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

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

Labels: google pay per click, landing page, PPC Campaigns, real estate 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

Increasing the time that a visitor stays on your website, increases the likely hood that they will contact you! This metric has been focused on a great deal by companies that run e-commerce websites, but we should be focusing on it as well. Here are 5 tips on how you can increase the time a user spends on your website.

• Pay Per Click Campaigns - Ensure that when you a user visits the landing page, it is what was advertised in the advertisement. For example, if you are advertising "Get a Free Foreclosure List" in your ad, and then the ad takes them to your "Home Page", it is unlikely you will get that user sticking around on your website!
• Links on Every Page - The navigation menus that you have on your website should not be the only way to navigate through your website. Within every page of content you should be linking to other areas WITHIN your website that can provide additional value. This way a user can stay on your website to learn more and see that you are the expert!
• Quality Content - Getting content from your title officer or the library of sources from your template provider is nice, but it is not unique! Concentrate on writing up content about your area from the perspective that only you can provide. Help people learn about neighborhoods, condos, homes, and more through your eyes!
• Calls to Action - Providing great content is essential, but you must also give them a reason to contact you. Make appropriate calls to action like "If you like this neighborhood, get the FREE list of Homes available" or "With lovely tree lined streets here in Bixby Knolls, use our FREE Long Beach MLS to see what is available".
• Multi Media - Sounds obvious, but enrich your pages with pictures, videos, or sound. Great products, like Instant Audio, allow you to put sound on your website for Testimonials or just explaining about your area.

Concentrating on these aspects of your web presence will increase a visitors time on your website and get you more contacts out of the same number of visitors! Our websites have increased by over 1 minute per visitor in just the past month, just by updating some of our Pay Per Click campaigns! :)

Labels: anchor text links, landing page, marketing real estate web site, pay per click, PPC Campaigns, real estate internet marketing, real estate leads, real estate pay per click

If you are focusing or at least are running pay per click ads for your real estate website you want to make sure that you are focusing on always running the right ad. So how can you do this? Well there is a way to make sure that your real estate pay per click ads are fine tuned and operating at the best of their abilities. We walk about a great website today of http://www.splittester.com/. This website is completely FREE and in fact tells you which ad it recommends that you run.

This post is about running ads on Google Adwords and works with their system. It may also help you with your MSN or Yahoo campaigns but the site has been designed for Google.

The great thing that I always like about the Internet is the ability to test an ad's effectiveness. In fact the greatest part is that you can test the effectiveness immediately. Now especially in pay per click advertising you want to make sure you are only spending on ads that you want to.

Hopefully everyone is always running two ads at a time. With Google Adwords you can run different ad variations for the same set of keywords. I always recommend to friends and co-workers to run two ads as Google will run the ad that it deems is the most relevant. They determine this by judging based on the CTR (Click Through Rate). This is simply (number of times the ad is shows)\(number of times the ad has been clicked). As the ads run the one with the higher click through rate will be shown more often. It is hard to judge just by this number which is the better ad. Now since we always want the best chance at success we want to always be testing new messages. If you can get a CTR rate above 1% you are on your way. It is not uncommon for us to have some of our ads have CTR rates above 15% or 17% it just depends on the words and the ad that is running.

A great site http://www.splittester.com/ helps you judge the effectiveness of your ads. This site was created by Perry Marshall and if you have not had a chance to read any of his books on Google I would highly recommend them. I hope this site helps everyone judge the effectiveness of their ads!

Labels: paid ads, pay per click, PPC Campaigns, real estate internet marketing solution, real estate marketing online, real estate pay per click

Testing your landing pages is what can help you to get more contacts out of the same visitors! Landing pages are where you send your customers from you online marketing like pay per click. Often as soon as we get some results that we are happy with, we stop trying to see if we could improve those results :).

For simple testing of pages you may want to consider changing the following changes to different versions:

1. Display the same adcopy in a different format (i.e. with bullet points or bolded)
2. Drastically different adcopy to get he same idea across
3. Different colors on your page
4. Change Page Titles on each version
5. Provide a Guarantee on some versions and none on the others

The professional SEOs recommended testing anywhere from 3-9 versions! Try testing a few different landing pages with your real estate pay per click ads to see what has the greatest impact. A great BLOG post by SEOmoz, a leading SEO company in Seattle, put together an in-depth article so you can consider different aspects of Landing pages and how to convert visitors.

Labels: BLOG, lading pages, pay per click, real estate pay per click, SEO