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.
A Pay Per Click (also known as Pay Per Ranking, Pay Per Placement or
Pay Per Position) search engine lets you to list your firm’s site at
the top of the search engine results. You pay only when a web
searcher clicks on your listing and connects to your site. You don’t
pay to list; you only pay for click throughs.
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.
The perception many have is that PPC search engines are a great way
to drive targeted traffic to your site because you only pay for
actual clicks to your site, and that it is risk free and a cheaper
alternative to hiring a search engine optimization firm to gain top
placements with the bigger search engines.
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
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.
Major PPC engines try to detect this type of fraud, but it is nearly
impossible with some of the methods that are out there. There are
been more and more Internet ads for recruiting people to surf the
Web and click on ads using their own computer. With such a network
of scammers all with their own IP address, there is no technology to
catch this scam.
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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