How Top Real Estate Professionals Get Great Leads on...

How Top Real Estate Professionals Get Great Leads on Google

Pay Per Click Advertising For Your Real Estate Business

The Power of Google Adwords

© Copyright 2012 by Gabrielle Jeans, e2000 Training Institute Inc. and RealEstateGab.com . All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, reprinted, entered into an information storage and retrieval system, or otherwise circulated in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording without prior written permission of Gabrielle Jeans.

Pay Per Click advertising has been around since 1998, one of the earliest years of when the internet started gaining widespread, worldwide usage for both personal and business usage. By 2009 it’s estimated that $15 billion has been spent to date on Pay Per Click advertising. And that spending is accelerating – FAST. Forrester Research estimates $31 billion will be spent in Pay Per Click advertising in 2014 alone and by that year Pay Per Click will take up a large portion (21%) of all money spent on advertising in all mediums.

Google is at the forefront of Pay Per Click advertising with their Adwords Pay Per Click program. Their 2008 revenue was about $22 billion, 97% of which was from advertising revenues.

What Is Pay Per Click Advertising?The simplest way of defining this type of advertising is as follows. First, you make an arrangement for a partner company to host your advertisements online on their site. Whenever someone visits that partner’s site and is interested in ones of your ads they can click it and get brought to a page on your website or other page you specify. You then pay that partner company a certain amount of money for each person who takes this exact action of clicking your ad once.

The amount you pay that partner company per click, when and where your ad displays, how often it displays, and so on are all variables we’ll explore in depth in this e-book.

The Origins And Early Evolution Of Pay Per Click AdvertisingPay Per Click wasn’t around in the early days of the internet. Pay Per Impression was how online advertising started out. An impression is an ad appearing on a user’s screen a single time. Advertisers would pay a pre-determined amount to their ad hosts to have their ads displayed a specific number of times or impressions.





The more a company was willing to pay, the more often they could have their ads displayed, and the more sites those ads could be displayed on. The problem with this early internet advertising was that advertisers had their ads displayed on search results pages or pages with content that had little or nothing to do with what was advertised or what their company offered. Consequently,

few people clicked these ads, and so advertisers received limited return on investment for their advertisements.

The next evolution in online advertising came from a company called Goto.com. They were the first to display ads that paralleled what a person was searching for or the content of a web page they visited. For instance, if you searched for “Toronto real estate” then you might see ads displayed from a real estate professional, a mortgage broker, or a home stager. If you visited a home inspector’s website the ads on their website might be from home appraisers or a real estate lawyer. Goto.com’s other innovation was offering Pay Per Click advertisements instead of Pay Per Impression ads.

With this new model advertisers paid Goto.com only when people clicked their ad, regardless of how many times the ad was displayed. Consequently, it was necessary for Goto.com to ensure ads displayed on their site were highly relevant to searches people did on their site. Goto.com’s pricing model was solely based on how much an advertiser would spend. The more an advertiser was willing to spend per click, the higher their ad would appear in search results.

Though Goto.com’s model was a major step forward in online advertising, it had a flaw. The site’s “pay for placement” model only considered how much an advertiser would pay per click in determining how highly or prominently





it would place an ad. True, Goto.com sought to align ad content with search queries so that relevant ads would be shown to browsers, but for Goto.com money trumped content relevancy and all other ad placement considerations. In other words, an advertiser could pay to have their ads in the most prominent positions for as many keywords searched for by Goto.com visitors as they wanted as long as they were willing to pay the most money per click for any of these keywords.

The problem with Goto.com’s model is their over emphasis on price per click as a determining factor in ad placement eroded the relevancy of ads displayed for searches. Companies with deep pockets could simply buy their way to the top of search result rankings for any keywords they chose, regardless of whether those keywords had anything to do with their business. For example, a bank could have their various financial services displayed most prominently in search results for relevant keyword searches such as “mortgage refinancing” or “business loan” but the bank could also be prominently displayed for irrelevant keyword searches on “children’s toys”, “imported SUVs” or “20 year old Scotch Whisky.”

