How to land on top LSA result

[dotgal]

Is it a lot of work to get a client's LSA to show up on the 1st 3 results? Do you find that max bid needs to be a lot higher than when originally started? Do you manually set a bid or allow Google to determine a max bid? If you allow Google to control, what's the best way to not exceed budget?

 

[Matt Casady]

Is it a lot of work to get a client's LSA to show up on the 1st 3 results?

This varies a lot by vertical and geographic market. If the client is in a competitive vertical like personal injury law and has half as many reviews as their competition it's going to be difficult to compete.

Do you find that max bid needs to be a lot higher than when originally started?

I'm not sure what you mean by this.

Do you manually set a bid or allow Google to determine a max bid? If you allow Google to control, what's the best way to not exceed budget?

I test both mode bid modes for clients and stick with the one that performs best for their individual account. Even if you allow Google to set the bids Google will not exceed the monthly max budget you set.

 

[dotgal]

This varies a lot by vertical and geographic market. If the client is in a competitive vertical like personal injury law and has half as many reviews as their competition it's going to be difficult to compete.


I'm not sure what you mean by this.


I test both mode bid modes for clients and stick with the one that performs best for their individual account. Even if you allow Google to set the bids Google will not exceed the monthly max budget you set.

@Matt Casady Thanks for your thoughts. On the bids, do you recommend new advertisers start with Google determining the max bid and then adjust accordingly? For accounts that have run for a while, do you see the per lead paid going down, staying steady, or going up? My hunch is that the space is getting more competitive so I wouldn't be surprised if pay per lead is going up. It would be an interesting experiment to see how efficient LSA vs. Google Ads is in contributing to leads with a better ROI.

 

[Matt Casady]

@dotgal, yes I recommend starting by letting Google determine the max bid and then adjusting accordingly. Yes, again depends on the market/vertical but we see it going up. Yes, always worth testing!

 

[NexstarNickR]

Hey @dotgal ! I work at a company where I coach hundreds of residential Plumbing, Electrical, and HVAC companies, most of which are using the LSAs.

One of the biggest factors in getting position in the LSAs is your review number and velocity. Google wants to see that you are getting new customers and they are happy with the service that is being provided.

As far as the bidding strategies, what we have seen is that if you are getting visibility and leads, don't mess with the bid strategy and just increase the budget slowly but surely. If it isn't working, then go ahead switch the bid mode around; if you are having google set it, then change it to be manually set. If you have it set super high and with a super high budget and you aren't getting anything, try scaling it back.

Basically if it ain't broke, don't fix it, and if it is broke, then keep changing the settings until you get something that works.

And you are correct, overall the cost per lead is going up across the board as the space becomes more crowded and they are still only offering the 3 slots.

 

[Benyy2001]

@NexstarNickR @Matt Casady

Some Questions about ranking:

1) How much effect will using a VOIP phone system effect our LSA Rankings? Any suggestions on this, landline, cell, ext?

2) In terms of Ranking Higher, is it more important to get LSA Verified reviews, or GMB reviews?

3) We are maxing out our bid to the highest amount LSA will allow. Is it also important you max our the weekly budget for the most LSA will allow? We tried letting LSA do the bidding, and it murdered our rankings.

4) We cover a pretty big area and after testing, I am unsure if shrinking our service area has any affect on the rankings, can you clarify this?

5) Will you rank higher if your GMB is a service area business instead of a Brick and Mortar?

6) Do new LSA Account get a bump in rankings?

7) How important is it to full in the data fields on the LSA lead?