San Bernardino attorneys & Riverside lawyers directory
The facts and fictions of Pay-per-click
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.
PPC search engines usually combine paid listings with unpaid listings to ensure any given search produces sufficient results. In an effort to provide proper disclosure, 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.
Often people have the perception that PPC search engines are the best way to attract traffic to your site. When you only pay for actual clicks to your site and it is a cheap alternative to hiring a search engine optimization firm, it seems very logical.
But be careful . . . all may not be, as it seems!
As firms believe more and more that it is the 'magic bullet' to increased Internet business, the Bid prices
(cost per click) are going up and up. Some recent examples of how much it would cost per click to be in the top position are below.
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
It could really cost a firm a lot with rates like these and their click-through conversion rate.
CLICK TRAFFIC
You may notice that ad click traffic is on the rise, but do you notice that at the same time fewer and fewer visitors are actually creating more business. In fact, clicks are increasing and conversion percentages are decreasing.
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.
Supposedly the PPC engines have technology to detect this fraud, but Internet ads advertise recruiting people to surf the Web and click on ads using their own computer. Having all the different IP addresses and a network of such scammers, it is an impossible task to regulate the rip-off click-throughs.
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 2007 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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