):
So soon as we got rid of them,we saw a reduction of our cost per lead,
and we could reallocate that budgetto go after stuff that worked
instead of like all thisrandom garbage.
I am Tyler Dolph,CEO of Rocket Clicks,
a full service digital marketing firmthat focuses exclusively with family
law firms and helping themgrow their firms, attract
(00:23):
more clients and convert more leads.
Joining me today is Anthony Carlsand James Patterson.
Anthony is our president hereat Rocket Clicks
and also the co-founder of our law firm,Sterling Lawyers,
which now has 32 attorneysand, over 25
offices across Wisconsin and Illinois.
(00:46):
He brings a wealth of leadershipexperience, and we're very happy
to have him.
And, along with Anthony,we have James Patterson.
James is our revenue operations directorand our paid media expert here.
Ryan Clicks.
He's worked on hundreds of law firms.
He's been in the weeds.
He's managed people, doneall of the things to help law firms grow.
(01:09):
And, we are very excited to have youboth on the episode today.
Okay. We're going to diveinto negative keywords.
One of the most overlooked yetpowerful tools in Google Ads and Bing ads.
Hopefully you walk awayknowing how to protect your
ad budgetand attract only those leads that matter.
(01:31):
Guys, appreciate you being here.
We are continuing our seriesin the paid ads
category and a big, big subjecttoday is negative keywords.
And being a novice myself,when I started, here in this business,
we talked a little bit about the,the importance
of negative keywords, like all whywhy would I want to use name keywords?
(01:55):
And, it's evolvedobviously a lot over the last few years.
But, James, we take overa lot of accounts, new law firm clients,
and I feel like I'm always hearingabout the wasted spend in these accounts.
Tell us a little bitabout the reason for this waste, and why
negative keywords are such a necessityfor failing law firms.
(02:18):
Yeah.
Negative keywordlists or even just negative keywords.
Added specifically at the campaignand ad group level, where it makes sense
as a huge miss by a lot of,Google Ads accounts out there.
A lot of times when we take over, new,new, clients and we're taking a look
at kind of how things are set upand doing our initial auditing.
(02:38):
This is one of the first placesthat we'll look.
Unfortunately for the past agency,it's always, really, unfortunate,
presentation, to,to show the, the client where they've,
mismanaged their spend and, and,spend a decent amount of dollars on
maybe services that they don't actually door just, quite frankly, junk
that's irrelevantto their business at all.
(02:59):
So we really thinknegative keywords are critical
to having a good paying media strategy.
Especially as you know,Google's got a business model too, right?
Like they they want advertisersto spend hours there.
There's all kinds of searchesthat are going on constantly
that Google might matchwith a keyword that you're targeting.
If you're not using negative keyword listsproperly, you're gonna like Google,
(03:20):
run the runthe show there and decide when and where
to show your ads all over the place.
And what we finda lot of times is a ton of wasted spend.
But I thought Google was the authority,James.
I thought we should just blindlytrust them.
You know, turns out, you know,there might be some better ways to do it.
There's, you know,we want to want to maybe at times test out
some of those new features.
(03:41):
But, jumping fully into the deepend is not something we ever advise
in terms of Google's,preference of how ad accounts are set up.
We totally agree.
So now I knowyou built the very first ad account
at Sterling when,you were building the law firm over there.
Any perspective,that you saw over the years
through the use of negative keywords,as a as an opportunity to reduce waste,
(04:02):
you know, it's like, as a business owner,you're always looking for ways to
to make more money.
Well, one way you could dothat is by increasing prices.
Another way you can dothat is by reducing expenses.
Right.
And wasting spend is is an expense.
We I mean, we've prior to the lawfirm, prior opening a law firm,
(04:24):
I had a lot of experience of paid search.
It's kind of howI was brought into marketing.
So we knew right awaykind of how to think about this.
And I would say,you know, we didn't we didn't absorb
a whole bunch of costs up frontthat we couldn't
really learn anything from,because we were targeting the right stuff.
(04:48):
So, like, there's a lot of,you know, when you use some of Google's
suggestion tools,like they're going to tell you
if you're in MenomoneeFalls, that you should
that I'm a nominee, falls lawyer.
The long tail version of thatis that's lawyer for any type of lawyer.
And like we've seen queries in therethat are like equine lawyer, dog lawyers,
cat lawyers, all kinds of nonsense thatyou really don't want those leads
(05:12):
calling you or going to your websiteand like telling Google that this is
this is something relevantthat Google is not going to like,
highlight it because you don't.
One of the problems in these ad accountsis they're small,
so you don't get most of the data,because Google will only show you
a certain percentage of the data,and the rest of it's just hidden.
So beingattentive to your search for reports
(05:33):
and then trying to like, surmisewhen you're seeing weird things in there,
what what theme or what categoryam I not really thinking about?
