The Sterling Family Law Show

Law Firm Keyword Research Mistakes Are Killing Your ROI - #173

• Jeff Sterling Hughes

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Stop wasting money on research keywords. Learn the intent-based system that converts clicks to funded cases using proven conversion data.


Family law firms waste budget on research intent when purchasing keywords convert 3X better. The constraint isn't spend—it's intent precision. This framework reveals which keywords fund cases versus which bleed your Google Ads budget on tire-kickers who aren't ready to hire.


We break down the exact keyword intent categories, match type strategy, and conversion optimization that transformed Sterling's paid search for lawyers into a predictable client acquisition system. 


Learn why phrase match vs broad match matters, how attorney keyword targeting differs from lawyer keywords, and the geographic targeting framework that stops wasted clicks in this episode.


📲 Subscribe Now: https://www.youtube.com/@karls.anthony

📝 Schedule a FREE Family Law Firm Audit: https://rocketclicks.com/schedule-a-family-law-quick-audit/ 


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📄 CHAPTERS  


0:00 - Law Firm PPC Keywords: Why Clicks Don't Equal Cases 

1:20 - The 5 Critical Keyword Research Principles for Family Law Firms

3:08 - Purchasing vs Research vs Core Intent: The Conversion Hierarchy 

6:11 - Why Most Agencies Over-Index on Research Keywords 

10:48 - Geographic Keyword Targeting Strategy That Actually Converts 

15:03 - Understanding Google Ads Keyword Data Limitations 

19:35 - Lawyer vs Attorney: The Conversion Rate Difference 

23:23 - Phrase Match vs Broad Match: Control Your Paid Search Spend


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If your Google Ads are generating clicks but not cases. The problem is not your budget. It's your keywords. Welcome back to the Sterling Family Law Show. I am your host, Tyler Dolph. I'm also the CEO of our hyper focused law firm only digital marketing agency called Rocket Clicks that was born out of our own law firm, Sterling Lawyers, that has grown to over 27 attorneys. Today on the show, we are diving into paid advertising for family law firms. We have the co-founder of our law firm, Tony Karls, as well as the head of our digital advertising, team, James Patterson, with us today. And we take a deep dive into keywords and the five things that family lawyers should think about as they're building out their paid advertising keywords. Gentlemen, we are back doing our deep dive of advertising for family law firms. And today we're going to focus on keyword research and kind of the five key points that every family law firm should think about as they're going through their keyword research process. We have our experts back in the room. And, James, we're going to start, number one with the services you actually sell, right? If you're a family law firm, you probably shouldn't be doing keyword research on personal injury or bankruptcy. Stay focus. absolutely. Yeah. You know, it almost goes without saying for sure, Tyler, but, you know, from time to time you will see accounts, that were built, with basically a spray and parade type strategy is the way I like to, to call it is just put kind of a little bit of everything in there. It's somewhat relevant to my business. So let's see if it works. You know, perhaps testing is an opportunity at times, but we really feel like you're going to want to build your your account strategy based off of the actual services that you sell. And, knowing those really important keyword variations that then can help you in, matching keyword intent with where the user is in the sale, and their sales journey to then building out your account and all of those different intents of those different services that you are selling. You can see different, search volume for that. So you can kind of understand what you can expect from impressions and, and things like that. Even some, basic auction type, insights you can get like a general top of page bid rate and stuff like that, primary tool that we like to use for that one, is, Google Ads keyword Planner tool. You can also use SEMrush if you're more on the SEO side. We're looking at keyword research. So so a lot of times when you're thinking about building out a brand new account, what you're going to want to do is kind of understand where the keyword you want to target. Definitely want to start with, keywords for, services. You actually. So definitely a pro tip there. And you're going to want to understand what the search volume is there as well, because obviously as you build that out and we've talked about an revenue roadmap in the past, campaign structure and things like that. Depending on the keywords that you target based off the services you sell, you will have some potential limitations in search volume. So then, budget allocation and things like that are going to have some, considerations that you will be mindful of. But ultimately great place to start. Go to Keyword Planner and Google Ads or SEMrush. Start playing around. Start with the services you sell and kind of go from there and understanding what's what's kind of the average search volume for these different keywords throughout. You know, the online world. James, what is it? What are the the intent categories that we we typically talk about? I know this probably been it's probably been a different in a different episode. We probably talked about this more specifically and like where where are some of the mistakes typically made like we're where we're seeing, over indexation and kind of buckets that matter less versus buckets that are more impactful. It's like, what are those buckets? And then where do we typically see the problem? Yeah. So, so the biggest one that like at a minimum, you know, every, every law firm should be having these keywords in your account are purchasing keywords. So that's going to be, you know, divorce lawyer near me, divorce lawyer. And then some type of geo variation. A lot of times, you know, people looking