One of the basic tenets of online marketing and search engine marketing (SEM) is the fact that being ranked highly for a search means that more people will click on your site. Studies have shown, time and time again, that search results near the top of the page net more clicks than those further down. Websites that aren’t on the first page – all of them, together – get clicked on less than 6% of the time.
But if it’s all about being near the top of the search engine results page, why invest time, money and energy into a marketing campaign when you can just buy a pay per click ad and jump to the top right away?
What Are Pay Per Click Ads?
Pay per click (PPC) ads allow you to vault to the top of the search results without putting in the marketing effort to get there – you just set up your PPC campaign, put down your money, and wait. During your PPC campaign, you’ll pay a certain amount every time someone clicks on your advertised website, which will be displayed prominently at the top or on the side the results pages of specified searches, with a little orange box tagging it as an advertisement:
The Problem: Not Many People Click on PPCs
The issue with PPC campaigns is pretty straightforward: No one clicks on advertised websites.
Online marketers have been suspicious of PPC campaigns for a long time – internet users have become good at identifying what’s an advertisement and what isn’t, and labeling PPC sites as an ad probably turns away a lot of traffic.
A 2012 study done in the UK shows that this hunch was right all along. However, the numbers are still surprising, because they show just how few people click on PPC results.
The study tracked 1.4 billion search queries on Google and Bing. Only 6% of those searches ended with a click on a PPC website. The overwhelming remainder went to webpages that got their ranking in the search page organically.
Important to note, though, is that there were some similarities among the 6% of searchers who clicked on PPC ads. The older the searcher, the more likely he or she would click on an advertised website. This statistic fits in with the fact that using the internet and being familiar with how it works is not universal, and that older generations are generally lagging behind younger ones.
Legal Blogging Helps Your Organic Search Rankings
With only 6% of search queries being satisfied with a PPC website, it’s clear that getting to the top of the results page organically is the best method. When it comes to marketing your law firm, hosting a solid law blog on your site is an excellent to populate your site with relevant content that attracts readers. Myers Freelance specializes in writing these legal blogs. Contact us today to get started, and follow us on Facebook and Twitter to get news, tips, and discounts.