And I'm likejust letting a bunch of stuff bleed in.
So there's a lot of thingsthat we we really did, and a lot of it
(05:54):
from a certain perspective.
That I built obviously building right.
The first time is, is optimal.
But I'm assuming a lot of our listenershave explored paid advertising
and, are hearing us and, you know,what's this negative keyword thing?
So, James,if I'm building a negative keyword list,
do I just put a bunch of wordsthat I don't think
are relevant in this listor talk to us, more about how this works?
(06:18):
Yeah.
The the way that we phrases iswe like to think in themes, not just terms
is is really our, our ideology on it.
So yeah, when you think about an accountand all the potential searches
that could exist,you might find yourself
with this massive listof different keywords
that you want to check out.
The problem with thatis that you don't really know if,
you know, maybe a specific campaignyou're running would maybe
(06:40):
want to have one of those searchesif you're going to have a conflict there.
The the management side of making surethat the right keywords are in there
as the as the list expands and scalesover the course of time as you launch
new campaigns and, you know, get more dataand more search terms, reports
and review and things like that,you know,
what you're going to find yourselfis with this massive,
really unmanageable list,if you start early with categorizing
(07:01):
the different types of termsthat you want to block
and tackle outside of your campaigns,you're going to have a much better time
in the future.
And the beauty of that approach as wellis as you're defining those different
themes, you can then start to,you know, specifically know
where to put these search terms.
So it just creates an entirely moremanageable, you know, approach to it.
(07:22):
I think, I know Tony'shad a lot of experience with this as well.
One of the things we dolike to block out our common names
and, one of the funny thingsthat we'll see sometimes if we're bidding
on, brand terms and we do want to target,like, a specific attorney's name,
we might be blocking, you know, the nameJames Johnson or something, right?
And then, lo and behold,we hire a guy named James Johnson.
(07:43):
Right.
Well, up until that point,we could be bidding for this random person
wasting dollars that are potentially.
But then also, as soon as we dohave somebody like that
come in, we can easily referencethat list.
It's not like, oh crap, you know,let's pull this massive list
and try and figure out what's blockingthis campaign from serving.
We can very easily know, oh,we got that names list.
That's where it's happening. Boom.
You know, it's it's a lot better that way.
(08:04):
So it's both better from, like managementlong term to organizing themes
as well as just like beingreally efficient in terms of, you know,
activating those lists to block and tacklethings that aren't relevant to.
And so just so I'm clear,if I'm searching for James Jones
and he's on ourkeyword list and he's he's a celebrity
(08:24):
or a Packer wide receiver or whatever,he's going to come up,
our ads are going to come up,we're going to spend money on that
ad Yeah.
Google if anybody's search is James Jones,I want to be there.
The more you likely use caseTyler is you're bidding on the term
divorce lawyer in a phrase match.
(08:47):
And then James Jonesgoing through a divorce.
And the query is actually going to beJames Jones divorce lawyer,
which is a, a,what would you call it,
more voyeuristic type search querybecause they're just curious
about what's happening in that divorce.
They're never going to convert.
(09:08):
But you're going to show your ad thatnow the user thinks
you relevant for the James Jones divorce,and you're not at all.
So we see a ton of that, both.
The other thing we'll see islawyer like lawyer name.
So we'll see this in the celebrity side.
And then we'll see with thiswith a lawyer name side.
So a lot of people, a lot of usersonline will use Google as a phonebook.
(09:33):
And they'll type in an attorney.
They think they knowbut they don't know their number.
So they'll type in.
James Patterson, divorcelawyer, Menomonee Falls,
and then they'll just callwhoever's ads are showing up.
And if they don't,if they if if James Patterson
doesn't work at your firm,guess what the caller does.
They hang up when they call the next one,but they clicked on your ad.
(09:55):
You've spent $32 now, and you'reprobably not going to get that search
query report that says you spent $35on this really obscure keyword.
That isn't going to matter.
So like, you have these like deathby a million cuts in these accounts that
because you don't get all the dataand you haven't thought and keyword
themes, you just waste a ton of money,you don't know where it's being wasted.
(10:19):
think we hear all thetime, our clients will come in and say,
yeah, I tried.
Paid search didn't work. Not for me.
My assumption is that a lot of the timesthey weren't doing this, the right way,
because it can be a great accelerantfor law firms.
We've seen it at our own firmand many of our clients firms.
But it's got to be done the right way.
(10:39):
Yeah. Theyeah I was going to say
that the other thing to just,you know, put out there for you know law
firm owners that have had bad experienceswith, with these types of things.
Google is increasingly expanding its,match,
you know, availability of search term.
So like even 2 or 3 years ago,if you were targeting an exact keyword,
(11:00):
you for the most part, you know,98% of the time are only going to serve
ads exactly.
For that keyword you're targetingexactly how it's typed now here in 2025.
