Has anyone ever read the sentence in Google where they tell you not to use more than 20 words per ad? It is right above the area where you add new keywords to an ad group. This small one sentence is terrific advice that unfortunately I rarely see followed. I have seen ads that have literally over 1,000 words pointing to the same ad.

So why shouldn't you use more than 20 words per ad? Well let's take a look at some great reasons to have less than 20 words per ad and see why?

1. Your ad should use your keyword - If you have 20 words that are similar to each other you can use them in your ad. Keeping your list to 20 will allows you to do that. Remember that "Santa Monica CA home" and "Santa Monica CA homes" are two different words that are close to each other and would work well in the same ad group.
2. The more specific your ad the better it will perform - we all want better performing ads because that means cheaper costs, a better Click Through Rate, and more people visiting. When your ad matches the words it is advertising on it will appeal to more to the people searching.
3. More than 20 words makes it hard to make the landing page match - Remember that your landing page should match up with your ad. Remember if you are advertising on "Santa Monica CA Home" than your landing page should have a title and a heading that mention that same phrase. This connects the ad with the page and makes the visitor likely to stay longer and request more information.
4. Your domain name hopefully has your keyword in it - If you have 20 words that are similar to each other you can either have a domain name that contains them or at least a directory for that phrase that you can display to the potential visitor. The more times that a potential visitor can see the keyword or phrase in the ad the more likely they are to click the ad and visit your website.

Remember that the more specific you are in your ad the better off you will be. You will reap the rewards in lower costs and better CTR(Click Through Rates) which means more visitors and more customers.

To Your Success online!

Labels: Google Adwords, real estate pay per click

When we are setting up a new Google Adwords campaign it is important to be as specific as possible with the ad and the keywords that you select. We found that some of the biggest frustrations with Google Adwords is what words should people select to advertise on and then once they have those words what ad should they put with those words.

So we have the two problems:

• Word Choice
• Ad matching those words

Let's keep this as simple as possible. Sometimes it is easier to write the ad before the keyword selection. You can always write the ad and then modify the key words.

Lets look at the ad that above. The ad is for Spring Valley Homes. Now The web address has CA in it so it is the Spring Valley in California and not the one in Indiana.

Ad Matching those keywords

When we hit a wall with keywords selection we will write an ad first and then find the words that will go along with that ad. In the example above we have an ad for Spring Valley Homes. It is simple and to the point.

Word Choice

This is usually the harder part of the equation. So in our ad example above we mention Spring Valley Homes. A few rules for adding keywords to an adgroup are that you don't want more than 30 keywords. This actually makes it easier because the ad will match better to a smaller set of words.

A sample word list for the ad above would be as follows:

• Spring Valley Home Sales
• "Spring Valley Home Sales"
• [Spring Valley Home Sales]
• Spring Valley home sale
• [Spring Valley home sale]
• Home Spring Valley sale
• Sale Spring Valley Home
• Spring Valley CA Home
• [Spring Valley CA Home]
• Spring Valley CA Home Sale

For why we use brackets or quotes see the post on match types. As you can see above the variances in the keywords for that ad are small. You are always better off having less keywords in an adgroup than more as it will increase performance of your ad because the ad will be more specific.

We hope this helps you focus your ads and your keywords and remember to take it step by step to make things easier. Implementing the strategies above helped many of our ads increase conversion by over 10% and increase Click Through Rate 30%.

Labels: Google Adwords, google pay per click

For those who are new to Google Adwords there are 4 different types of matching that can be done for your ads. They are as follows:

• Broad Match
• Exact Match
• Phrase Match
• Negative Match

These are used when you add words to your ad groups. For today's post we are going to cover Broad Match and Exact Match. By the way one is not really better than the other it just depends on what your goals are. So let's get into each one and figure out why we would want to use each one differently in our real estate ads.

For all of our examples today we will use the word that we are advertising on as 'Spring Valley Homes' in reference to my hometown of Spring Valley, CA.

Broad Match

If I want to advertise on the search phrase 'Spring Valley Homes' and I want a match that covers as many different search possibilities as possible I will add the phrase Spring Valley Homes to my Google Ad Group without "",[], or - around the word. I would merely just add the word to my campaign. So what does this mean then.