In February 2002, Google launched their initial Adwords program and improved upon Goto.com’s flaw of making “pay for placement” trump all other ad ranking factors. Google Adwords was among the first Pay Per Click systems recognizing the supreme importance of relevance in determining ad rankings. For Adwords the most important factor in determining an ad’s relevance was its click-through rate (CTR). Google largely allowed people doing Google searches to decide which Adwords ads had the most relevance to their searches by closely watching which ads these people clicked. The click through rate was calculated by the number of times the ad was clicked vs. the number of impressions the ad received. CTR was calculated by taking the number of clicks and dividing it by the number of impressions. For instance,





Ad #1 with keywords “X Y Z” had 7 clicks and 900 impressions it’s CTR was 0.78%. Ad #2 with keywords “X Y Z” had 3 clicks and 85 impressions it’s CTR was 3.52%.

Since Ad #2’s CTR rate was higher than Ad #1’s CTR, Google would rank Ad #2 more highly than Ad #1 even if Ad #2 bid higher per click than Ad #1.

The supremacy of relevance for Google Adwords is exciting because it means you can get high ranking for the keywords you want to be found under searches for without necessarily paying a lot of money for that ranking. We understand that most real estate professionals have very limited advertising budgets, so using Google Adwords can be tremendously beneficial for those willing to take the time and really learn how to use the Adwords system well.

Understanding How People Search OnlineBefore delving into the finer details of everything to do with Google Adwords let’s step back for a moment and take some time to understand the psychology of how people search for things online. Understanding this psychology is a critical part of a successful Adwords campaign because how our ads are displayed to searchers is closely and directly tied in with how people search. So if we have a keen understanding of how people search, then we’ll understand how to get the right ads in front of the right people at the right time. First, we must make a distinction between search engines and what they’re used for and how they’re fundamentally different from social bookmarking sites. Contrary to what you probably think, search engines are not used for browsing the web. People browse the web using social bookmarking sites of various kinds. A social bookmarking site contains content that is highly organized and this organization is done largely by people, not machines.

For instance, if you visit a news site such as CNN, the site’s articles and information are gathered and organized by people who work for CNN.

Ad 1

Ad 2





In other types of social bookmarking sites, the general public has a larger a role in how a site’s content is created and organized. For instance, Amazon.com allows anyone from the public to write reviews on any of their products or services and rank these products on a scale of 1 to 5 stars.

People like to browse sites like Amazon because they can

almost always know they are getting true, unbiased information about the actual quality of any particular item offered on the site. Amazon also looks at purchasing trends, user reviews and other information and uses both people and software to organize products in such a way that if you look at one product, Amazon can recommend to you several other products that are very similar to it. This lends itself very well to browsing.

Why Use Search Engines?Search engines are poor at organizing information because they completely rely on machines and software to do this organization. Search engines have to rely on machines to do this organizing because a search engine’s goal isn’t just organizing a particular subject area but doing this for the entire internet for any subject area. It would take a massive full time work force to do this properly. So the best search engines can do is have their software look at the words most commonly found on a given website, compare that site to other sites with the same or very similar keywords, and then organize and rank the sites in this subject area.

So since search engines are poor at organizing information they are only really useful when someone already has a good idea of what they want





to find when they start looking for it. So people use search engines when they’re seeking specific information on any given topic. When thinking of keywords to use for your Adwords account always remember: people use search engines to find the answer to a question they have.

The problem with creating effective Adword phrases is that everyone thinks in different ways. Different people approach problems and questions they have in different ways. Generally, most people’s questions can be classified in one of the following 6 categories:

• The person’s actual question, or an abbreviated version of it• The answer to the question• A description of the problem• A symptom of the problem• A description of the cause• Product parts or brand names

It is important to remember there are different stages people go through when looking at a home. There are 5 stages to the buying process and it’s called the buying funnel. The 5 stages are:

• Awareness• Interest• Learning• Shopping• Buying

For simplicity’s sake, let’s reduce 5 stages down to 2:

• Home Research (Awareness, Interest and Learning phases)• Home Search (Shopping, Buying)

The difference between the 2 stages is; people in Home Research mode are not certain of what home they want to buy, whereas with people in Home Search mode they are certain of what home they want to buy or know exactly what home they want to buy.





Let’s look at these 6 categories in light of how someone searching for a home might articulate themselves for each category:

The person’s actual question, or an abbreviated version of it

Below is an extensive list of questions any real estate buyer or seller might ask input into Google in their search online:

Specific Properties• Can you show me a detailed description with photos of

some of the X and Y types of properties in Y area?

• What should I think about when I’m deciding which community I want to live in?