It is not that way at all.
There's all kinds of what they call closevariants.
And it's Google again,kind of taking liberties
in terms of, well, that advertiser'slooking for this keyword.
We think this is pretty close to Tony'spoint with the specific attorney
(11:23):
who doesn't work here,but it has a divorce lawyer in the name.
So there's there's libertiesbeing taken that way too.
So that reallythe only way you can catch that, you know,
proactively versusreactively is to have a really good
negative keyword list organized by themes,kind of at the forefront.
There.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, whenwe originally implemented this
because we didn'twe didn't do this right away
(11:43):
at Sterling with the name.
So something like we saw in the first,you know, probably call it six months.
And I'm like, man,I hate doing these search reports
with all these stupid names. Like,who are all these people?
And then I started noticing, like,Alex Rodriguez went through divorce
and I'm like,why don't we show for that query?
And there was like a bunch of namesand I started looking names up.
I'm like, oh, those arethose are our competitors.
(12:05):
Like those are thethose are the attorneys in town.
And I'm like, perfect.
All of these cost melike 35 to $50 a click
and like it adds up really fast.
And it's a ton of budget.
So soon as we got rid of them,we saw a reduction of our cost per lead,
and we could reallocate that budgetto go after stuff that worked
instead of like all this random garbage.
(12:28):
That's so it's so important.
It's so overlooked.
It's the boring work on a paidsearch account, honestly.
But, you know, just like a great footballteam, you need a good line
and they're going to do the boring, dirtywork.
And like, this is the boring, dirtywork in a paid search account.
And so there's, like, an actual reportthat shows you every term
you're bidding on is how we use.
Yeah, yeah. The search term reports.
(12:50):
That'sgoing to be your best friend in terms of
especially after you start buildingyour your list, hopefully up front
as you add to it and, you know,maybe test out different campaigns
and targeting different keywords,continuously looking at your search terms
report is going to be really massiveto keeping those lists really
well maintained and added to,as you know, search behaviors change
and things like that.
(13:11):
So you can block out a significant amountjust by, you know,
kind of doing the basics upfront,but you're going to want to be looking
at your search terms reportsto some frequency.
It's going to kind of depend on, you know,what's the level of spend
you have in there. What's the,the scale of the number of keywords
you're targeting, things like that.
Are you using primarilyexact and phrase match,
which is what, you know,we generally recommend with clients?
(13:33):
Or are you primarily using broad matchthat's going to, you know, significantly
impact the amount of search termsthat you may be looking at?
But definitely working with your teamor agency to be looking at search
terms regularly is definitely reallycritical to.
Great.
I've got all these awesome keyword lists.
I'm feeling good.
We're walking tackle.
No, it's going to overthe course of time is again,
(13:54):
Google takes different libertieswith these close variants.
And so there's going to be new stuffthat you're going
to want to be continuously adding.
The flip side to this, and we're talkinga lot about exclusion and cost savings.
There's also potentially opportunitiesin the search term report as well.
Is there maybe a keywordwe shouldn't be targeting?
Build out a.
Net new campaign where we can make,you know, the ad creative and landing page
more specific to it.
So it kind of works on two fronts.
(14:15):
Both, you know, maybe potentialopportunities as well as cost savings.
Model.
And, you know, I'm listening.
I'm hearing you guys talk aboutI live in this like,
you know, every daywith you guys and I'm overwhelmed.
I'm like,there's so much here that has to be done.
How what advice can you give to a law firmowner who's listening in this?
Who's as overwhelmed as I am?
(14:36):
My name is. It's simply like,find an expert.
Or are there little stepsthat they can take
to to refine their list a little bitand save some money?
James, you want to rant about,make sure you want me to.
You know, I was given p max a tough timein their last revenue roadmap.
So I think, I think it's time for you,Tony, to, to lead the
(14:59):
We we get a lot of accountswhere primarily all the budget and spend
is being done on Pemex,and it's what this new.
Yeah, it's it's called performance maxbut basically gives Google
ultimate libertyto do whatever Google thinks is right.
And it's where we see them most basedall over the place because they will.
(15:21):
If you're a divorce lawyer, they're goingto bet on things like divorce.
That's going to bring in a wholebunch of random queries,
because divorce is a very broad term.
And if you look at all the variantsthat have a divorce in it, lawyer
is one of them,but it's one of like 200, 300,000.
And most of them,they're not going to convert for you.
So same thing with lawyerlike lawyer will be part of that group.
(15:45):
And there are tons of differenttypes of lawyers that people search for.
Like that's why we havewe literally have a list of different
law types that we do negatives forbecause that crap got into our account.
So and it's not just like the big ones,like the big obvious ones
are for your family firm.
Get rid of personal injury.
But did you think of that one?
(16:05):
Did you think of like that?
Because there's actuallya fair amount of search traffic.
