The most expensive click we have found anywhere is in your profession, and for most firms it is the one search you should not be bidding on.
What your clicks actually cost, which searches are wasting money, and what your cost per signed matter looks like. Fifteen minutes, and you keep it either way.
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A sixth of the price, 22,200 searches a month, and a matter that opens a file rather than a bidding war.
Compensation lawyer is $99.51 a click and personal injury lawyer $81.64. Those are the most expensive searches we have found in any industry, and they are being bid up by national firms running no win no fee at a scale a suburban practice cannot match. Conveyancing is $16.00 with 22,200 searches a month. Wills and estates is $6.91. That is where a general practice firm actually competes.
Average cost per click across Australia, from Google Keyword Planner. What your account pays will differ with location, competition and quality score. The gap between these rows is the argument, not the exact figures.
The top of this chart is a national auction. Compensation and personal injury are bid by firms with advertising budgets in the millions and a settlement model that lets them lose money on acquisition for years. If you are a suburban practice, that is not your auction and no amount of clever bidding changes it.
The bottom of the chart is a real business. Conveyancing has more monthly searches than everything above it combined, at a sixth of the top price, and it is transactional, fixed fee and repeatable. Wills and estates is cheaper again and opens a client relationship that lasts decades.
Three numbers, and only the last one decides anything. It is the same chain our Brisbane digital marketing agency works through in every industry, only the dollar figures change.
We work it right to left. What a job is worth sets what a lead can cost, which sets what a click is worth bidding.
Cost per click is the easiest number to improve and the least useful one. Bid on cheaper searches and it drops immediately, whether or not those searches ever turn into work. That is why we will sometimes tell you to pay more per click rather than less.
Google Ads is the fastest of the three and the only one you pay for by the click. Here is what the other two do, and where the expensive clicks eventually stop.
THE SLOW ASSET
A real page per practice area, plain English explanations of process and cost, a Google Business Profile built properly, and a review process that stays inside the professional conduct rules. Slow to arrive, and the only affordable way into the expensive practice areas.
THE FAST LEVER
Campaigns split by practice area, never one campaign called Lawyer, because the click prices across this profession differ by a factor of fourteen. Negative keywords so you stop paying for law jobs, paralegal courses, legal aid, free legal advice and law degrees. Call tracking, because a legal enquiry almost always starts with a phone call.
THE ONE MOST FIRMS SKIP
The cheapest reach available, and the right channel for a profession people choose on trust. Nobody picks a solicitor from an ad the first time they see one. They pick the firm they have already heard of when something finally happens.
We start from what a matter is worth in fees, not what a click costs. A firm doing fixed fee conveyancing and one running litigation cannot afford the same cost per click. Google Ads does the fast work, SEO eventually takes the expensive clicks off your bill, and Meta Ads keeps the firm familiar. We will tell you if one is not worth running.
Not a strategy document. These are the three campaigns we would build first for a Brisbane firm, and what each one is actually for.
Built around “conveyancing”
22,200 searches a month at $16.00 a click, more volume than every other row on the chart combined. Conveyancing is fixed fee, it is decided largely on price and responsiveness, and the client comes back for a will and sends you their family. Put your fixed fee on the page or do not run this campaign.
Built around “wills and estates lawyer”
$6.91 a click, the cheapest search in the profession, and a client relationship that can last thirty years. A will is a small matter that turns into an estate, then a property transfer, then the next generation. Almost nobody bids on it because the immediate fee looks small.
Built around the searches we exclude
Law jobs, paralegal courses, law degrees, legal aid, free legal advice, template documents and the very large number of people researching a problem they will never pay anyone to solve. At these click prices that traffic is the most expensive mistake available in this profession.
Send us access to your Google Ads account and we will come back with what it is wasting, which searches are costing you the most for the least, and what we would change first. Fifteen minutes, no obligation, and you keep it either way.
Two clicks can cost the same and be worth completely different amounts. That gap, not the click price, is what decides whether an account works.
Under seven dollars for the click and the cheapest search in the profession. A will is a modest fee and the beginning of a relationship that runs through the estate, the property, the family and the next generation. Firms that measure the first matter only will never see why this is the best buy on the chart.
Your Google Business Profile, suburb pages, and local listings optimised so customers in your area find you first.
Technical fixes and service-focused SEO that make your site easy for Google to understand and trust.
Build your reputation through reviews, with monthly reports tracking rankings and leads from organic search.
Ninety nine dollars and fifty one cents for a single click. The firms bidding there advertise nationally, run no win no fee, and can carry an acquisition cost for years against a settlement. A suburban practice entering that auction is funding somebody else’s brand awareness.
Site speed, crawlability, schema markup, and Core Web Vitals sorted so Google can index and trust your site.
