A new study has just come out to confirm what the search engine optimization specialist here at Legal Marketing Advantage have been talking about for some time now; organic search engine optimization outperforms pay per click. If you have been involved in online law firm marketing (in a big market) for the past year or so you may have also noticed this fact. SEO over PPC turns out to not only be true in the legal field, but others as well.

The new study, done by User Centric, proved without a doubt the increasing importance of SEO for not only Law Firms but all businesses that want to gain more business online. User Centric used an eye tracking study to look at the two leading search engines (Google and Microsoft Bing) through the eyes of their users. The results are staggering and found that one hundred percent of people looked at the organic search results on both Google and Bing search engines. In comparison, the right-hand paid search ads where only viewed 28% and 21% by the users of Google and Bing (respectively).

To drive the pint home, the users not only focused on organic search results more often, versus paid search results, the users spent more time viewing results of organic search versus the paid search results. This means that search engine users are learning to overlook the paid ads more and more as the majority of online users become more search savvy.

So how should this affect your law firm marketing online? It means your SEO efforts will be more important than ever and in the long run will mean more results.  Even though it takes longer and a more serious effort to rank well on the major search engines like Google and Bing through organic efforts, the payoff is more beneficial. Now does this mean that pay per click (PPC) is dead? No way.

The top three paid ads can still get a lot of action BUT the cost per click in the main legal practice areas can be outrageous. Then again getting that “one big case” may make it worth it all. Still, the cost and return on investment is going to vary greatly based on the market you are after and what portion of law you want to focus on. Some PPC campaigns can still be very successful if a law firm online marketing company really knows what they are doing. On the other hand if PPC prices are dirt cheap maybe consumers just are not looking for those particular terms.

So if your law firm has not already done so, your online efforts need to focus on organic search results. It can take some time depending on where your site is at right now, but with a solid steady game plan, the time and effort put in your law firm search engine optimization can bring in huge results for your law firm.