Equine lawyers for horses like,are you really thinking about this?
Dog breeding is another one.
There's a decent amount of trafficfor that type of term,
and you just waste your money on stuffthat's never going to go anywhere.
So you know, and what whatever.
(16:25):
So we get these accountsthat have this set up with P max.
And like the biggest opportunityis if that's what you're
if that's all you're hearingfrom your agency, you're in a bad spot.
If all you're hearing is p max, Max, Max.
Next. Max.
And you don't have really, really,really good conversion
down the funnel like youryour conversion offline from a higher
(16:48):
isn't going back into Google,which I've never seen a client do that.
We don't even have enough data.
It's their own to do that.
It's not going to it's not goingto be optimizing for the right things.
You're just going to waste a ton of money.
And like, not only from like, what'slogged in, but from how it's optimized.
And if you're hearingyou're hearing a lot of details and
you're like, I don't know where to start,you're hearing from your agency that
(17:10):
you just do p max, you have a problem.
Yeah, I think that Google created to bethe easy button.
Is is it's very easy.
Any business ownercan just set up a p max campaign.
That's why we make fun of it.
So you have ad agenciesthat, like push this crap.
That's their primary tactic.
It's like the businessowner could have set that up.
(17:32):
Like they don't need you.
Yeah, I push button, push button,waste budget.
Yeah.
That's wild to think about.
It's so the opposite of that rightis our approach.
We're in the weeds.
We're looking at every single word.
Just to go even deeper, James,there's the ideology around,
like guarding our campaignsfrom a even an intricate
(17:56):
individual word standpoint.
Can you talk to us a little bitabout that?
Yeah. For sure.
So, obviously, if you're building outyour campaign structure really well,
you should have a specific ad groupsfor different, services and sub services.
Right.
So you might have a divorce, campaignthat has an ad for mediation
and then an ad group for contested.
(18:19):
If you're not doing a good jobwith negative keywords, then at the ad
group level, what can sometimes happenis the mediation and contested divorce.
Keywordsor search terms are actually going
to a whole different groupthat you have in there.
Maybe it's just divorce lawyer,you know, location.
So by having the exclusionsat the ad group level,
you can make sure the right keywordsand right searches are going to the
(18:41):
best advocate possible.
And the advantage is there is that you cangive them a much better experience.
Right.
So then the ad creative matcheswhat the keyword intent is supposed to be.
They're not, you know,looking for divorce mediation but are now
seeing contested divorce language like,well, that's not what I wanted anyways.
You know, you can really kind of,you know, take that stuff into account
to make sure that you'recontrolling the experience
(19:02):
all the way throughif you're not being careful there.
Again, I'm sorry to keep,you know, talking about Google here,
but Google will take libertiesand kind of decide where to potentially
show, your ads based off of,the keywords you're targeting.
And sometimeseven though you're targeting that keyword
in a separate ad here,but some might show to the wrong one.
So it's again, it's kind of ourapproach is we we would rather be really
(19:22):
tight in terms of our exclusionsand negative keyword strategy.
That way we can ensure if somebody'ssearching for a specific search,
they're getting ad creativerelated to that specific search,
and they're getting a landing page that'sthen specific to that search as well.
A good a good way to like, think aboutkind of what we just talked about.
And then the first conversationI, we had about themes is like
your themes are essentially like if,if your business
(19:45):
if your paid search account is a castle,the themes are the moat around it.
Like, I don't want any of that crapcoming in at all.
But then there's like a couple,there's like one way in and like,
you want to make sure you'redirecting traffic.
Well, and like the ad group accountsare how you like, make sure you don't
fall off the bridge into the moat, like,which is what you don't want to do.
(20:05):
Right?
Because that's where the all the sharkswith laser beams on their heads
are sittingover your budgets getting wasted.
So, you know, that'sa that's a good way to think about it.
Like, you need both.
You need the moat around yourself,and then you need kind of the precision
within thewithin the account to get the places to or
you get the traffic to the right places.
So you match creative, message.
(20:29):
Holy cow, guys,it sounds like there's a right way
to do this and a wrong way to do this.
And it's so easy to get caught up inand all of the intricacies
and dials and buttons in the backend of an ad account.
And so if you're listening to thisand you're as overwhelmed as I am,
please reach out to our team.
We have an incredible team of expertsthat that lives in this stuff,
(20:51):
and they do an amazing job.
And as you heard today, the,level of expertise needs to be high.
We're talking about the opportunityto save real money,
when building a strong family law firm,that is going to allow you
to reinvest those dollarsback into to your future growth.
Gentlemen,really appreciate the summary today.
(21:11):
I appreciate the opportunity to connect.
If you found this episode valuable,then you will love our next
episode on specific keyword categories.
How to structure your ad strategyto attract high quality family leads.
Click the link to check that episode outand we will see you there.
it addsup really fast. And it's a ton of budget.
