Yelp Negative Keyword Targeting | What Every Lawyer Needs to Know

If you’re a lawyer who’s running a Yelp advertising campaign, you need to stop what you’re doing and read this article. There’s a new option that allows “negative keyword targeting” – the ability to choose what words you don’t want to spend money on. You may think that doesn’t sound groundbreaking, but you’d be wrong. Dead wrong. Why is this critical for Yelp advertisers? Well read on to see how this will change your entire execution of Yelp ads.

What is Negative Keyword Targeting?

Negative keyword targeting was born from pay-per-click advertising (PPC), or the ability to pay for search phrases you’d want to appear for in a search. In most PPC platforms, like Google, Bing and Yelp you’re usually paying to be found for specific searches and related searches (synonyms and phrase variations). The problem is that sometimes those related searches aren’t really what you do, or for one reason or another you don’t want to spend advertising dollars pursuing that traffic. For example in California, most personal injury lawyers don’t want to pursue medical malpractice cases due to MICRA, case complexity, litigation costs etc. Unfortunately most PPC platforms recognize “medical malpractice lawyer” as a related search to “personal injury lawyer” and you’d be grouped in by default. The same goes for estate planning lawyers who don’t do probate, business litigation firms that don’t do simple incorporations… you get the picture.

You Can Now Choose What Words You Don’t Want to Spend Money On in Yelp

Part of a lot of lawyer’s gripes about Yelp advertising is that they spend money to be found, but they’re also visible for phrases that have nothing to do with their practice. This leads to “budget burn” on non-productive advertising. Additionally, they have to incur the overhead cost of administering incoming leads that they can’t work with, and often the added hassle of sending out non-engagement letters to potential clients they’ve turned down.

Take a look at the screenshot below of the default search phrases that Everest Legal Marketing recently customized for a personal injury client. Just by being in the “Personal Injury Law” category, you’d also be potentially running an ad for the following searches by default:

Bankruptcy attorney
Business law
Criminal defense lawyer
Wrongful termination lawyer
Workers’ Compensation lawyer
Traffic lawyer
Small claims lawyer
Real estate attorney
Medical malpractice lawyer
Mediators
Landlord tenant lawyer
Living trust attorney
Immigration lawyer
Family law attorney
Eviction lawyer
Estate planning lawyer
Employment lawyer
DUI lawyer
Disability lawyer
Divorce attorney
Civil attorney
Car accident lawyer
Law firms
Lawyers

In my opinion there’s only a few of those “related phrases” that the average personal injury law firm would want to pay to be found for. Having a background in Yellow Pages and legal directories, I can’t help but think to myself that it’s a wonder how those originally got grouped together in the first place. Most likely it’s because Yelp was not set up as a legal directory which would have had significantly different practice categories… I mean if you’re hungry for a sandwich you might want a burger – It makes sense for restaurants and entertainment.

What to do Now

Yelp is currently testing negative keyword targeting with approved Ad Partner Agencies only, like Everest Legal Marketing. This means that if you want to add negative keywords into your campaign, you’d need to work with an Agency for the time being until Yelp decides to roll this out to all advertisers (if they do at all). Working with an Agency opens a lot of doors and adds a lot more benefits to the average Yelp advertiser like:

Advanced reporting
Geographic competitive analysis
More strategic ad implementation and campaign goals
Agency-only promotions

There are some restrictions and caveats on setting up an Agency relationship, so contact us if you’d like to discuss this further. In the quest to be as transparent as possible, all Yelp campaigns managed by Everest Legal Marketing are a flat $100/mo. This fee helps us offset the costs of administration, reporting, campaign modifications and other overhead costs. However, many Yelp advertisers may find that this amount (or more) is saved every month by preventing ad-bids on non-productive search phrases.