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The truth about 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.
Search engines have a system where your listing is at the top of the search results and you only have to pay when someone clicks on your listing. These Pay Per Click or Pay Per Ranking programs allow you to only pay for click through and not to list.
List your website by selecting keywords referring to your practice area. You set your budget and the higher you bid, the higher you will appear in 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), are going up as more firms believe it is the ‘magic bullet’ to increased Internet business. Below are some recent examples of the bid cost, per click, to be in the top position on one of the major PPC engines:
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 … For legal firms it has always taken a large number of click-troughs to actually convert into a paying client. Now combine this with the above trend in scam click-troughs and the cost effectiveness of the PPC model for legal firms may not be the panacea once believed.
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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