Dallas Fort Worth Texas lawyers - attorneys directory
Pay-per-click information
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.
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.
List your website by selecting keywords refering to your practice area. You set your buget and the higher you bid, the higher you will appear in search results.
To produce sufficient results, PPC search engines combine paid listings with unpaid listings. Such terms as: featured listings, sponsored listings, partners etc. are what PPC search engines call the listing to differentiate from the real non-pay listings. Some smaller PPC engines have 100% results paid and therefore, do not have this differentiation.
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
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
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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