Which page for ppc landing?

[Ryan Ward]

I am having a hard time trying to figure out which of these pages I should try to land people on and would love to hear some opinions. Currently I have people landing on the city page. I started my ppc campaign 3 days ago and have had 29 clicks @ 1.7% overall. Some keywords are over 10% but they are over $2/click. I am just starting out my campaign so I am only using one of the areas I serve. Should I land them here on the city page (not my homepage) or here on my search page. I have to say that I have a very basic search IDX framed into my site that is provided by my mls and it doesn't allow for registering guests so anyone interested will have to fill out a contact form. I would really like some suggestions as I have been reading through these threads and I feel like I am starting to get a feel for it. I use some negative keywords to help eliminate impressions and so forth. Any help here would be greatly appreciated. If you think my search is that bad, I would like to know that also. My goal is improve my site over time and start ppc now until, hopefully, I will get some organic unique visitors. BTW, the ugly black logo in the framed search will eventually be updated to look like the logo in the top left of my site whenever my broker gets around to it!

Thank you in advance,
Ryan

[RonnieG]

I send my PPC users to a community specific search page, which includes only a little bit about searching for homes in that community, a link to the larger community info page on my site, and a pre-built community specific home search. If you send them to a community page, just make sure you have some strong call to action links to the search page, right at the top of the landing page. Google wants to see that you are taking the user to a page that delivers what they want.

If you are only getting 1.5% CTR, you probably need to work on your ad text to include a stronger call to action, and for sure the name of the specific community in the ad, and not just in the keyword. All of my landing page urls are very community specific, which some say helps get a better Google QS, and from a consumer standpoint, my experience has been that consumers like to see a community specific url before they click, as it provides some assurance that they will get to a page that delivers what they are looking for.

On your search page, you need to increase the vertical size of the search frame to the max your search plug-in would ever need, so users don't have to scroll it.

I would also eliminate the contact form from your community page. Google really does not like PPC users to be sent directly to a page that has a form requesting personal information. That can lower your AdWords QS and increase your CPC significantly.

[Ryan Ward]

Ronnie,

Thanks for the insight about the contact form, I've removed it. I also lengthened the page to eliminate the scroll. As far as ads go, I keep changing them when the CTR goes below 1%. The two ads I have now are 2.02% CTR with 700 impressions and 1 click for 9 imprssions for the second ad. I may have misunderstood you, but, it sounds like you are saying to have one ad per keyword - or are you just saying that I should at least repeat the keyword in the text as well as the first line of the ad?

Thanks in advance,

Ryan

[RonnieG]

At least one ad group per community, and I usually have three. One group each for: "mycommunity mystate homes", "mycommunity mystate houses", "mycommunity mystate real estate". This lets me build more highly specific ad headlines and text for each group. And yes, I try to repeat the main keywords twice, once in the headline, and once somewhere in the two lines of ad text. In addition, I try to use the community name twice, spell out the complete state name once, and use the state abbreviation once in each ad. A few long community names mean I sometimes have to get creative and compromise on some of these goals. Those with very long state names could find this a challenge as well. Average CTR for my ads this month is running around 10%. Some better, some worse. States where abbreviations may not help much, in the ad or in the keywords: IN, OR, or any other abbreviation that is a "connector" word Google strips from searches.

Google does not reward you for changing your ads often. Quite the opposite. Part of its QS is the long term CTR history for an a keyword/ad combination. Each time you change your ad, the CTR history goes back to zero.

If you don't change your bids or ads, try to track what happens to your average ad position and CPC after removing the registration form from the community page.

[webmaster]

Incidentally, for those that don't know QS, Ronnie is referencing Google's quality Score which is defined as

Quality Score

Quality Score is the basis for measuring the quality and relevance of your ads and determining your minimum CPC bid for Google and the search network. This score is determined by your keyword's clickthrough rate (CTR) on Google, and the relevance of your ad text, keyword, and landing page.

We believe high quality ads attract more clicks, encourage user trust, and result in better long-term performance. To encourage relevant and successful ads within AdWords, our system defines a Quality Score to set your keyword status, minimum CPC bid, and ad rank for the ad auction.

[Ryan Ward]

To a smaller point that you were discussing. It appears that your text add can show a URL that doesn't even exist. Ronnie, you said that people seem to prefer clicking on a URL that has more relevance to the search. I typed in a URL that displays as www.youralpharettahome dot com for the URL text in the add and that is what it shows the URL to be in the ad. When you click on it, it takes you to my landing page (different URL). In your opinion or anyone else's, do you think this might pose any problems? This is much easier than doing redirects and buying other domain names simply for ppc. It also appears more relevant than my websites true URL. So, is this a cool trick, or something that will backfire. Google gives the option when you make the ad to show a different URL than the page so I guess as long as noone is using the fake URL it should be o.k.

[RonnieG]

As long as the landing page url is on the same domain, no problem at all.

If you use redirects, it potentially can be a problem, but is not necessarily a violation of AdWords editorial guidelines or TOS. In fact, many AdWords advertisers use redirects to send users to the web site of their distribution/marketing partner, with a referral ID that tells that partner where the click came from. In my case, I do use redirects, from a very community specific domain name to a landing page in a community specific folder on my main site. Since the keyword, ad text and landing page contents all match, it hasn't harmed my QS at all, and probably enhances QS, since I can make the domain name exactly match the community name. You could do the same a bit more simply with a third level domain redirecting to the community specific landing page, or by naming the landing page with the community name.

[webmaster]

I would not use a ficticious URL if that is what you are saying.

Like I could have my ad "Real Estate Forums" and point it to realestatewebmasters.com/forum.php but have the display URL realestatewebmasters.com

But I would not have it display realestateforums.com and go to realestatewebmasters.com/forum.php because I don't own that domain and would not want to advertise someone else's website

[Ryan Ward]

I read through G's guidelines and they don't want them so that settles that.

[RonnieG]

I read through G's guidelines and they don't want them so that settles that.

Where? How? If you are referring to fictitious/artificial urls, than I agree. But if the landing page url is a real one, that accurately reflects the landing page file name (url), then you should be OK.

I always use domain level redirects or third level domains that point to real community specific landing pages for lots of my ads, with nothing but great results, and they have been approved and active for over two years. I have had a couple of times when a new and inexperienced Google ad reviewer misinterpreted their own guidelines and deactivated one or two ads. But they have always been reactivated immediately when I notify my contact in G's Ad Quality team. They now have a note on my account about the past issues, and have added specific training for their new ad reviewers in this area. The guidelines are that the display url and landing page url (in the ad) must match, and the target url must be to a working web site landing page that delivers what the ad promises, and the displayed url on the landing page must be accurate. In other words, no masking. Their specific guidelines are very carefully crafted, and do NOT explicitly prohibit using third level domains or redirects, if used honestly and without masking. If they really meant to prohibit those, their guidelines would be very specific on that point.

Play it totally safe if you are more comfortable. But a community specific third level domain redirect should never be questioned, since the domain name and suffix will be clearly the same all the way from the display url in the ad to the final landing page. The issue will be that if you advertise for multiple communities, and the community name is not in the displayed url, your CTR will not be as good because the consumer often will pass your ad by if they do not see the specific community name in the displayed url. That is a proven fact, from almost 3 years of painful and costly AdWords experience, and not just conjecture on my part. QS may therefore suffer, making your CPC and overall AdWords costs per lead higher. To me, the difference between a 2% average CTR and 10% average CTR is well worth being on the edge. That's a 5x increase in the visitors to my site, resulting in 5x the number of prospect registrations, and therefore a much lower cost per transaction.