Las Vegas lawyers - attorneys legal directory
The true facts about Pay-per-click
By Bob Schwartz, CRS, GRI ©20042003 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's and not 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.
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), 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
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 … It seems that ad click traffic is continuing to grow, but
fewer visitors are clicking through to either take some kind of meaningful
action, or actually transact business. In other words, clicks are
increasing, but 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.
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 … To convert into a just one new client it takes a
considerable amount of click-throughs. With the above trend in scam click-throughs
and the cost efficiency, it seems to these PPC search engines are not the
best alternative after all.
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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