Google Adwords campaigns

[Real Estate Forum]

this is ppc (http://www.national-real-estate-directory.com/real-estate-forum/forumdisplay.php?f=65) related but since some of you may have clicked on Google, here is another category.

[MaxSinclair]

I'm curious how everyone finds Google Adwords? Does any one get good results?

Max

[HHI Golf Guy]

I'm curious how everyone finds Google Adwords? Does any one get good results?

Max

I use Adwords to drive traffic for some new sites before they dominate the SERP's. For my client's, I usually eat the cost for 3-6 months, or until the SE's are driving decent traffic.

Targeted keywords depend upon the market. For example, it may be cost prohibitive to target "your city + real estate". Besides, your conversion rates are usually low for these types of phrases.

You can get more bang for your buck - and more conversions - by targeting other keywords related to your market. For example, you may have new residential developments or gated communities that you can target. You can usually have the top PPC placement for less than a nickel a click.

Sure, they don't bring in a whole lot of traffic on their own. But you can drive a ton of traffic (for pennies a click) when you target 50-100 of these types of phrases. Best of all, because these phrases are more specific then "your area + real estate" the web surfers are more likely to be buyers than just browsers.

[MaxSinclair]

great advice, golfguy. Thank you!!! ;)

[San Diego Real Estate]

Max... It works but you really need to know what you are doing...check your PM!

[Jim]

I have been doing adwords on google and Yahoo (area + real estate) both for about 2 months. Not any leads yet. On the bright side it is rather inexpensive for advertising.

[pianistu83]

I don't know about you guys but Google Adwords really helped me a lot.
I'm responsable with link exchange campaign for several websites and this was really helpful.;)

[bsystem]

seem it is not a good adv words

[Rusty]

Anyone use Keyword Discovery? Thoughts?

[jimkimmons]

Is Keyword Discovery a product or service trade name?

[builderscut.com]

I've used google adwords with what I think is mixed results Got some traffic my way but I don't think enough..I have also used www.adbrite.com (http://www.adbrite.com) which is much cheeper with what I think the same results

[Kevin Kirtz]

Google Adwords can drive huge amounts of traffic to a website. Remember when starting a campaign, FOCUS. Each campaign should focus in on a specific idea or area. Don't hesitate to split campaigns or groups into individual groups or campaigns if you think they're too spread out idea-wise. And use google's keyword tool. Great tool for starting campaigns. Google Adwords takes time. And a LOT of effort. Hell, I'm specialize in using Adwords for real estate promotion, and I have to spend hours studying to keep on top of the game. Not for the faint of heart, that's for sure.

[Codythebest]

I have used Adwords for another product than RE and got nice results.
Adbrite didn't bring me any significant results.
I also have tested my Adwords campaign.
I found a way to increase my CPM rate from 0.18% up to 0.27%.
I have focused on a 2 word keyphrase. On the 3 line available, I have put the keyphrases by making a > when typed in the search field on Google.
Since they appear in Bold, you can see the > easily.
0.18% to 0.27% is actually 50% increase!!

[Kevin Kirtz]

I have never seen much success with CPM campaigns. I would suggest trying to start 4-5 per-click campaigns and target special parts of that CPM campaign to zone in on specific audiences. One of the keys is to target specialized audiences through many campaigns and ad groups to filter out unwanted traffic and pick up buyers only on many different fronts. Just a suggestion. And the content network is the devil in a cheap tux. Enable it for a few weeks, and see if you lose any money on it, if you do don't hesitate to disable it.

[seosusan]

We have had some luck and even had some major transactions. But they are few and far between. If you are not careful, it will eventually eat away a good portion of the money you made from it.

[RealEstatePromos]

I think the key it to really focus on it and continually refine it. It is not something you can just set and forget, at least in my experience.

[ChristianOC]

PPC campaigns work; they just need to be monitored. Tweak and test, tweak and test. Eventually you'll find what works. Set reasonable limits though, or all that testing will cost you a bundle.