(00:02):
So soon as we got rid of them,we saw a reduction of our cost per lead,
and we could reallocate that budgetto go after stuff that worked
instead of like all thisrandom garbage.
I am Tyler Dolph,CEO of Rocket Clicks,
a full service digital marketing firmthat focuses exclusively with family
law firms and helping themgrow their firms, attract
(00:23):
more clients and convert more leads.
Joining me today is Anthony Carlsand James Patterson.
Anthony is our president hereat Rocket Clicks
and also the co-founder of our law firm,Sterling Lawyers,
which now has 32 attorneysand, over 25
offices across Wisconsin and Illinois.
(00:46):
He brings a wealth of leadershipexperience, and we're very happy
to have him.
And, along with Anthony,we have James Patterson.
James is our revenue operations directorand our paid media expert here.
Ryan Clicks.
He's worked on hundreds of law firms.
He's been in the weeds.
He's managed people, doneall of the things to help law firms grow.
(01:09):
And, we are very excited to have youboth on the episode today.
Okay. We're going to diveinto negative keywords.
One of the most overlooked yetpowerful tools in Google Ads and Bing ads.
Hopefully you walk awayknowing how to protect your
ad budgetand attract only those leads that matter.
(01:31):
Guys, appreciate you being here.
We are continuing our seriesin the paid ads
category and a big, big subjecttoday is negative keywords.
And being a novice myself,when I started, here in this business,
we talked a little bit about the,the importance
of negative keywords, like all whywhy would I want to use name keywords?
(01:55):
And, it's evolvedobviously a lot over the last few years.
But, James, we take overa lot of accounts, new law firm clients,
and I feel like I'm always hearingabout the wasted spend in these accounts.
Tell us a little bitabout the reason for this waste, and why
negative keywords are such a necessityfor failing law firms.
(02:18):
Yeah.
Negative keywordlists or even just negative keywords.
Added specifically at the campaignand ad group level, where it makes sense
as a huge miss by a lot of,Google Ads accounts out there.
A lot of times when we take over, new,new, clients and we're taking a look
at kind of how things are set upand doing our initial auditing.
(02:38):
This is one of the first placesthat we'll look.
Unfortunately for the past agency,it's always, really, unfortunate,
presentation, to,to show the, the client where they've,
mismanaged their spend and, and,spend a decent amount of dollars on
maybe services that they don't actually door just, quite frankly, junk
that's irrelevantto their business at all.
(02:59):
So we really thinknegative keywords are critical
to having a good paying media strategy.
Especially as you know,Google's got a business model too, right?
Like they they want advertisersto spend hours there.
There's all kinds of searchesthat are going on constantly
that Google might matchwith a keyword that you're targeting.
If you're not using negative keyword listsproperly, you're gonna like Google,
(03:20):
run the runthe show there and decide when and where
to show your ads all over the place.
And what we finda lot of times is a ton of wasted spend.
But I thought Google was the authority,James.
I thought we should just blindlytrust them.
You know, turns out, you know,there might be some better ways to do it.
There's, you know,we want to want to maybe at times test out
some of those new features.
(03:41):
But, jumping fully into the deepend is not something we ever advise
in terms of Google's,preference of how ad accounts are set up.
We totally agree.
So now I knowyou built the very first ad account
at Sterling when,you were building the law firm over there.
Any perspective,that you saw over the years
through the use of negative keywords,as a as an opportunity to reduce waste,
(04:02):
you know, it's like, as a business owner,you're always looking for ways to
to make more money.
Well, one way you could dothat is by increasing prices.
Another way you can dothat is by reducing expenses.
Right.
And wasting spend is is an expense.
We I mean, we've prior to the lawfirm, prior opening a law firm,
(04:24):
I had a lot of experience of paid search.
It's kind of howI was brought into marketing.
So we knew right awaykind of how to think about this.
And I would say,you know, we didn't we didn't absorb
a whole bunch of costs up frontthat we couldn't
really learn anything from,because we were targeting the right stuff.
(04:48):
So, like, there's a lot of,you know, when you use some of Google's
suggestion tools,like they're going to tell you
if you're in MenomoneeFalls, that you should
that I'm a nominee, falls lawyer.
The long tail version of thatis that's lawyer for any type of lawyer.
And like we've seen queries in therethat are like equine lawyer, dog lawyers,
cat lawyers, all kinds of nonsense thatyou really don't want those leads
(05:12):
calling you or going to your websiteand like telling Google that this is
this is something relevantthat Google is not going to like,
highlight it because you don't.
One of the problems in these ad accountsis they're small,
so you don't get most of the data,because Google will only show you
a certain percentage of the data,and the rest of it's just hidden.
So beingattentive to your search for reports
(05:33):
and then trying to like, surmisewhen you're seeing weird things in there,
what what theme or what categoryam I not really thinking about?
