Experimenting with Pay-Per-Click
September 10, 2007 – 3:24 pmPay-per-click marketing (also referred to as paid search or sponsored search) is one of two primary paths to search engine visibility. Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the other path.
Here’s the main difference between SEO and PPC:
- SEO s when your website ranks well in the search engines naturally, due to its content, link popularity and other factors. Search engine optimization takes a lot of work and patience, which is why we offer SEO services to lawyers.
- Pay-per-click, on the other hand, allows you to achieve quick search engine visibility through a process of bidding for placement. With PPC, you could literally reach the top of the search engines by tomorrow (within the sponsored search area).
In other words, SEO ranking results takes longer to achieve, but they are also longer-lasting and cannot be “turned off” overnight. PPC ranking results can come within a day or so, but they will go away as soon as you stop paying for them.
In the image above, the green shaded area shows Google AdWords (sponsored ads), while the pink shaded area shows natural (organic) search results.
I wanted to clear up the difference between these two types of search engine marketing, because I often get inquiries from people who want search engine visibility “in a hurry,” which is only possible through pay-per-click search marketing.
Google AdWords for Lawyer Search Engine Marketing
Without a doubt, the Google AdWords program is the most popular of the pay-per-click options. Yahoo and MSN also have pay-per-click programs (which, by the way, drive most of the companies’ revenues).
It is beyond the scope of this blog post to offer detailed instructions on conducting a pay-per-click program. But if you’re interested in using AdWords as a search engine marketing channel, you can certainly find plenty of books, articles and websites on the subject.
For now, just realize that pay-per-click is one of many ways you can start generating leads and growing your legal business online.
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