Pay Per Click (PPC)

Navigation Menu

• Home
• Services
  • General Info
  • SEO
  • Local Search
  • Mobile Search
  • PPC
  • Web Design
• Portfolio
• Prices
• About Us
• Contact Us
• Resources
  • Sitemap
  • hCard
  • Legal Notices

Call Us Today

208-215-8114

Pay per click ads (PPC) are ads where you only pay if a searcher actually clicks on your information or link.  The PPC ads of the Big 3 search engines are highlighted in the SERP screenshots below:

Google – www.google.com

Yahoo – www.yahoo.com

MSN – www.msn.com

With pay-per-click, your ad can be displayed time and time again, but you do not pay unless and until someone clicks the ad and is forwarded to your website.  Although this sounds great, there is actually an advantage to NOT having your ad display numerous times without clicks (especially in Google).  The number of clicks as a percentage of displays is called the “click through rate” or “CTR.”  Generally PPC ads are listed in rank order with the highest bid first.  Thus the advertiser that is willing to pay the most for a click is at the top of the list. 

However, a high CTR can cause your ad to be listed higher than that of a higher bidder.  Proper management of your CTR can be used to your advantage to secure better positions at a lower cost than simply trying to outbid competitors.  At first blush you may think that this does not make sense.  Why doesn’t the search engine simply want the highest bid?  The reason is that you do not pay (and the search engine does not get paid) until someone clicks.  For example, the search engine would rather get paid $1 per click on an ad that gets 10 clicks per hundred ($10.00 per hundred) than from an ad that gets $8 per click and getting 1 click per hundred ($8 per hundred).  Therefore the proper design of a PPC ad and effective management of a PPC campaign can result in reduced costs, better rankings, and more potential clients.

The major advantages of PPC are:

The primary disadvantages of PPC are:

• Cost.  PPC can quickly get very costly.  PPC makes up the bulk of Google’s revenue and is a multi-billion dollar industry.  As more and more law firms start SEM campaigns, the cost of PPC is constantly being “bid up.”  In many instances cost per click can be many dollars per click.  Effective management of campaigns can help try to control these costs, but it is likely that the cost of PPC will continue to rise over time

• Management.  Proper PPC campaigns need to managed, particularly in regards to keyword tracking and development and CTR maximization techniques.  If attempted alone, it takes significant time to learn, keep current, and actually manage these campaigns.  These services can be provided by PageOneNow at a cost lower than the value of your time.

• “Ad Blindness.”  Internet users often ignore paid advertisements.  They have simply trained themselves to immediately look at the actual search results and ignore banners and other paid advertisements.  This is known as “Ad Blindness.”  Because of the placement and format of PPC ads, PPC is not as prone to Ad Blindness as other forms of paid ads (such as banner ads).  However, PPC is not immune and PPC ads do suffer from searchers knowing that PPC ads are “paid ads” and therefore ignoring them and concentrating on actual search results.  Although PPC ads are prominently placed at the top and side of the SERPs, studies have shown that they only are only clicked  15% to 20% of the time.

Despite some of the disadvantages of PPC, in properly designed and managed campaigns, PageOneNow feels that PPC is an important part of a law firm’s effective SEM campaign.