I am interested in knowing how many users of this forum actually use PPC. There is a poll set up.

If yes, how well has it worked for you
If no, why not?

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Don't miss out on the 12 days of Christmas promo

I don't see the point in paying for people to come to my website. Hopefully I've optimized enough to get traffic from natural results.

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Brevard MLS Search
Satellite Beach Real Estate
Advanced Brevard MLS Search

It is very useful for very targeted KW's IMO. Example---A new condo downtown that people in the area may be searching for--You could have a higher ranked page about that property than the home page of the property because they just got their site up and going.

Niche neighborhood KW searches, etc.

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I don't use PPC because I believe it takes thousands of hits for any results to occur. I'd rather be patient and generate this traffic naturally than fork out money for ppc.

Also, my market is saturated and highly competitive. I'm not paying $20 a click to be on page one.

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Dana Point Real Estate - Laguna Niguel Real Estate - San Clemente Real Estate

I am doing it - testing it out. nothing to report as yet.
john

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Fort Lauderdale Real Estate | Fort Lauderdale Condo | Fort Lauderdale MLS

Hi Tim,

I did a brief search in Overture for a couple of your terms. Laguna Beach is costing $2.16 per click to be #1 in Yahoo. You could probably expect the same for Google. I'm not sure where $20 per click is coming from, but it's really easy to see your competition and what they are bidding on:

http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/rc/srch/

Google does not have this type of tool yet, but I've not see these vary too much from se to se. Laguna Beach has very high end properties and if you did consider ppc, I think it would be worth the money spent, perhaps a smaller budget of $300 per month. I just set up a client in Yahoo for Houston Texas and it is rockin and rolling. If you are interested in their promo go to www.cash.overture.com and do the sign up yourself deal. You will get $100 worth of free clicks - you could even set your budget for $50 to start, get the $100 of free clicks and see how this performs. Don't overdue it with keywords, keep it simple. When you have an effective ppc campaign, you can also work the terms into your seo.

Well the only issue is I'm getting about 1,000 unique visitors per month to my site and no real prospects out of it. Augmenting that by about 150 a month using ppc would probably just be a waste. My hope is that when I'm really high on google and getting a lot more traffic I'll start to get some deals. So far though it's making me nervous.

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Dana Point Real Estate - Laguna Niguel Real Estate - San Clemente Real Estate

Google and Yahoo work when set up correctly, work. It's no different than having a great site and sending business, and a poorly constructed site and sending business. A nice site with properly set up Google and Yahoo is valuable.

Tim, your site is easy to navigate, has good information, and would be of value to do ppc's.

There are many scenarios that make or break your ppc campaigns. If you already have business outside of your website that you rely on, then waiting until you rank organically is a good choice. If you need to bring in business to your website for leads, then a solid ppc is a great way to go.

It always amazes me when clients tell me they are spending $$$ in magazines, newspapers, offline marketing and can't track their results. But need to scrimp on their website. Online marketing is where it is at. Organically is the best way to go, but the time, money and effort takes a sincere commitment and budget to make that happen.

If you have business coming outside of your online efforts, then definitely work on organic. If you want leads to come in that you can work with immediately, then pure ppc is the way to go. Stay away from Homegain or other programs of this nature. They are simply Google on steriods.

Overture (Yahoo) has changed their free credit program, that was time sensitive.

Well I guess my logic is that I want to see if a website will even generate business in my market first. I've gotten hundreds of form submissions, 90% with false info, zero prospects. If I was able to get a closed deal from the site I'd consider reinvesting that into some ppc advertising. However, like I said I'm getting decent traffic now and nothing is converting. I know you might be thinking, "well maybe you aren't closing them properly". The thing is when I started this site it was for a different market where I closed a couple deals with a tenth of the traffic I'm getting now. So you see where I'm very cautious about investing further in this market when I'm not getting any return?

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Dana Point Real Estate - Laguna Niguel Real Estate - San Clemente Real Estate

Cherie,

Do your clients have good success with Yahoo PPC? is there a measurable difference between the results ($$$$$$$) in ROI?

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