Houston Texas lawyers - attorneys directory
Website Pay-per-click Separating fact from fiction
By Bob Schwartz, CRS, GRI ©2007 Promotions Unlimited All rights reserved.
This material is subject to copyright and any unauthorized use, copying or mirroring is prohibited.
When a firm's site is at the top of the search engine results, this is called a Pay Per Click search engine. Other times referred to as Pay Per Placement or Pay Per Position, these programs allow you to pay only when a web searcher clicks on your listing. Only paying for click through's, you don't have to pay to list.
You list your website by selecting keywords that refer to your practice area. For each keyword you determine how much you are willing to spend. The higher you bid, the higher you will appear in the search results.
Combining paid listings with unpaid listings help PPC search engines to obtain sufficient results. All PPC search engines differentiate their paid listings from the real non-pay listings by calling the PPC listing such terms as: featured listings, sponsored listings, partners etc. Some smaller PPC engines do not have this differentiation because 100% of their results are paid.
Many people perceive PPC search engines to be a great way to drive targeted traffic to your site. After all you are only paying for actual clicks to your site, and it seems to be risk free and less expensive than a search engine optimization firm to boost your rankings.
But be careful . . . all may not be, as it seems!
Bid prices
(cost per click), increase as firms believe in this method to increase Internet business. You can see below, there are examples of the bid cost per click to be in that top position of a major PPC engine.
Los Angeles criminal defense attorney - $15.14
Los Angeles DUI attorney - $42.25
Los Angeles accident attorney - $10.00
San Francisco accident attorney - $26.00
San Francisco personal injury attorney - $20.00
Houston personal injury attorney - $8.00
Houston accident attorney - $6.10
Las Vegas defense lawyer - $5.00
At these rates, and a typical high click-through conversion rate, a firm could really put a major dent in new client acquisition costs.
CLICK TRAFFIC
With ad click traffic's growth increasing, it seems more visitors are just clicking through and not transacting business. Clicks are increasing, however conversion percentages are declining.
RIPOFFS
The consensus among knowledge webmasters is that the PPC affiliate programs are to blame for this: PPC search engines pay webmasters for hosting their paid ads and/or providing search results that link through their PPC network. It seems some affiliates may be artificially boosting their PPC hits in order to increase their share of the paid click-through revenue.
Sure the major PPC engines have technology in-place to detect this type of fraud, or so they say. But recently, there have been Internet ads for recruiting people to surf the Web and click on ads, using their own computer and an Internet connection. With different IP addresses and a network of such scammers, it would be impossible to distinguish legitimate click-troughs from the rip-off ones.
CONVERSION RATES
It has always taken a large number of click-throughs to produce a new client and combined with the cost effectiveness, legal firms may want to rethink how beneficial the PPC model really is.
Copyright 2004 Promotions Unlimited. All rights reserved.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Bob Schwartz, is the founder of Promotions Unlimited, an Internet legal directory (CA, TX & Las Vegas ) publisher and search engine placement technology analyst. You can contact Bob via e-mail at bob@websitetrafficbuilders.com or visit his San Diego legal directory at: http://www.sandiegolawyerforyou.com/special.htm
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