Is Your Firm’s Web Marketing Strategy Only Paid Ads? You’re Missing Out

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There is a great article over at the Legal Practice Pro blog discussing the sobering numbers involved with paid search.

Using Google AdWords to market your law firm? If you’re paying for ads and ignoring your organic search engine placement then 84% of web surfers will never click on your ad. Even worse, only 8% of all internet users will account for 85% of all clicks.

Jay goes on to make the point that your search engine strategy needs to encompass more than just paid search, and I couldn’t agree more.

Let’s back up a second here. I talk to lawyers that aren’t quite sure the distinction between paid search ads and organic rankings. If I perform a search for “personal injury lawyer” Google returns results to me. At the very top and on the right side of the page are paid ads. Law firms and companies will pay each time a visitor clicks on this ad.

The results underneath this are the organic results. These are the results that Google’s algorithm determines to be the most relevant to a user’s search. You can not pay to be listed in this section, your site must come up naturally. However, once you appear here, you pay nothing when someone clicks on the link to your website.

The point that is being made is that 84% of internet users click on the “organic search results”, not the paid ads. For your firm to truly take advantage of search engine marketing, you need to appear where the users are clicking. Don’t let 84% of your potential market pass you by.