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To Buy or Not To Buy Website Traffic: Attorney Edition

To Buy or Not To Buy Website Traffic: Attorney Edition

According to the American Bar Association, only 8 percent of people looking for an attorney today turn to a print directory like the Yellow Pages.  The vast majority of people who want to find a lawyer look online, either through search engines or on directories.  There are two different types of website traffic that you can get.  Free website traffic comes from sources that don't cost any money directly.  However, you can also buy website traffic.  There's nothing wrong with wanting to buy web traffic—in fact, doing so is a great way to start your website's rise in search engine rankings, even before strategies for building free web traffic can start to really work.

What's Wrong With Free Web Traffic?

Well, there's nothing wrong with it, strictly speaking.  But when you buy website traffic, you're able to more directly target your most likely clients and get immediate results.  The problem with building up free web traffic because you don't want to buy website traffic is that free web traffic takes a great deal of your time to build.  What's more, changes to search algorithms can wipe out months of work in a single programming change.

What's more, nothing says that you can't buy web traffic and keep working on your free website traffic at your own pace.  You can gradually buy website traffic less as you become familiar with what kinds of free website traffic strategies work in your area and with the kinds of clients most likely to call your firm to schedule an appointment.

Keep in mind that many comprehensive “free” website traffic strategies are actually going to require hiring someone part or full time to run your campaigns.  You may find that especially if you're a small firm, it can be cheaper to buy web traffic than to get it for “free” in this way.

What Will It Cost to Buy Web Traffic?

It's easier than ever to buy website traffic today, and one of the things that makes it so easy is that the budget can start very, very low.  If you called a TV station or newspaper or radio station and asked for $20 worth of advertising, you couldn't even get the smallest unit possible.  But when you buy web traffic, you can set your budget as high or as low as you want.

Not all clicks cost the same amount.  Usually you'll buy web traffic as PPM (this means per thousand views) or PPC (per click).  For attorneys, it's usually better to pick PPC advertising when you buy website traffic, because otherwise you run the risk of having your ad displayed in front of thousands of eyes that don't have a legal problem and can't use your services.  When you pay only for clicks, you buy web traffic that has a much better chance of converting into a paying client.

Making The Most of Paid Web Traffic

If you've never tried to buy website traffic before, you may not know much about getting value for your money.  Here are a few good rules to live by when you buy web traffic, so that you don't pay for anything that isn't actually making you money.

Rule #1: Buy Website Traffic That Is Targeted

After your law practice has been in business for a long time, you know the kinds of clients that you do best with.  The demographics of your clients can go a long way to telling you how to target your website advertisements.  Today's pay per click advertising lets you buy website traffic from the age group, gender, and location of your choice.

Using some platforms, you can actually buy web traffic that is coming from mobile users in your very specific area.  For example, on a platform like Foursquare, you can actually draw the boundaries you want to in order to only show your advertising to people near enough to your office that they have a much higher chance of converting.

Rule #2: Buy Web Traffic That Can Convert

This may sound like it's obvious, but make sure that if you're going to buy website traffic, make sure your site is conversion ready.  There's no sense spending money on buying traffic only to have the bounce rate be extremely high due to a poor website design or excessive downtime.  Make sure that you have reliable, fast website hosting and a website designed to be accessed by both desktop and mobile users.

Rule #3: Monitor Your Web Traffic Performance

One of the biggest mistakes that you can make once you set up your pay per click ad campaigns is just leaving them alone.  You need to constantly change things around in your ad campaigns, not only to avoid ad fatigue but also so you can tinker and find what works.  The most successful web marketers are the ones with a healthy sense of experimentation, who are willing to take a bit of risk now and then to find a new and better way to get the traffic they need.

You may even want to buy a tool or two that will help you to better visualize your web traffic.  Although some of these tools are free (for example, Google Analytics), the free tools are often geared toward making you purchase more ads at higher prices rather than just helping you analyze what will save the most money.

Transitioning To Free Web Traffic

While you buy website traffic, you should also work on getting free traffic.  The more you build your social media presence, for instance, the less you'll have to buy web traffic to get the same amount of new business per month.  Try to make a slow transition from paid to free traffic, to minimize the short-term negative impacts of making such a switch.  You may also want to continue to buy web traffic at least at some level in order to ensure that changes to search algorithms can't destroy your traffic numbers.

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