[KaterinaGasset]

Thank you so much golf guy for your advice on adwords! I was getting ready to run an adwords campaign to drive traffic to my new website and was debating to myself which keywords to focus on. Your idea about the communities is perfect! Thanks for sharing.

[tonynoriega]

Its great, if you have the money, especially for this Industry.

My experience (about 1 year of using Google AW)

(sorry if this is reiteration of anyone elses comments)

-Good Titles - Keep them relevant
-1 to 2 keywords in your ad that are on landing page...maybe just 1
-Landing page must be very relevant to your AD....
-Check your campaigns every day.
-Use the Content Network - always worked for me. My impression were huge.

-Use alot of specific adgroups....dont try to throw everything in one group.

..if you are in real estate like myself, i have several new communitites that i use an AdGroup for each one...

-just my 2 cents

[AAO]

I don't know about you guys but Google Adwords really helped me a lot.
I'm responsable with link exchange campaign for several websites and this was really helpful.;)

Can you explain in detail how you did it? I have a chat technology available for real estate agents and want to publicize it through adwords. How do I go about it?

AAO

[dbar]

HHI Golf Guy gives some great advice about targeting



You can get more bang for your buck - and more conversions - by targeting other keywords related to your market. To add to the beauty of that approach – after you find profitable ppc phrases (if you are tracking properly) you then know where to target you seo efforts.

Yes, you may want to try and rank organically for “your town – real estate”, but if you know “community x in your town real estate” is a highly profitable phrase in PPC, you could probably rank organically much easier for that term. If you are on the page twice (ppc & organically) your conversions will go even higher!

[AAO]

Can anyone guide me? I want to know how to track search phrases for an adwords campaign. Is there a tool available? Are they paid or unpaid?

AAO
Live Chat

[nuvru]

The net is the cheapest way to advertise.

Use google adwords to drive targeted traffic directly to your site.

You bid on keywords which you choose and you tell Google how much you are willing to spend per click. Longer "long tail" keywords are cheaper and easier to get the #1 position for. A long tail keyword would be "redlands real estate, 4 bedroom" or something like that.

You find those keywords by using keyword tools that are built into adwords or from third party sites like Keyword Discovery, wordtracker, etc.

They allow you to compile lists of keywords people search for and will often tell you how many times people search per month for that keyword.

So, you can bid on the keywords people would use to find you.

But don't stop there!

Send you're traffic to a landing page specifically designed to capture leads.

Don't send them to your home page! You're throwing money away if you do. If you already do this try testing out a simple, clean landing page that has persuasive copy on it that has a "call to action" on it,, ie. a contact form, a newsletter sign up, a free local real estate guide when you sign up! type of thing.

Hope that helps some.

[AAO]

Thank nuvru,

That was a detailed reply and I will follow it to the letter.

Just one question though- is there a limit as to how much money I can spend and my ads can stop appearing after that limit. I am very scared of click frauds.

AAO
Live Chat

[nuvru]

Google will accept as much money as you want to throw at them.. haha.

But yes you can set daily budgets on how much you want to spend. You can also set monthly limits and have that spread throughout 30 days.

You can tell Goog how much you want to spend per click also,, and that can be anywhere from 5 cents to 10 dollars if you want. It's better to start low and the reporting will tell you where your ad ranks in their list of ads that appear on the right of every page of Google when you search.

TIP: The best places for your ads to appear are either in the first spot (most expensive) or the 7th spot the lowest spot on the first page when you search. For some reason searchers look at the first then the last ads more often. So try and get into those spots. Of course the 7th position is cheaper so you can get more clicks for less.

You can select whether you want your ads to appear on their search network or only when someone searches Google. It's better to leave out their network and that can be set after you create your campaign under Campaign Settings.

You want people that are typing in your desired search terms in Google, not people just browsing other real estate sites.

