Lawyer Search Engine Marketing Explained
November 6, 2007 – 7:56 amI wanted to write a quick post to explain / clarify the two sides of lawyer search engine marketing — SEO and PPC. In my dealings with clients, I find that a lot of people still confuse these two elements of search engine marketing.
2 Sides to Lawyer Search Engine Marketing
Search Engine Optimization – SEO is the act of improving your website’s natural rankings in the search engines. “Natural ranking” is what makes this approach to lawyer search engine marketing different from the second approach discussed below. With SEO, you improve your rankings by creating a content-rich website focused on certain key phrases, and then linking to the site from elsewhere (through directory submissions, networking, etc.)
* Learn more about search engine optimization for lawyers.
Pay Per Click – PPC marketing, also known as sponsored search, is where you pay for search engine rankings. Google’s PPC program, for example, is called Google AdWords. If you take this approach to lawyer search engine marketing you will have to pay a certain amount of money every time somebody clicks on your search engine listing.
* Learn more about pay per click for lawyers.
Now that you know the difference between the two lawyer search engine marketing strategies, the question becomes: “Do I need both of them?” That depends on several things — namely, the competition.
If you practice a specific area of law in a smaller city, there might not be that much competition online. In this case, you can probably get plenty of traffic with search engine optimization / SEO. However, if you practice general law in a big city, you may find it necessary to pursue both types of lawyer search engine marketing just to stay visible online.
Benefits of SEO as Search Engine Marketing Tool
Both SEO and PPC have their pros and cons as lawyer search engine marketing channels. But in my opinion, SEO should be a part of every lawyer’s marketing budget. The results you derive from SEO are long-lasting, whereas the results you derive from PPC will disappear as soon as you “turn off” the campaign or exceed your PPC budget.