Service pages and suburb landing pages written to rank and convert, not just fill space.
Backlink building and on-page optimisation that compounds month over month.
Three things come up in nearly every Google Ads account we audit for a firm.
Every practice area shares a budget, and the click prices in this profession range from $6.91 to $99.51. Google will spend where it can spend, which means the compensation clicks quietly consume the budget that should be funding conveyancing.
Conveyancing at $16.00, wills and estates at $6.91, family at $23.17. Separate budgets, separate pages, separate targets, so a fourteen times price difference cannot resolve itself inside one campaign at your expense.
Legal advertising is regulated, and personal injury advertising in Queensland is restricted more tightly than most people outside the profession expect. Plenty of agency written legal copy has never been checked against any of it.
We write to the professional conduct rules and the restrictions applying to your practice areas, and nothing goes live until your principal has read it. If you run personal injury work, confirm what you are permitted to say before a single ad is written.
An enquiry count treats a conveyancing quote and a commercial dispute as the same event. The fees differ by orders of magnitude, and a firm optimising for enquiry volume will drift toward the cheapest, least valuable work without noticing.
Cost per click, then cost per enquiry, then cost per signed matter by practice area with the fee against it. That last number is the only one that tells you which campaign to fund, and almost no firm has it.
We start with what a matter is worth in fees and work backwards to what a click can cost.
A fixed fee conveyance and a commercial dispute cannot carry the same cost per click, and neither can a firm that converts one enquiry in three against one that converts one in ten. We work out fee per matter and conversion rate by practice area first, because together they decide which searches are open to you at all.
Conveyancing, wills and estates, family, commercial and criminal each get their own campaign, budget and landing page. In a profession where clicks range from $6.91 to $99.51, this is not a refinement, it is the whole job.
Search terms reviewed weekly and negatives added, because at these prices a fortnight of unmanaged broad match is a serious amount of money. Then monthly reporting on cost per signed matter by practice area.
Worth saying before you enquire, because it saves everyone three months.
If you are a general practice firm hoping to win personal injury work through search, we would tell you plainly not to. That auction belongs to national advertisers and you will spend a great deal proving it. And if nobody can take a call during business hours, do not start at these prices, because legal enquiries do not leave voicemails.
Fast answers, clear decisions.
Spend, leads and trends at a glance.
Your data, your accounts.
Budget goes to what converts.
4+ years average client retention.
Specialists across each platform.
Yes, and it is the highest figure we have found in any industry on this hub, higher than commercial fitout and higher than emergency locksmiths. Compensation lawyer sits at $99.51 and personal injury lawyer at $81.64. Both are being bid by national firms running no win no fee at a scale most practices cannot match.
Not through search, if you are a suburban or general practice firm. You would be funding a bidding war against advertisers who can carry acquisition costs for years against a settlement. There is also a regulatory dimension: personal injury advertising in Queensland is restricted more tightly than most people expect, so confirm what you are permitted to say before anything is written.
Agency fees usually work one of three ways: a percentage of ad spend, a flat monthly retainer, or a base fee plus a percentage above a threshold. Percentage models get expensive as you scale and quietly reward the agency for spending more of your money. Ask which model an agency uses and why before you ask for a number.
It has more monthly searches than every other row on the chart combined, at a sixth of the top price. It is fixed fee, repeatable, decided largely on price and responsiveness, and the client comes back for a will and refers their family. It is the most reliable way into a legal account.
For conveyancing, effectively yes. That client is comparing fees across three firms and a page that will not answer the question sends them back to the search results. If your firm will not publish a number for fixed fee work, we would rather tell you that campaign will underperform than take the budget.
Because the first matter is not the point. A will becomes an estate, then a property transfer, then the next generation. Firms that measure only the immediate fee conclude it is not worth advertising, which is exactly why the click is so cheap.
It depends entirely on which practice areas you are in, more than in any other industry we advertise for. A conveyancing account and a commercial litigation account are different propositions at $16.00 and $41.67 a click. We would rather fund one area properly than spread across five.
Impossible to quote honestly without knowing your practice areas and conversion rate, given clicks range from $6.91 to $99.51 within the same profession. We report cost per signed matter by practice area with the fee against it, which is the only view that means anything here.
Three places, in this order. One campaign covering every practice area, which lets the dearest clicks eat the budget. Research traffic, free legal advice and template documents, which this profession attracts enormously. And law jobs and courses, which look almost identical to your service keywords.
We look at what it is wasting, whether the practice areas share a budget, how much is going to research and careers traffic, whether anything published sits outside the conduct rules or the restrictions on your practice areas, and what your cost per signed matter looks like. You get it in writing and you keep it either way.