Click fraud happens more on individuals sites running Adsense since they earn money from the ads and are more likely to try and cheat the system.

TIP: Use Google Analytics on your website pages to track your traffic! They offer great reporting tools to track your visitors, see how they found you, see how many pages they visited, where they came from, etc.

TIP: Adwords offers split testing abilities so if you can actually test two different landing pages to see which converts better. Start with one landing page and then change the headline and test it. Only test one thing at a time. The most common things to test are:


Headline - The first seen and most read part of your landing page.
Offer - Test what you are offering if they sign up for your newsletter or fill out a form.
Proof - Prove your case by telling visitors about why you're the best in the area to go to for Real EstateMedium size copy works better then short or long copy when you are asking people to sign up for a newsletter or fill out a form. They still need to be sold on giving you their info. Don't make it too short. You want to persuade them so you need to give some info on Why they should comply with your request.

You don't want it too long either because you'll have a lot of people drop off your page after thinking they have to read your 5,000 word landing page.

Anyway, hope that helps a bit more. I'd set up an adwords campaign and take it for a test drive. If not I'd hire someone who knows a lot about it.

Regards,

Jeff Hendrickson

PS. I've posted a little bit about Real Estate SEO (http://www.jeffhendricksondesign.com/category/search-engine-optimization/real-estate-seo/) that you can freely read on my blog. I also give away a free set of real estate keywords you can view to get an idea of what to expect for real estate keywords.

[ER Rentals]

I use Adwords at the moment, I'm not really convinced that I'm paying for the real deal here. It gets quite expensive to run and I don't know if there's much follow through with the clicks. 20% are probably from my competitors trying to run up the bill :)

[ExtraArm]

Make sure you install conversion tracking code so you know what users do once they land on your website.

[panamairp]

ive used it in the past. its fairly good. but as with all keyword tools, they should be used for guidance only and not absolute numbers...

[TowerVest]

Hello All!

I've been using google adwords for a couple of months now. I am also using google analytics to track the visit patterns.

I have mixed feelings. It certainly drives a lot of traffic and I do get a reasonable number of clicks, but I find that the keywords I am looking for are quite expensive ($3-4 / click) so often my ads against these keywords are not active.

I like the post that discussed using adwords for early stage traffic driving and then relying on SEO to drive the bulk of traffic.

Cheers,

David.

[HiddenGreece]

Learning about Adwords can be a long process. Google is convincing me that it is quite tricky.

Most exposure goes to your key words with the highest cost per click. General key words cost more and bring in more hits. I am doing real estate in the Greek islands and most of my serious enquries come from people who are searching for a property on a specific island, rather than those who are searching for real estate in Greece.

Thus by being a lot more specific you reduce the cost of Google ads substantially and also increase the number of serious visitors to your site.
You just cut out the time waster for whom you have to pay for every click they make.

If you are looking for as many visitors as possible, irrespective of quality then stick to the general key words. Otherwise don' waste money.

I also use Yahoo ads but they seem to be so incompetent that it is just a waste of time.

[jamesww]

Has anyone seen better luck with Google adwords when using keywords such as Houston homes for sale or Houston Texas Real Estate rather than the generic terms? Also how many fewer clicks do you get when you use these longer keywords?

Thanks,

James

[philippine_real_estate]

Hi james, in my experience we always mix things up. Generic and Specific keywords. Of course we choose carefully which has higher profitability and then bid. They say that even if there are a few clicks on the long specific keywords the chance of getting a sale is high.

[joelrunner]

Can anyone guide me? I want to know how to track search phrases for an adwords campaign. Is there a tool available? Are they paid or unpaid?

AAO
Live Chat
Use google's free conversion counter. All you have to do is paste a snippet of code they provide you on your "thank you page". You'll get instant feedback as to how many visitors to your site are actually taking action.

Not using that tool is just shooting in the dark...