SEO builds long-term visibility for lawyers through organic search, enhancing credibility over time. PPC provides instant exposure by paying for ad placement but incurs ongoing costs. A balanced approach combines SEO's sustainability with PPC’s quick, targeted client reach.
Understanding the current search marketing landscape
Before we dive into comparing and contrasting SEO vs PPC, let’s take a moment to unpack what’s actually happening in Google’s search results when people look for law firms like yours.
Over the years, Google has changed. It’s now got so many new features beyond the traditional PPC ads up the top followed by the ten blue links, otherwise known as organic listings.
Local Service Ads (LSA): These ads only show on local intent keywords. Local businesses pay only when they receive a phone call lead from these ads, making them a fairly low risk investment to test the waters with search marketing.
Pay-per-click (PPC) ads: These are the traditional ads that have been up the top of Google search results for decades. You’ll pay for every click to your website.
Local Map Pack: This is an organic result that displays the top three local businesses along with their star rating and location pin on Google Maps. The law firms we work with get over 50% of their leads from this feature—very powerful for growing your client acquisition pipeline.
The short answer is neither SEO or PPC is better than the other. The best option for you depends on your law firm’s growth, budget, and goals.
The long answer is that both SEO and PPC have unique benefits that complement each other quite nicely. For that reason, we recommend doing both especially if you want to get maximum visibility and leads from search engines.
Think of it like roulette.
If you’re thinking about only investing in either SEO or PPC, that’s like putting all your chips on one bet. If you do both, that’s like spreading your chips around, a more superior strategy for generating better results.
In saying that, I totally understand if you’ve got a limited budget. So here’s what to consider if it’s only feasible to choose one over the other right now.
1. Time to results
In general, SEO will take much more time than PPC before it starts generating leads for your firm. But once it gets going, you’ll likely see a level of growth PPC will not be able to compete with.
PPC, on the other hand, takes a much shorter time to deliver leads to your business but it will reach a growth ceiling over time and results will plateau.
The great thing about PPC is that you can turn the ads on, and within a couple of weeks, you should start getting leads and phone calls as a result.
SEO, however, takes anywhere from 6, 12, or even up to 18 months to get going, depending on how competitive your market is. Since placements for SEO are earned not bought, it’s also not something you can turn on or off at your whim.
2. The “keyword ceiling”
PPC eventually reaches a plateau is because there is a finite amount of keywords that it makes sense for you to bid on with ads.
After a while, you’ll find there aren’t any more keywords in your local area and for your services that drive a positive ROI. Generally this is because most keywords in the law space are searched by people who:
Are very early in their discovery process
Are not ready to work with a lawyer
Are looking for free information where possible
As a result, bidding on these keywords with Google Ads often leads to wasted budget. You can, however, target them very effectively with SEO content on your website that’s optimized competitively so you rank high.
Since you’re not paying per click with SEO, it makes sense to allocate the resources to try and rank organically.
On the flip side, where SEO struggles to get decent visibility is for keywords with a high conversion potential. These are the ones with a very high likelihood that the searcher is actively looking to work with an attorney.
You’ll generally need to pay for ads to get leads from those keywords for a few reasons:
It’s often the case that ads are the only thing visible before scrolling on these search result pages
Aggressive competitors are already paying for ads and grabbing visibility right up the top
Google has pushed the organic results very far down the page, often requiring a fair bit of scrolling
3. Lead generation potential
The keyword strategy of each channel directly influences how many leads (and their quality) you’ll get each week.
By blending both SEO and PPC, our law firm clients get over 100+ calls each month because they’re capturing as much of the real estate on search result pages as possible.
Over 50% of these leads come from SEO results—specifically the local map pack that looks like this.
So yes, SEO takes a long time, but it’s also how you’ll get more out of a limited budget once it starts working for you.
However, that’s not to say PPC is not worth considering.
It can deliver dozens of leads each month and can help you stabilize your cash flow. We recommend paying for both the Local Service Ads and pay-per-click ads to maximize your visibility.
The LSA ads, in particular, are great for law firms. You’ll only pay if you receive phone calls, making them a low-risk way to get started with search marketing. Here’s what they look like:
4. Costs and fees
Comparing the costs of SEO vs. PPC is never going to be a like-for-like comparison. You can’t pay for placements in SEO like you do for ads.
Instead, with SEO, the cost comes from working with experts who can do it all for you.
Generally, a good agency will charge you a flat monthly fee. Over the first six months, you might be under water on that investment, but in the following 6–12 months your traffic, leads and return on investment will grow.
With PPC, the costs are a little more nuanced.
There may be a management fee if you work with an agency, and there’s also the cost of your ads that goes straight to Google. You can closely monitor every dollar you invest in each campaign.
Things that make your ads cost more or lead to wasted budget can include:
Targeting too many keywords and stretching your budget thin
Only targeting the most competitive keywords
Targeting keywords with the wrong intent that do not lead to phone calls
Law is not only a competitive space for marketing, it’s also expensive. A single click to an injury lawyer’s website costs hundreds of dollars. And the reality is that (at best) only one in ten clicks will lead to a phone call or consultation booking.
How to make the most with a limited SEO or PPC budget
At Webris, we offer a blended service that combines SEO and PPC for all our clients, regardless of their budget.
For those on a smaller budget who want to focus more on one channel over another we recommend focusing only on a single practice area. For instance if you’re a family lawyer, focus just on marketing your child custody services or only divorce settlements.
Better yet, choose a specific niche angle that can help you connect with more of the right people without having to spend a lot of money on your advertising. For instance, you could specialize in divorce settlements for men specifically.
The minutiae of your strategy is what will make or break your marketing efforts.
If you need help getting the right strategy in place for either SEO, PPC or both, reach out. Better yet, book a free analysis where we’ll audit your website, competitors and market and show you the exact roadmap for how to get more leads for your firm.
Our Traffic Projection Tool Will Show Your Website’s True Potential (aKA How Much Money You Should Be Making).
Using data from your website, our Traffic Projection analysis can accurately forecast how much traffic (and revenue) your website could be getting from Google.
