Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) vs Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaigns – what’s right for your law firm?

ARTICLE

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) vs Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaigns – what’s right for your law firm?

By Conscious Solutions

The main factor you should consider when deciding whether an SEO or PPC campaign is right for your law firm, is what are your firm’s goals and objectives? Is your law firm looking to grow with a big influx of clients, or is your firm looking to steady leads per month?

We discuss this, and other ways to determine whether an SEO, PPC or combined campaign is best for your firm in this article, so read on.

What is SEO?

SEO is defined as the practice of improving and promoting your law firm’s website to increase the number of visitors and visibility within search engines. This ultimately helps to drive enquiries through your website over time organically.

SEO is made up of hundreds of different elements to drive those all-important enquiries via your website which takes time, skill, knowledge and patience. Therefore, although there isn’t a direct cost from Google like with PPC campaigns, it does have a cost in terms of time, resources and learning.

What are the benefits of SEO for law firms?

More traffic = more enquiries to your law firm

As mentioned, the aim of SEO is to bring better quality traffic to your law firm’s website, and this will ultimately lead to more enquiries.

No additional spend necessary

SEO doesn’t require a direct spend like a PPC campaign, however to get the most out of your campaign, it requires a level of expertise and knowledge. Incorporating effective SEO on your site will take some time, so you’ll have to put in plenty of work for it to be a success, but you certainly won’t have to pay your way to the top if you know what you’re doing. However, there are costs involved such as time, resources and a budget if you enlist the help of an agency.

You can measure success

With the right tools and knowledge, you can track the results of your SEO efforts through platforms such as Google Analytics. This means seeing exactly how many people are viewing the pages on your website, how much time they spend on each page, and whether they are making any conversions (such as clicking a link to an enquiry form, filling in a form or calling a phone number). From there you can make decisions about which pages are working, which might need a bit more work or a change in call to action.

Good SEO = User-friendly content

Good SEO is usually tied to good content. Good content usually means content that is user-friendly, clear and concise. Your content should use headings, subheading, and internal links. By investing in SEO, your content should therefore be user-friendly which will support your website users and improve your Google rankings.

What should I consider before investing in SEO?

Your websites current Domain Authority (DA)

It’s important to remember that with SEO, it’s a long-term strategy that can bring you future wins, but if your website has a low DA, a PPC campaign might be better for your firm. Domain

Authority is a search engine ranking score out of 100 (according to Ahrefs) and this score determines how relevant Google sees your website in its specialist area. A law firm with a lower score, will struggle to appear high up on Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs) and therefore SEO is unlikely to drive new business immediately. An SEO strategy will obviously help to increase your DA over time, so you shouldn’t write SEO off.

Time

SEO is huge and covers so much. It includes everything to do with Google, the structure and readability of website content including services pages and blog posts, digital PR, and social media marketing. So, to do it well, a lot of time needs to be invested in your strategy so you’re covering all bases.

Your firm’s objectives

As previously touched upon, what your law firm’s objectives are will help to determine whether a PPC or SEO strategy is right. An SEO strategy is great if you’re looking for a steady trickle of work overtime, instead of a ‘quick win’.

What is PPC?

PPC is a form of paid advertising where your law firm will pay a fee every time someone clicks on your ad.

What are the benefits of PPC for law firms?

You don’t have to have a huge budget

One of the good things about a PPC campaign, is that you will only pay when a user clicks on your ad. This means that you can use a small budget to put your ad out there, see how it performs and only pay if someone clicks on your ad. PPC is therefore a good choice if your law firm is limited on budget.

Reach clients who are further up the conversion funnel

A PPC campaign is a great way to target potential clients who are further up the conversion funnel. They either might not know whether they need a solicitor yet, aren’t sure on the process of conducting a solicitor or are still deciding. For example, a client might see an ad for your website when searching for something else, click on it, understand that there is a service your law firm can provide to them and then fill out an enquiry form there and then resulting in a piece of new business

Can reach clients further afield

In addition, PPC campaigns can help you reach firms that are not in your local area or in a specific area you think there is work but you aren’t currently operating in.

What should I consider before investing in PPC?

Your budget

If you have a limited budget, a short PPC campaign might be the better campaign to invest in for your firm right now. This is because you can set a budget and once this has been reached, your campaign will stop. And, with a budget used on the right keywords you could still have a direct impact on your enquiries which means your budget might be able to increase in later months.

Your firm’s objectives

If your firm wants work in a particular area now, PPC is the right choice for you. As previously mentioned, SEO is a long-term strategy, so if your firm wants a few new clients today, PPC is better suited.

Your landing page

You firm needs to decide where it’s going to send clicks from a PPC campaign. Is it your firm’s homepage, your family law service page, a blog post you’ve written which answers a key question, or something else? If the current landing page is performing well, are you sure that PPC is the right route for you, or is there something else you could be doing that page to increase the enquiry rate instead such as adding an enquiry form or sending the user elsewhere?

Your time

Although PPC requires less time than an SEO campaign, it doesn’t mean there is nothing to do. To get the most out of your PPC campaign, you need to be researching, testing, measuring success and implementing changes to your website, keywords and more. With the right experience and knowledge, PPC can bring you wins almost overnight but if you go in blind, you’re not going to see the results your firm is expecting.

Is a combination of SEO and PPC beneficial?

As you can see from this article, both SEO and PPC have benefits and can have an impact on law firms marketing efforts resulting in new business. But ultimately, a combination of both an SEO and PPC strategy is best if your firm is looking to grow.

It’s important that you firm determines who your audience is, where your audience are online, what your audience are searching for and why your audience is using search engines to get the most out of your SEO and PPC campaigns.

If you’re still unsure what’s right for your law firm, get in touch on 0117 325 0200 or email sales@conscious.co.uk and we can help you perfect your digital marketing strategy, so your firm sees the results it wants. ■