AD Words

[FairwayandIsle]

I am getting ready to start an AD Words campaign...

With that said I wanted to hear peoples opinions, what worked well, what didn't work. Did you use very specific keywords or did you use long tail keywords. On your first campaign did you set a lower budget to "test the waters"

And lastly any advice??

[jamesww]

Where's Ronnie. This is a Ronnie specialty question. You might try and find one of his posts as I think he is likely the number one expert on adwords.

The only advice I have when you put together a ad is to make sure your keywords are rather narrowly focused and then write an ad with the components below.

1. Use keyword as title
2. Benefits
3. Features

Then produce two ads to split test against one another after each ad has had at least 30 clicks. Once you have this data select the winner by CTR.

[FairwayandIsle]

Thanks James, that is good advice.

[RonnieG]

For what it's worth:

For very tightly targeted smaller communities, like subdivisions or condo complexes, a few broad match keywords and one or two ads works fine, primarily due to low search volumes and generally very little competition.

However, for the best AdWords Quality Scores and lowest cost per click for larger communities (cities, towns, large metro areas), you will need several carefully crafted "call to action" ads and matching long tail keyword sets for each community, and for various property types and different real estate services within that community. I typically build up to 10 different buyer ads and keyword sets for each city/town. Specific ad texts and keywords are proprietary, so don't ask.

The importance of and techniques for negative keywords, geo targeting and campaign scheduling are covered in many previous posts in this forum.

Still, there are some metro areas where AdWords is simply not cost effective, due to very high levels of competition and resulting cost per click, so you just have to try it and see if it works for you.

[AnnAnderson1015]

Make sure to back your adwords up with strong SEO for your site.This will help keep the cost per ad down and will allow for more impressions.

[RonnieG]

Make sure to back your adwords up with strong SEO for your site.This will help keep the cost per ad down and will allow for more impressions.

AdWords and SEO do not interact, not directly at least. Having great site SEO and SERPs does not affect AdWords costs or ad positions in any way, and vice-versa. All that is important to AdWords is its own internal Quality Score, which does take into account how well your keyword phrases and ad texts match the applicable landing page title, meta description and page contents. All of those factors need to be in close alignment with each other.

Also, total impression count is not as important as getting appropriate, quality impressions that will drive traffic. In fact, more impressions often yields lower CTR, which is a percentage of clicks to impressions, and as a result, Quality Score goes down and cost per click goes up. That's why it is critical to have a strong and comprehensive negative keywords list.

[scottiegrace]

WHen I started I was the first one in my region to do it and I targeted everything! It didn't cost me even 5c per click. I had my competition's brokerage's names in there and individual REALTORS in my area. It was super cheap compared to today. Now It's $1.50 to be on the first page of Halifax Real Estate. That is why I had to start doing SEO.

[NealRM]

I am not really thrilled with the ROI on adwords. I recently stopped my adword advertising because it only brought in 270 vistors for the month and cost $200. I think I can do better with other advertising options.

[scottiegrace]

The more competition the more it will cost unfortunately.