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.  

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.

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

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 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