This means any time someone types any phrase that contains the words spring valley homes my ad will appear. So what are the problems with this. If someone typed in the following phrases I would appear:

• spring valley homes for rent
• homes spring valley by food
• food in spring valley homes
• Rent spring valley homes

This means my ad is possibly showing up to people who I don't need to see my ad and may click it even though I don't want them to. Keep in mind this isn't always a bad thing but it is a very broad search and for that reason you will want to watch your ads carefully.

Exact Match

This is basically the opposite of a broad match search. When you put [] around your words such as [Spring Valley Homes] that means the user must type exactly that phrase. In fact if they type anything else before or after those words your ad will not trigger. The sample list below shows when my ad would NOT show up.

• Spring Valley Homes for sale
• Spring valley homes for purchase
• buy spring valley homes

Now you can see that I would miss out on these searches but I would get anyone interested in just Spring Valley Homes. I would probably be getting a person just starting their search and that is who I would be targeting with the ad.

Each match type has it's place in your ad groups. You want to make sure to use different types of match types in your ad so it triggers for different types of users. Have fun with it and you can always check out the free guide I wrote on Improving Your Performance on Google Adwords. We also have a free video tutorial section on different portions of Google Adwords as well at http://www.onlinerealestatesuccess.com/resources_video_tutorials.shtml.

Labels: Google Adwords, pay per click, real estate pay per click

One of the things that can frustrate anyone who uses Google AdWords is not seeing results. Now one of the surest ways to make sure you don't get the results you desire is to drive all visitors from Your Google AdWords Campaign to your home page. There are reasons for this so we will go over our

1. They are looking for something specific - this is the best reason not to point an ad to your home page. A user who clicks your ad has something very specific in mind. Your home page is general. Give them what they want.
2. It will take more visitors to get the same results - If you weren't paying for each and every visitor this may not be a big deal but you are. So if you have to pay for 10 times as many visitors to get the same results then you are just wasting money.
3. It is not how Google Recommends you to do it - Now Google even tells you in various tutorials that you want to make your ads specific and make sure they match up to your landing page or destination page. Ensuring that you follow a winning formula is a great way to ensure success.
4. Your Visitor wasn't trying to get to your home page - often times the home page is a great place to start for a user who finds you organically because it provides an array of choices to start their visit but the visitor wasn't trying to get to a general page.

Remember you want your ads to go to pages that match up to exactly what the user was looking for. In a perfect world each ad would go to it's own page and that would be exactly what the user was looking for. Since we don't have the time for perfection we want to strive toward it and make sure that each ad goes to a page within the website that matches to that ad. If you don't have a page that matches the ad you may want to ad a page. Good luck with Google. For more information on how to improve your ads check out our 5 Tips to Improve Ad Performance Guide.

Labels: Google Adwords, google pay per click, pay per click

Google Adwords is a great program to get traffic to your website instantly. In fact it is the quickest way that you can get visitors to your website.

Now having people visit your real estate website is great but having them convert to buyer leads or selling leads is better. So how can you tell if people converted to leads? Well you use Google's conversion tracking code that's how. Don't be afraid if you aren't a technical wizard. Thanks to Google you don't have to be. So let's go over 4 Great Reasons to Use Google Conversion Code.

1. 1. It is easy to implment the code - Google gives you the code necessary in order to track how many people converted to a lead from your paid ad.
2. You will know the cost of your leads - nothing helps you determine if your money is being well spent wisely than knowing what you are getting for your dollars.
3. You have something to judge success on - You want a conversion rate of at least 5% on all of your landing pages. Some of our landing pages have conversion rates as high as 36%.
4. Google gives you tutorials - if you want to put this code in yourself google offers multiple tutorials in both print and in video format that make it easy to get going.

So get that code added today so you can begin to have the kind of success you want out of your Google Ad campaigns. The picture above shows where you need to go in your Google Adwords account to get things started.

Labels: Google Adwords, google pay per click

Labels: Google, Google Adwords, google analytics, google pay per click, Google Webmaster Tools, pay per click, real estate pay per click

If you have a Google (R) adwords account we hope that you have logged in to it in the last several days. What you noticed is a message announcing a change to how Google will determine which ads appear above the search results. So what did they do and most importantly how will this affect you and your ads.

