Pay Per Click Advertising on Google, Yahoo and MSN

Pay per click advertising can drive targeted traffic to solicitors' websites cost effectively.

When you carry out a basic search on Google you may have noticed that the top two results on the left hand side are in a beige box that has a headline of "Sponsored listings". In the right hand column there are also up to eight sponsored listings. These sponsored listings are pay per click adverts. If you click on advert then it costs the advertiser. The ranking of the adverts is determined by a bidding system.

Law firms need to carefully consider the following:

Key phrases

Efforts need to be spent in researching the key words and phrases that potential clients may type in a Google, Yahoo or MSN search. There is no disadvantage in having a large selection of key phrases - only the ones people click through on are the ones you pay for. Some of the keywords will be logical ones but we have tools that can show us all of the related searches made on search engines in the last calendar month that are relevant to your law firm. Sometimes the phrases and language you use is not the same as your clients. A good example of this is the key phrase "clinical negligence". My research shows that in April 2007 there were 928 searches for this phrase on Yahoo in the UK. However the phrase "medical negligence" was searched for 34,130 times. Which key phrase would you use?

Advert Development

We help solicitors develop pay per click adverts. We have found that successful adverts have the keywords repeated in the title. Searchers want to see a good match to what they typed in the search box. Multiple adverts pertaining to all the areas your law firm covers are better than one generic advert. The description copy which follows the headline is also important in getting people to click through. It needs to be relevant to what the individual has typed into the search box.

Landing Pages

Many pay per click beginners direct potential clients to the homepage of their website. This is a mistake; your visitors need to get to the part of your website that relates to their search. If a searcher is looking for an employment lawyer then they should be taken straight to the employment page - anything less and you risk losing your potential customer at this stage.

Call To Action

Once a potential client is on your page you need to give them a 'call to action' such as an online "request a call back form" or submitting an enquiry by email. You will reduce your chances of success by only saying "for further details call us on.".

Campaign Implementation

The next stage involves setting up an account with the appropriate service provider (Google, Yahoo and MSN); going through the bidding process for the key phrases you have identified and then initiating the campaign. Part of this will involve setting a budget - initially you may decide on a small amount - you can change this at any time. Google is the most popular search engine in the UK but it is unwise to ignore Yahoo and MSN as they still deliver large amounts of traffic.

Campaign Monitoring

One of the major benefits of this form of marketing is that everything can be measured - number of times your ad gets shown, number of click throughs to your website, clients resulting etc. We help our clients track which keyphrases are generating the best return to enable them to maximise the return on investment.

Management

If you find the prospect of setting up and managing a pay per click campaign too daunting then we can assist you. Apart from the cost of the clicks you can expect to pay a set up and a monthly management fee.