for specific, you know, highly ranked, lawyers. So top, you know, top rated lawyers, best lawyers in your meet, those types of searches or somebody really showing the signal of an intent that like, hey, I'm, I'm looking to get somebody, like, now, you know, not goofing around, whereas, a core type, intent, which is kind of somewhere in the middle, right, is somebody is looking for a divorce lawyer as their search. There's a lot more search volume for that because obviously it's a more general, search with more general intent that way. So as a result, you're going to typically see obviously less conversion and lower quality conversions coming from those types of keywords. And then probably the next biggest bucket. And where I think a lot of, accounts goof up in this area is research intent type searches, because there's a ton of search volume for that. Obviously it's how a lot of people, if you think about, you know, yourself as a consumer, start in this research phase when they're thinking about potentially moving forward. You can spend a lot of dollars, getting ads in front of people that are in that research phase that aren't ready to work with you, and you're still going to pay for that. Click to your ad. Right. So, it's not to say you can't have success with that strategy, but in terms of to Tony, your question of like where we look at prioritizing, you know, get in front of those people that are already putting their hand up and saying, hey, look, I'm, I'm ready to go. Past that research search, I would like to work with a lawyer for the best ones in my area. Let's go. So that that's really the way that we, look at the structure, those kind of bigger groups. That way. If, I mean, if I'm a, if you're a, lawyer listening to this episode and you're running your own practice, if you have an advertising company working with you and you're hearing a lot of things like, p max and, more broad, broad based, search terminology, but we're not talking specifics. You you're probably over indexing, this research bucket. And then you probably also have the belief that paid search doesn't work because it doesn't work when you have it run poorly. And a lot of these services will be very cheap. If you're paying $500 a month for your paid search advertising, I can almost guarantee you you're running one of those research oriented, kind of lazy campaign setups that are not going to work, in your view, and you're going to think paid search doesn't work. I don't know why anybody does this. I'm not sure how the firm XYZ can afford this. This is all garbage. Yep. The strategy implemented is garbage, so I don't know if there's any other, like, things that are, attorney owners that are, listening could like, listen for from their, from their agency contact and like how to identify like am I getting this versus like having to figure out how to deconstruct a campaign structure on their own. Like what are some things that they can listen for? I mean, for my opinion, it is it is extremely difficult to run an effective agency if you're only charging your clients 500,015 hundred. It's. You don't you can't afford the right staff and, the right staff to implement the right strategy. So if you're a small law firm and you can't afford, you know, an expensive agency, I think try to implement some of these on your own. But if you do have, an agency and they are struggling, it might be, simply they they have too many clients. They're trying to fit. Yeah. I don't know if there's anything else, Jim, that you would want to highlight that they're going to hear from their agency partner. Yeah. So, a lot of times to when we think about, like, what are the these kind of black box solutions that Google is rolling out for agencies or even business owners that want to try themselves? Like what are the biggest pitfalls there? Well, obviously lack of visibility and targeting is a major piece to it because you're not really you're not really sure where you're going to get the ad placements and ad buys for either search ads or across different placements like display or YouTube and things like that. So my biggest pro tip, honestly, when it, when it comes to this is it's like you're kind of in that range too, where you're aware of your account set up with this really low budget. But you are seeing some, you know, results and things like that. But you're just curious, like, are these really going to be helping me drive revenue or my is my agency just spinning, you know, platform, metrics at me? All the time in our meetings and things like that, is have them pull search terms report because a lot of what we're talking about right here in terms of intent, you can learn a lot and expose a lot and where the strategy has gaps today. So, p max, if we were to inherit an account, for any that's running p max and look through a search term during, expect a ton of brand search in there, which certainly can be effective. We our our strategic recommendation is you pull that out to a separate campaign. So we want to control spend there. Right. Next up you're going to see a lot of these core type intents that I talked about previously. So you'll just see like divorce lawyer or even worse, sometimes just a lawyer. Right. And so I think there's a funny story. We, audited account here one time and we saw, like, equestrian lawyer or something. So, so a horse is that lawyer, showing up in there? So it's like there's all these different examples where if you're not, being really mindful of the keywords or targeting in the match types you're using, you're probably, you know, spending some dollars on things that are very possibly not relevant to your business at all. Search terms reports can be, one of the best ways to really get a quick, quick understanding of where are my dollars going, because the keywords itself, that's really the important thing to know is the keywords that the campaigns are targeting. Of course, that's what, Google is going after, but the search terms that then are eligible to serve on that keyword is the real story. So you could be targeting divorce lawyer as a