CA or no CA?

[Oaklandhomespecialist]

I'm trying to figure out if my biggest keyword is Oakland Ca Real Estate or Oakland Real Estate. When I use the overture tool (which I hear isnt that accurate?) it says that there were like 6 thousand more searches in march for Oakland Ca Real Estate as opposed to Oakland Real Estate. I assumed that the most popular real estate keyword was ususally "city real estate".

But I guess there are several Oakland's througout the country, so maybe more people are typing in the CA with it.

Is the overture tool accurate? I was going to try to compare the highest bid for the PPC but it looks like that tool is gone from overture.

Any insight anyone?

[Ted S]

Like Google, Yahoo (formerly Overture) now uses a quality score which looks at the bid amount, click thru rate and other factors to determine ranking spots. As such, the old Overture tool for viewing the top bid is no longer in place (likely because knowing the bid and the placement would let you infer the ad's effectiveness). This means there is no real way to know exactly what someone spends for their bid but because both sites now rank on quality versus highest bid, there's a real benefit from good ad copy and good keyword selection.

As a last point of consideration, keep in mind that consumers may search several times and visit several sites before deciding to take action and call you. As such, you want to be on the initial big term (oakland real estate) as well as the much more granular terms which they may be using on their second or third search after they've done some initial research into the market.

The Overture tool is fairly accurate at showing Yahoo's volume but keep in mind, Google is far bigger. I generally use Overture along with Wordtracker to get a good estimate for a set of keywords but I've found that there can be a great deal of seasonal fluctuation throughout the year, and even day by day changes to different terms. Often times the keyword that shows as having the most volume is too broad and doesn't preform as well as something a bit more targeted thus making it worth less bid wise. Higher volume keywords also tend to have higher bids so while you should definitely explore, test and probably try to rank high for your major terms, building out a keyword list that takes advantage of the long tail (smaller terms with less searches but less cost as well) is a very wise idea.

Lastly, when you think about a term, think about the context the potential customer would use it in. As a former Oakland resident, I rarely thought of myself as living in Oakland, CA versus just Oakland. It's likely the case that many of your potential clients think this way as well, and even if there are other oaklands, you may be losing people by making your terms too exclusive. You can always search on "Oakland real estate" and see what other words people are adding on and use negative keywords to remove anything that's not relevant. You can also use exact matches to insure people are searching for this term, rather than "Oakland VA Real Estate" or such.

Also keep in mind that many searchers start out with a broader term (Oakland real estate) and visit several sites conducting multiple searches as they narrow down their train of thought. Ideally, you want to be listed on both the broad and narrow terms and want to find a good way for tracking people who click on both so you can give credit to the "helper" term and the "converting" term -- this can be a bit difficult from a tracking perspective but it makes your ad spend more accurate.

[RonnieG]

If you will be using Google AdWords, the answer is simple:

One campaign containing the ad for "communityname st real estate", "communityname statename real estate", (and homes, houses, etc.), with the campaign geo-targeted to all English speaking countries a consumer may be coming from.

Another separate campaign for all just "communityname real estate" (and homes, houses, etc) with the campaign geo-targeted only to the applicable state.

If you co-mingle the keyword variations in one nationally geo-targeted campaign, that's when you get into trouble with duplicate community names in different states, and that cannot be solved with negative keywords alone.

[Oaklandhomespecialist]

If you will be using Google AdWords, the answer is simple:

One campaign containing the ad for "communityname st real estate", "communityname statename real estate", (and homes, houses, etc.), with the campaign geo-targeted to all English speaking countries a consumer may be coming from.

Another separate campaign for all just "communityname real estate" (and homes, houses, etc) with the campaign geo-targeted only to the applicable state.

If you co-mingle the keyword variations in one nationally geo-targeted campaign, that's when you get into trouble with duplicate community names in different states, and that cannot be solved with negative keywords alone.

Thanks Ronnie, that's great info, and something I hadn't considered. I am using ppc for some of the longtails, but not for the big ones. I will give more thought to my campaign now but Oakland real estate is over $4.00/click!

But I though this would be a good place for the post since it had to do with keywords.

I recently used a free tool on Bruce Clay's site that supposedly estimates search traffic for terms. It said that Oakland Ca real estate gets roughly twice the the searches that Oakland real estate gets. This seems ironic since there are many Oakland's throughout the country. I assume my Oakland is more popular than all the other ones.

[RonnieG]

I will give more thought to my campaign now but Oakland real estate is over $4.00/click!

I just set up a test ad for various Oakland CA real estate terms, using your site's Oakland home search page as the landing page, with my standard national campaign "real estate" ad text and keyword phrases. None of the "real estate" keyword phrases should cost more than $2.50 for positions 1-3 in AdWords, according to the "Traffic Estimator" in their "New Ad Group Setup" process. With only two exceptions, you should be in positions 1-3 for under $2/click. If you are hearing higher CPC from other local AdWords users, their ads and/or landing pages must not be that good, so Google is giving them a low QS.

To use the AdWords traffic estimator, you have to actually set up an ad group, with the applicable landing page, ad text and keywords, and default CPC bid for the new ad group. Once you get that far, AdWords setup gives you a "View Traffic Estimator" link on the same page as where you enter the default CPC bid. Click that link, and it will show you its estimates of ad positions and clicks per day for each keyword phrase, based on that bid, and assuming it has enough information about the specific keyword phrase to do that. In some markets, and for some low volume communities, it may not be able to arrive at estimates for many keyword phrases, so you just have to work through the bid adjustments from actual ad group performance stats over the first couple of weeks the ads run.

This tool is not always 100% accurate, but is what I use to set initial bids, and I find it is a good guideline. Many times, I end up reducing bids on some keywords after a few days, simply because Google has over estimated CPC, and/or underestimated the power of the "Call to Action" in my ads. When that happens, my CTR is much higher than Google thought it would be, so my QS gets better, and minimum bid prices go down for the better positions.

I have several CA PPC clients, in some very competitive markets. Their multiple community campaign average CPC is generally in the $1.30 to $1.60 range, across the board, with CTRs in the 4% to 8% range for national campaign ad groups, depending on the community name, and somewhat lower CTRs, but similar CPCs, for their state targeted campaign and ad groups.