One of the key challenges we face as web site designers is getting a web site ready for an effective PPC campaign.

I have found that a PPC ad campaign does not really work well if your landing page is your home page. You have to offer a very specific service in your PPC ad, and when the user gets to the landing page, that service must be the one and only service on the page, or they will be confused and may simply go to another ad or site. Nine times out of ten, they will also go away if the very first thing they see is a registration form asking for their personal information, or they will simply give you bogus contact info to get by the form.

So, if your PPC ad says:

Mytown ST Homes for Sale
Homes for Sale in Mytown Mystate
Buy/Sell, Search All Listings Now!
www.MytownHomes.com

Then the landing page must be a community specific home search for Mytown, preferably one with homes for sale displayed immediately or with no more than a single click, and not a generic search form where they have to enter lots of specifications and go through several more pages to actually see homes in that community.

I prefer to let users browse basic listings info as much as they like, and I require them to register only when they want to save a listing, save a search, request email new listing alerts, or request more info or a showing appointment for a particular listing. Most of the time, this would be a function of your IDX, so you should look for an IDX solution that operates this way. This process allows the user to be anonomous for awhile, which most Internet users appreciate and demand. When they are ready, they will raise their hand and let you know who they are. It also allows me to focus my time and efforts on the serious prospects, and let the "lookie-lous" poke around on my site until they do become serious. And believe me, if you don't harrass them, the lookie lous will come back and eventually register, on their own timeline.

You may have noticed that the landing page URL in the example above says: www.MytownHomes.com. This is another way to let consumers know that the target site is specifically for that community. For each community I service and build PPC campaigns for, I buy and use a community specific URL, and direct it to the community specific home search page on my site, usually by pointing the primary domain name to a third level domain on my Point2Agent site that points to the specific web page, since it can have a rather long URL. Third level domains are great for this purpose.

Note on seller PPC ads: I don't do them any more. In my market, they rarely attract consumers, and even when they do, they rarely result in registrations or CMA requests. Therefore, I focus all of my PPC efforts and investment on buyers, and since many are also local sellers, I get them anyway.