And I'm likejust letting a bunch of stuff bleed in.
So there's a lot of thingsthat we we really did, and a lot of it
(05:54):
from a certain perspective.
That I built obviously building right.
The first time is, is optimal.
But I'm assuming a lot of our listenershave explored paid advertising
and, are hearing us and, you know,what's this negative keyword thing?
So, James,if I'm building a negative keyword list,
do I just put a bunch of wordsthat I don't think
are relevant in this listor talk to us, more about how this works?
(06:18):
Yeah.
The the way that we phrases iswe like to think in themes, not just terms
is is really our, our ideology on it.
So yeah, when you think about an accountand all the potential searches
that could exist,you might find yourself
with this massive listof different keywords
that you want to check out.
The problem with thatis that you don't really know if,
you know, maybe a specific campaignyou're running would maybe
(06:40):
want to have one of those searchesif you're going to have a conflict there.
The the management side of making surethat the right keywords are in there
as the as the list expands and scalesover the course of time as you launch
new campaigns and, you know, get more dataand more search terms, reports
and review and things like that,you know,
what you're going to find yourselfis with this massive,
really unmanageable list,if you start early with categorizing
(07:01):
the different types of termsthat you want to block
and tackle outside of your campaigns,you're going to have a much better time
in the future.
And the beauty of that approach as wellis as you're defining those different
themes, you can then start to,you know, specifically know
where to put these search terms.
So it just creates an entirely moremanageable, you know, approach to it.
(07:22):
I think, I know Tony'shad a lot of experience with this as well.
One of the things we dolike to block out our common names
and, one of the funny thingsthat we'll see sometimes if we're bidding
on, brand terms and we do want to target,like, a specific attorney's name,
we might be blocking, you know, the nameJames Johnson or something, right?
And then, lo and behold,we hire a guy named James Johnson.
(07:43):
Right.
Well, up until that point,we could be bidding for this random person
wasting dollars that are potentially.
But then also, as soon as we dohave somebody like that
come in, we can easily referencethat list.
It's not like, oh crap, you know,let's pull this massive list
and try and figure out what's blockingthis campaign from serving.
We can very easily know, oh,we got that names list.
That's where it's happening. Boom.
You know, it's it's a lot better that way.
(08:04):
So it's both better from, like managementlong term to organizing themes
as well as just like beingreally efficient in terms of, you know,
activating those lists to block and tacklethings that aren't relevant to.
And so just so I'm clear,if I'm searching for James Jones
and he's on ourkeyword list and he's he's a celebrity
(08:24):
or a Packer wide receiver or whatever,he's going to come up,
our ads are going to come up,we're going to spend money on that
ad Yeah.
Google if anybody's search is James Jones,I want to be there.
The more you likely use caseTyler is you're bidding on the term
divorce lawyer in a phrase match.
(08:47):
And then James Jonesgoing through a divorce.
And the query is actually going to beJames Jones divorce lawyer,
which is a, a,what would you call it,
more voyeuristic type search querybecause they're just curious
about what's happening in that divorce.
They're never going to convert.
(09:08):
But you're going to show your ad thatnow the user thinks
you relevant for the James Jones divorce,and you're not at all.
So we see a ton of that, both.
The other thing we'll see islawyer like lawyer name.
So we'll see this in the celebrity side.
And then we'll see with thiswith a lawyer name side.
So a lot of people, a lot of usersonline will use Google as a phonebook.
(09:33):
And they'll type in an attorney.
They think they knowbut they don't know their number.
So they'll type in.
James Patterson, divorcelawyer, Menomonee Falls,
and then they'll just callwhoever's ads are showing up.
And if they don't,if they if if James Patterson
doesn't work at your firm,guess what the caller does.
They hang up when they call the next one,but they clicked on your ad.
(09:55):
You've spent $32 now, and you'reprobably not going to get that search
query report that says you spent $35on this really obscure keyword.
That isn't going to matter.
So like, you have these like deathby a million cuts in these accounts that
because you don't get all the dataand you haven't thought and keyword
themes, you just waste a ton of money,you don't know where it's being wasted.
(10:19):
think we hear all thetime, our clients will come in and say,
yeah, I tried.
Paid search didn't work. Not for me.
My assumption is that a lot of the timesthey weren't doing this, the right way,
because it can be a great accelerantfor law firms.
We've seen it at our own firmand many of our clients firms.
But it's got to be done the right way.
(10:39):
Yeah. Theyeah I was going to say
that the other thing to just,you know, put out there for you know law
firm owners that have had bad experienceswith, with these types of things.
Google is increasingly expanding its,match,
you know, availability of search term.
So like even 2 or 3 years ago,if you were targeting an exact keyword,
(11:00):
you for the most part, you know,98% of the time are only going to serve
ads exactly.
For that keyword you're targetingexactly how it's typed now here in 2025.