broad keyword, and you could be seeing potentially just the lawyer and things like that going and getting clicks. Or like I said, hopefully not force lawyers or something really ridiculous. But, you know, the true story is going to be found in the search terms report. Awesome. Hey friends, Amazon.com is loaded with theory books on how to grow a law firm, but if you want the real stuff on how to actually grow a family law firm from 0 to 17 million plus, check out my partner Toni Karl's book where he shares and detail our actual growth blueprint that we still use today. His book is called The Waterfall Method. The link is in the show notes below, and if you order before the end of October, you will get free shipping. All right. I want to get us back to our list. The second, you know, item we have here is mapping out your client's real life problems. And because we think about everything and not by platform, but more holistically, this this is maybe more beneficial on kind of the content or SEO side of the fence. But. And how do we use it? In the paid side, James. Yeah. So like we're talking about I mean, it's not to say that these, you know, longer tail keywords or research based keywords are ineffective completely in a paid media campaign. Totally not sure they can be extremely effective. In fact, what the problem that a lot of clients run into is, well, in terms of budget allocation, you want to maximize on those higher intent keywords first. Once you've, you know, fully maximize your visibility and reach on on coverage of those keywords you want to keep kind of going down your list until you land at this phase of the funnel. The second piece here is like, again, there's a lot of search volume. And so you're going to probably see a decent amount of impressions and clicks, even potentially. But it's that landing page that's going to be a big piece here is if you don't have a landing page that's strategically built to, you know, address the research based questions that are coming in for that keyword and then also have a very good, conversion rate optimized page that's then going to push that person into the right, either lead magnet opportunity to get into an a nurturing journey or some, some form of conversion flow. What you're going to end up doing is pushing these people to a landing page that's developed for those folks that are like divorce lawyer and or me, I'm ready to go. And there you go. What the hell is this? This not answering my questions. I'm out. But unfortunately for you, you already paid for that. Click there. So it's like that. That's the big distinction, I think, between these these longer tail research based keywords is of course you can do it. You're not going to want to start here. And it's going to require a different strategy than those higher intent keywords that are a little bit more valuable, more transaction based. Yeah I think you hit the nail on the head there with like the it can drive traffic but it's the conversion intention is going to be very different. So if you don't if you're not doing webinars or you're not doing workshops you don't have lead magnets like you know, parenting van plant templates and things like that. There are likely going to be a page that is set up to convert someone that's ready to go. And like, none of these people in the research phase are ready to go when we've done our own independent, surveys of clients that we've worked with like Sterling and asked them, like, how far in advance did you actually start researching, like, think back when you before you got divorced, how far in advance did you actually start researching all the different things you were concerned about before you called the first law firm? And the range of answer is about 18 to 36 months. So it's a really long time. They're in the research phase. So if you don't have like educational things that you can continue to give them while they're going through that you're just slamming them into a conversion page. That's like calling it a console. They're not ready to call you and get a console. They're ready to learn more information about what happens to the house. How does property division work? What what about my kids? What is what is parenting time look like? Like all of those questions they have concerns about. And like those are the opportunities that we can advance them with brand trust with us. If we do a good job on the conversion side. You know. Well said. It is a full funnel approach here. Okay. James, number three is building a root keyword list and then stacking intelligently. Right. So it's starting small, understanding what works and then building from there. Yeah. Just, you know, obviously, like, you know, kind of zooming out right on this whole idea of how do I begin keyword research, how do I kind of kick the kick the the get the ball rolling in terms of, getting my keyword lists that I'm going to want to target in my account? What this is really saying is like, you know, if this is the first account you ever run or, you know, first, I really been thinking about a content strategy on your website. Like, what type of keyword should I target? What kind of keywords should I, you know, focus on and building a page around? You're going to probably want to start with core terms first. So like, you know, baseline divorce lawyer, things like that. Like I talked about, previously, there's definitely opportunity to target those types of keywords in your paid media account, as it obviously also pertains to your website and your core service pages being really focused around those types of keywords. From there, you're going to want to kind of understand what are the different variations that I can expect in terms of intent based off of that root keyword. So, you know, tying us all back together when we're talking about, you know, campaign structure and keyword intent, right? So going from divorce lawyer to a divorce lawyer or me to top divorce lawyer to divorce lawyer, Miami, Florida, you know, so on and so forth, even going in and potentially looking at some of those, longer tail keywords and