1. The maximum price you are willing to pay for a click will now count! - This is known as Max CPC. Prior to this change your Max CPC did not affect (directly) where you were in the placement. It related only in comparison with your competitors. So the higher you are willing to pay for a click will now add greater weight to were you are placed. You will still only pay more than the person below you and won't necessarily pay your max. You will also never be charged more than your Max CPC.
2. Quality Score still matters the most - This is the secret Google formula. They determine a quality score for your ad. Hint though the better your CTR (Click Through Rate) the better your quality score is going to be. So even if you are willing to outspend all of your competitors if you can't write a quality ad you still will not be placed above them.

So now you can have better control to get the top spot. Now just because you can get the top spot doesn't always mean you should get it. Remember you have a greater likely hood to get more clicks at the top although sometimes it isn't the quality that you would want. There are many times where spot 3-6 are 50% less or more than the top spot and generate you quality traffic and more important customers who are willing to purchase. Keep that in mind as you make changes to your Google Adwords accounts. Good luck and may you achieve your results!

Labels: Google, Google Adwords, google search, Google Webmaster Tools, keywords, real estate pay per click

So why would you want to increase your click through rate? Well it means that more people find your ad compelling and want to see what you have to offer. There is nothing better than increasing your click through rate on the ads you run on Google, MSN, or Yahoo. So we thought we would put some of our favorite ways to increase the click through rate.

1. Use the keyword that you are advertising on in the title of the ad. For instance if you want to advertise on the word "San Diego Condos". Make sure this shows up in the title. It could be as simple as "All San Diego Condos".
2. Use the key word in the domain name. Users on search engines and the search engines themselves reward for the word you are advertising on appearing multiple times within the ad. So in our above example if our domain was www.LovelySanDiegoCondos.com that would be fantastic. The user would see the word they typed in multiple times in your ad. Remember you don't have to have a separate website just a domain name that points to the landing page on your website that you want it to go to. You can pick up more domain names at www.TopAgentDomains.com. Now you don't have to have a domain name for every keyword but for the top 5 or 10 you want to dominate in we highly recommend it.
3. Make sure all your ads tell the user the benefit of going to your website not just a feature. For example a feature would be FREE MLS. The benefit would be "See all available homes without signing up". Remember it is about them not us.

We hope these three tips help you increase the performance of your ads today. Good luck on the Internet!

Labels: Google Adwords, msn, paid ads, pay per click, PPC Campaigns, Yahoo

Often in the old advertising world of long ago you had to mail items out and wait to see how the response rate went or you waited for the magazine ad to go out and you waited to see if you got calls. If you didn't get any calls you changed the ad. But this process took weeks at best. It is expensive testing and you were having to deal with designers, copy write people, and the publisher as well. Now don't get me wrong magazines are not dead and we are not writing them off. But the beauty of Google and Yahoo is that their system allows you to check instantly whether you are doing things well.

In fact you get to know almost instantly how things are going. Set-up an add, select keywords, set a budget, and 5 minutes later the faucet is open. If you get a bunch of people clicking and visiting your website but now buys or sign ups you should look at your website. No one clicking your ad, then look at the copy. The great part is you can do this in minutes on Google.

Try different things, look at others ads, and most of all test. So if you want to know how your ad is performing just log into your Google Adwords account and check. It will tell you what your CTR(Click Through Rate) is. Your goal should be to keep this over 1%. Your sign up rate should be over 4%. If you aren't acheiving these than look at your ad or your copy on the landing page. In future posts we will highlight some changes you can make to landing pages.

Labels: advertising, Google Adwords

It is always amazing when people say "I have the perfect ad, can't get any better, no way, no how, never going to happen." Now this could very well be the case but then you ask that person how do they know and they have no idea they just say they do.

Luckily if you advertise with Google Adwords they give you an option that allows you to run two ads at the time same for the same set of key words. Now the ads aren't literally running at the same time but what Google does is alternate them. Google keeps doing this until it determines which is the better ad. Now since Google is a system and not a person it judges your ad based on the number of times that someone clicks on it. The more people click the more that Google determines that this ad is "more effective". Now we always say you should double check things. There is a fantastic website that allows you to do just that. In fact it will even tell you which ad it feels is the better ad.

You can visit this website at www.splittester.com. This website is 100% free and gives you a great tip on how to make sure that your ads are performing at their best.

Just make sure that you always have two ads running at all times and you can make sure that you always have the best ad running. When one starts to fall too far behind in performance check it out against splittester.com. If it agrees with Google sounds like you need to delete the ad and write another one to take its place! Good luck and happy ad writing!

Labels: advertising, Google, Google Adwords, paid ads, pay per click, SEO