It is not that way at all.
There's all kinds of what they call closevariants.
And it's Google again,kind of taking liberties
in terms of, well, that advertiser'slooking for this keyword.
We think this is pretty close to Tony'spoint with the specific attorney
(11:23):
who doesn't work here,but it has a divorce lawyer in the name.
So there's there's libertiesbeing taken that way too.
So that reallythe only way you can catch that, you know,
proactively versusreactively is to have a really good
negative keyword list organized by themes,kind of at the forefront.
There.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, whenwe originally implemented this
because we didn'twe didn't do this right away
(11:43):
at Sterling with the name.
So something like we saw in the first,you know, probably call it six months.
And I'm like, man,I hate doing these search reports
with all these stupid names. Like,who are all these people?
And then I started noticing, like,Alex Rodriguez went through divorce
and I'm like,why don't we show for that query?
And there was like a bunch of namesand I started looking names up.
I'm like, oh, those arethose are our competitors.
(12:05):
Like those are thethose are the attorneys in town.
And I'm like, perfect.
All of these cost melike 35 to $50 a click
and like it adds up really fast.
And it's a ton of budget.
So soon as we got rid of them,we saw a reduction of our cost per lead,
and we could reallocate that budgetto go after stuff that worked
instead of like all this random garbage.
(12:28):
That's so it's so important.
It's so overlooked.
It's the boring work on a paidsearch account, honestly.
But, you know, just like a great footballteam, you need a good line
and they're going to do the boring, dirtywork.
And like, this is the boring, dirtywork in a paid search account.
And so there's, like, an actual reportthat shows you every term
you're bidding on is how we use.
Yeah, yeah. The search term reports.
(12:50):
That'sgoing to be your best friend in terms of
especially after you start buildingyour your list, hopefully up front
as you add to it and, you know,maybe test out different campaigns
and targeting different keywords,continuously looking at your search terms
report is going to be really massiveto keeping those lists really
well maintained and added to,as you know, search behaviors change
and things like that.
(13:11):
So you can block out a significant amountjust by, you know,
kind of doing the basics upfront,but you're going to want to be looking
at your search terms reportsto some frequency.
It's going to kind of depend on, you know,what's the level of spend
you have in there. What's the,the scale of the number of keywords
you're targeting, things like that.
Are you using primarilyexact and phrase match,
which is what, you know,we generally recommend with clients?
(13:33):
Or are you primarily using broad matchthat's going to, you know, significantly
impact the amount of search termsthat you may be looking at?
But definitely working with your teamor agency to be looking at search
terms regularly is definitely reallycritical to.
Great.
I've got all these awesome keyword lists.
I'm feeling good.
We're walking tackle.
No, it's going to overthe course of time is again,
(13:54):
Google takes different libertieswith these close variants.
And so there's going to be new stuffthat you're going
to want to be continuously adding.
The flip side to this, and we're talkinga lot about exclusion and cost savings.
There's also potentially opportunitiesin the search term report as well.
Is there maybe a keywordwe shouldn't be targeting?
Build out a.
Net new campaign where we can make,you know, the ad creative and landing page
more specific to it.
So it kind of works on two fronts.
(14:15):
Both, you know, maybe potentialopportunities as well as cost savings.
Model.
And, you know, I'm listening.
I'm hearing you guys talk aboutI live in this like,
you know, every daywith you guys and I'm overwhelmed.
I'm like,there's so much here that has to be done.
How what advice can you give to a law firmowner who's listening in this?
Who's as overwhelmed as I am?
(14:36):
My name is. It's simply like,find an expert.
Or are there little stepsthat they can take
to to refine their list a little bitand save some money?
James, you want to rant about,make sure you want me to.
You know, I was given p max a tough timein their last revenue roadmap.
So I think, I think it's time for you,Tony, to, to lead the
(14:59):
We we get a lot of accountswhere primarily all the budget and spend
is being done on Pemex,and it's what this new.
Yeah, it's it's called performance maxbut basically gives Google
ultimate libertyto do whatever Google thinks is right.
And it's where we see them most basedall over the place because they will.
(15:21):
If you're a divorce lawyer, they're goingto bet on things like divorce.
That's going to bring in a wholebunch of random queries,
because divorce is a very broad term.
And if you look at all the variantsthat have a divorce in it, lawyer
is one of them,but it's one of like 200, 300,000.
And most of them,they're not going to convert for you.
So same thing with lawyerlike lawyer will be part of that group.
(15:45):
And there are tons of differenttypes of lawyers that people search for.
Like that's why we havewe literally have a list of different
law types that we do negatives forbecause that crap got into our account.
So and it's not just like the big ones,like the big obvious ones
are for your family firm.
Get rid of personal injury.
But did you think of that one?
(16:05):
Did you think of like that?
Because there's actuallya fair amount of search traffic.