things like that, to kind of understand, like what, what does the full landscape look like and what's the search volume based off of this one keyword for all possible searches that are happening for this topic, right. So, so starting kind of with that core term first can be a good building block as it pertains to kind of trying to understand like what are all the keywords that exist out there, especially if you're newer to this? You know, type of type of project or initiative. Looking at keywords, it can be a good starting place to be like, oh, I didn't realize that there's so much search volume for divorce lawyer. I, me maybe I always thought it was just, you know, divorce lawyer and then location. And so they're there to be like little things like that that maybe you're not aware of today, that by starting with the the court term first and kind of building out from there, you can get more insight to, to to where really the bulk of searches are happening. Yeah. Super basic way to think about this is your core term is basically in the middle. And that would be the worst layer terms that would be lower down the funnel with more intent. They're going to have divorce layer plus a couple extra keywords like near me or you know, city or whatever, and then up the funnel, they're going to be how how much does a divorce lawyer cost? What questions to ask a divorce lawyer like it's going to you're going to go up the funnel and you're getting a bunch of questions up here. Those are more research oriented. So starting with that core and then kind of going up and down, it's going to be a good, good like super basic way to think about this. And if we're thinking about budgets and you right. So I'm starting a law firm I only have a few hundred bucks or maybe a couple thousand dollars to spend on ads. I'm going to stay kind of in that middle of the funnel approach. Right. Tony, would you say that You're going to want to say middle to the bottom of the funnel. That's where you're going to want to play. Because you're if that's likely where you are, you likely don't have a very strong, scale offers opportunity that you've already developed. The more developed your marketing gets, the more likely you're going to have workshops and webinars and lead magnets and all of those things. So like if you have a small budget, it's a pretty good indicator, at least from our perspective, when we see that there's not a value ladder offer. So those research terms we probably don't want to be spending a lot of time on because there's no good way to convert it yet. Yeah, I love it. Okay. Number four is a fun one, James. It is. Let the tools guide you, but not define you. It turns out that these companies, like Google, are in business to make money and not necessarily grow law firms. So how do we think about the suggestions or recommendations that, you know, these tools, give us every day? Yeah. So I mean, I think the most important thing to to recognize with these is, you know, while Google does have, you know, a massive amount of data, they're not willing to share every precise detail with us. So a lot of this stuff is sampled and estimates and things like this. Same with the SEMrush side of things. When you look at their keyword planner tool. So, you know, first things first is use this directionally. Obviously, it's a really great, place to start, the data itself in either your campaign or even, you know, from a traffic perspective, looking at Google Search Console or Google Analytics will tell you a lot in terms of what you can expect from those keywords when you start to target them. So I would just say the biggest thing here is like, look for the patterns, right? In terms of like, what are the keywords that have the most search volume or what are the keywords that you expect the highest engagement from clicks in the Serp or you know, from your paid ad and things like that? And just, you know, start there and then let the data kind of tell you the rest, because, you know, there are some certain instances where, perhaps, Google ads, you know, planner, for whatever reason, tells you a keyword has massive search volume. And, you're really excited to test it out and then you don't end up seeing the results you expect. Of course, in in all of these different channels, you know, there's there's many variables. Perhaps your ad creative needs a little bit of work or your landing page experience, things like that. So I would just say, when utilizing these tools, be mindful that they are sampled and they are estimates. One pro tip I'll give you on the Google Keyword Planner side of things especially is if you were to put in like, a full list of keywords, right? And you put in Divorce Lawyer, and then you put in divorce attorneys in that list. So to us, we're looking at those as two very different searches. Right. Like, you know, somebody who's typing in divorce lawyers, that person, that group of people that are typing in that, that, keyword search are a different number of folks that are typing in divorce attorneys. Google's just combining that. So if you actually look in the data, you'll actually see the same average monthly search volume for both of those keywords. And you look through there's there's a lot of great data in there. And like in terms of like, historical, seasonal trends and stuff like that by month. So just be mindful of that too. Is that like whereas like you might look as that being a unique keyword. Google is actually combining that. So especially if you look at forecasting and stuff, that's where you can get yourself into some trouble because you're like, oh my God, I'm going to have, you know, so much opportunity to get here and actually Google's combining some of that. But, you know, it just basically ties into what I was saying earlier, which is like, just understand that some of this stuff is sampled and not true. It's going to be a great way to get a, you know, baseline understanding of what you can expect. Then from there, as you build out the content on your site or you build out your your paid search campaign, you'll let the