In an earlier post, I recommended that you avoid investing in Paid Search/Pay Per Click campaigns like Google Adwords and Yahoo Sponsored Search till after your website has reached the top of the search engine rankings.

I’ve had several attorneys ask why you would do that. They wanted to know why in the world would you want to spend more cash on paid search if your site was already ranking well for search terms related to your practice.

To find out why, let’s get into the mind of the potential client for a moment – in fact, let’s use as an example a potential client who’s searching for an attorney who can help with a custody issue. And when Google gives them the search results they’re looking for, they see your website sitting near the top of the page.

And if you have a solid Paid Search Campaign in place…look at that, your ad is near the top of the page too – just on the right.

Quickly now….what’s that potential client thinking at the exact moment they see your website shown two times near the top of the page?

They’re thinking “This attorney must be good – His website is listed all over Google”.

At that exact moment, the potential client is making no distinction between the natural search results and a paid search ad. They’re simply impressed by the fact that your site is shown multiple times.

Immediately after that initial thought, the potential client then begins to suffer from “winners syndrome” – they want to be associated with a winner.

And the perception the potential client now has is that you must be a winner because your website is “all over the place”.

Care to guess who clicks over to your website?