Equine lawyers for horses like,are you really thinking about this?
Dog breeding is another one.
There's a decent amount of trafficfor that type of term,
and you just waste your money on stuffthat's never going to go anywhere.
So you know, and what whatever.
(16:25):
So we get these accountsthat have this set up with P max.
And like the biggest opportunityis if that's what you're
if that's all you're hearingfrom your agency, you're in a bad spot.
If all you're hearing is p max, Max, Max.
Next. Max.
And you don't have really, really,really good conversion
down the funnel like youryour conversion offline from a higher
(16:48):
isn't going back into Google,which I've never seen a client do that.
We don't even have enough data.
It's their own to do that.
It's not going to it's not goingto be optimizing for the right things.
You're just going to waste a ton of money.
And like, not only from like, what'slogged in, but from how it's optimized.
And if you're hearingyou're hearing a lot of details and
you're like, I don't know where to start,you're hearing from your agency that
(17:10):
you just do p max, you have a problem.
Yeah, I think that Google created to bethe easy button.
Is is it's very easy.
Any business ownercan just set up a p max campaign.
That's why we make fun of it.
So you have ad agenciesthat, like push this crap.
That's their primary tactic.
It's like the businessowner could have set that up.
(17:32):
Like they don't need you.
Yeah, I push button, push button,waste budget.
Yeah.
That's wild to think about.
It's so the opposite of that rightis our approach.
We're in the weeds.
We're looking at every single word.
Just to go even deeper, James,there's the ideology around,
like guarding our campaignsfrom a even an intricate
(17:56):
individual word standpoint.
Can you talk to us a little bitabout that?
Yeah. For sure.
So, obviously, if you're building outyour campaign structure really well,
you should have a specific ad groupsfor different, services and sub services.
Right.
So you might have a divorce, campaignthat has an ad for mediation
and then an ad group for contested.
(18:19):
If you're not doing a good jobwith negative keywords, then at the ad
group level, what can sometimes happenis the mediation and contested divorce.
Keywordsor search terms are actually going
to a whole different groupthat you have in there.
Maybe it's just divorce lawyer,you know, location.
So by having the exclusionsat the ad group level,
you can make sure the right keywordsand right searches are going to the
(18:41):
best advocate possible.
And the advantage is there is that you cangive them a much better experience.
Right.
So then the ad creative matcheswhat the keyword intent is supposed to be.
They're not, you know,looking for divorce mediation but are now
seeing contested divorce language like,well, that's not what I wanted anyways.
You know, you can really kind of,you know, take that stuff into account
to make sure that you'recontrolling the experience
(19:02):
all the way throughif you're not being careful there.
Again, I'm sorry to keep,you know, talking about Google here,
but Google will take libertiesand kind of decide where to potentially
show, your ads based off of,the keywords you're targeting.
And sometimeseven though you're targeting that keyword
in a separate ad here,but some might show to the wrong one.
So it's again, it's kind of ourapproach is we we would rather be really
(19:22):
tight in terms of our exclusionsand negative keyword strategy.
That way we can ensure if somebody'ssearching for a specific search,
they're getting ad creativerelated to that specific search,
and they're getting a landing page that'sthen specific to that search as well.
A good a good way to like, think aboutkind of what we just talked about.
And then the first conversationI, we had about themes is like
your themes are essentially like if,if your business
(19:45):
if your paid search account is a castle,the themes are the moat around it.
Like, I don't want any of that crapcoming in at all.
But then there's like a couple,there's like one way in and like,
you want to make sure you'redirecting traffic.
Well, and like the ad group accountsare how you like, make sure you don't
fall off the bridge into the moat, like,which is what you don't want to do.
(20:05):
Right?
Because that's where the all the sharkswith laser beams on their heads
are sittingover your budgets getting wasted.
So, you know, that'sa that's a good way to think about it.
Like, you need both.
You need the moat around yourself,and then you need kind of the precision
within thewithin the account to get the places to or
you get the traffic to the right places.
So you match creative, message.
(20:29):
Holy cow, guys,it sounds like there's a right way
to do this and a wrong way to do this.
And it's so easy to get caught up inand all of the intricacies
and dials and buttons in the backend of an ad account.
And so if you're listening to thisand you're as overwhelmed as I am,
please reach out to our team.
We have an incredible team of expertsthat that lives in this stuff,
(20:51):
and they do an amazing job.
And as you heard today, the,level of expertise needs to be high.
We're talking about the opportunityto save real money,
when building a strong family law firm,that is going to allow you
to reinvest those dollarsback into to your future growth.
Gentlemen,really appreciate the summary today.
(21:11):
I appreciate the opportunity to connect.
If you found this episode valuable,then you will love our next
episode on specific keyword categories.
How to structure your ad strategyto attract high quality family leads.
Click the link to check that episode outand we will see you there.
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