data tell you where there's opportunities and where you can potentially push harder. With budget and things like that. Yeah, I'd say another watch out that we were talking about earlier is if your agency or if your platform just tells you that you need to spend more money to get more, there's often lots of other things you can do. But, James, I want to double tap on something you said, because I didn't know the answer to it. Tell me why there is a difference between divorce lawyer and divorce attorney. I just think from like, you know, when you think about keywords in general, right? Like the intent there, right, is is similar, but the search itself is objectively different. Right? Like somebody is either typing in lawyer or they're typing in attorney. So really the point I was trying to make there is like you would expect, two different numbers for those two different keywords, because objectively the words are different. Now the meaning is quite similar. Right. And that's where Google is bucketing the data together. So that's the thing to be mindful of. There is just again tying back into that sampling, that Google is not going to give you that, that precision that you expect. It is going to take some, you know, leaps and bounds as well as close enough. You know, I'm not going to give you the exact breakdown for each. So just be mindful of that. In your research, I think it's important. I guess the other like another thing there, on divorce lawyer versus attorney. So lawyers typically used by non-lawyers attorney is actually more often used by attorneys. And like it's not just consumers or potential clients that are doing the search. There is oftentimes another opposing counsel trying to find such and such lawyer in an area they're going to more likely, use attorney versus lawyer. And we've when we've run really specific conversion, through the funnel on on sterling, we see a very we actually see a difference in conversion rate. Lawyer versus attorney. They're both good. But there is a difference. We believe it has more to do with the fact that there are more professionals doing searches in that attorney bucket than there are in the lawyer bucket. Yeah. And so to you to bring that back again, that's why it's you got to take the Keyword planner tool with a grain of salt, because there is going to be different intent that Google's like, yeah, close enough. It's got one of the two correct words being the same here. So we'll just roll up the data together. So being mindful of that I think is, is important because you will see different, results and data when you do target those keywords separately in your account. Yeah. There's this great, divide between entrusting everything that these large companies and platforms are saying versus maintaining some level of control. Right. And our final point is, is leveraging phrase and exact match keywords versus broad keywords, right. And broad keywords are often saying, hey, you know, take the wheel, Google, take the wheel. You decide what I'm going to bid on versus having that control of saying, no, I only want to pay when someone searches exactly this. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think broad has its place in a, in an ad account potentially. But for most law firms it's not going to make a lot of sense. There's so much great data out there in terms of like, what are the most common types of keyword searches where people are looking to, you know, work with a divorce lawyer right now. There's, you know, obviously, a lot of data in, in targeting those keywords first that you can kind of understand, based off the search terms and stuff, even what slight variations come off of those with broad, you tend to just open up the can wildly. So now you're going from you're going to have some variation still coming from these phrase and the exact match keywords that allow you to have this really great control of the intent and the exact keyword that's being searched. And now you're basically saying, well, as long as Google thinks it's somewhat close, go for it, Google. And a lot of times what we see, you know, I think Tyler, you said it previously with budget, recommendations and stuff like that. If you're running a lot of broad keywords in your account, you will almost never get rid of that limited by budget, status in your account, because Google's just going to keep pushing the the fence out more and more and more and more and more. So that's this is another reason, I mean, I think, to play devil's advocate, I think the benefit of broad at times can be like, let's say you've been running the same account and you have a very advanced strategy in there that you're really happy about and you're looking to test out, you know, are there certain keywords that maybe could perform well that we're not getting data on into our account? It can be a good way to, kind of get a general sense of like, well, maybe we could we could split out a different campaign for those or maybe try testing out some new keywords. But for the, you know, the bulk of law firms, you're going to want to really focus on phrasing the exact match first. Even from there being really mindful to the search terms you're seeing, because Google will still take liberties on those match types here in 2025. Then start looking at broad. If you're in that place where it's like, yeah, we're we're seeing really great results. We can really rely on what we get out of paid media. We're feeling good about that. Now. Let's see what what else is out there for us to, to potentially test out. allows you to go fishing right? Gentlemen love it. Appreciate your time and expertise here. Excited to continue this deep dive into paid media for family law firms. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to stay tuned. The next episode we're doing is going to be on negative keywords. So we're going to continue to dive into paid search for family law firms and the different things that you should think about. We have a whole series on this, so make sure to check it out.

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