Real Estate Law• What is the document entitled Agreement of Purchase and Sale

(or Offer to Purchase)?• In what cases should I hire a real estate lawyer?• What is a conditional offer?• What will it cost to hire a real estate lawyer?• What is a Quit Claim deed?• Is there a difference between a residential and a commercial lease?• What are real estate syndications?• What is eminent domain?• What are time-shares?• What non-government restrictions are there on the use of my property?• What is the difference between cooperatives and condominiums?• What is a life-estate?• What is a disclosure statement?• What is joint tenancy?





• How is the property title transferred?• What is the Conveyance Tax Certificate?• What is escrow?

Foreclosures• Frequently asked questions for power of sales, bank sales and foreclosures

• How can I find Power of Sale and Bank Sale Properties in Toronto?

Rentals• Do you do short or long term rentals?• How can I find affordable rental units near the University/College of X?• Where do I find out about the availability of City owned rental properties?

Insurance• What are “title insurance” and “mortgage

insurance”, and are they necessary?• What kinds of insurance can I buy?• How much does the CMHC insurance cost?• How much Land Transfer Tax am I going to

have to pay on my purchase?

Construction• What is construction law?• Is a contractor bound by his written estimate of a job?• What is the full form of FSBO?

Mortgage• How can I save money on my mortgage?• What are the various types of mortgages?• How can you pay off your mortgage sooner?• What is a Variable Interest Rate Mortgage (Open)• How much of a mortgage can I afford?





Let’s review again the 6 fundamental ways people search for information online. They are:

• The person’s actual question, or an abbreviated version of it• The answer to the question• A description of the problem• A symptom of the problem• A description of the cause• Product parts or brand names

Above we have given a large list of questions someone might ask as their search query. So let’s review some of those questions and see them expressed in the other 5 ways people search for information online.

Key Financial Questions“How much of a mortgage can I afford?”The answer to the question – the answer might be a simple, direct statement such as an explicit mortgage amount:

$200,000 mortgage $300,000 mortgage $400,000 mortgage $500,000 mortgage

Other words or phrases instead of mortgage could be used such as “home financing”, “property financing”, “condo financing” and so on.

A description of the problem – someone who asks how much of a mortgage they can afford may or may not have a problem with getting financing. They may not have a problem and simply want to devote all their savings and income toward buying the most expensive home they can possibly get. They may have used one of the many online calculators available and already





know how much they can afford, so they typed the amount in as above (e.g. $200,000 mortgage).

Those who have a problem getting financing (or believe that they have a problem) may be facing any number of problems. For instance, here are some descriptions of problems people might type into Google if the question “how much of a mortgage can I afford?” is on their mind when searching:

• My high monthly payments for X – “X” could be car, truck, vehicle, repairs, maintenance, child support, alimony, credit cards, line of credit, student loan, business loan, cell phone, payday

loans, medical treatment, health insurance, property insurance, life insurance, child day care, children’s education costs, property taxes, etc.

• I do X work – “X” could be any type of work related (or lack of work) scenario for either a single person or a couple seeking financing typically not viewed favorably by banks such as “contract based work”, “seasonal work”, “commission based work”, “self-employed work”, “have not worked since X date”, “gaps in my employment record”, “terminated from a past job”, “am collecting unemployment benefits”, “am collecting welfare”, “am collecting disability payments”, and so on.

• Rising cost of X – “X” could be any of the factors associated with owning a home, having a mortgage or any living expenses that are volatile and can quickly and unpredictably increase significantly in price such as “rising interest rates”, “making lump sum or balloon payments on mortgage”, “gasoline”, “oil”, “local real estate values”, “hydro”, “electricity”, “natural gas”, “utilities”, etc.





Below are some additional descriptions of a problem related to the original question “how much of a mortgage can I afford?”

• I only have $X for a down payment from my own savings

• I declared bankruptcy in the past 7 years

• My income level is stagnant, yet the cost of living is always going up

• I owe my landlord for several months of unpaid rent

• Banks say I must pay minimum 5% down payment and I can’t afford to pay that all by myself

• My partner and I may split up in the next few months, yet I want to keep the home in my name

As you can see there are a lot of different problems someone might be having that inform a single question on their mind (“How much mortgage can I afford?”). There are also many different ways someone can express this problem to a search engine.

However, our goal isn’t to anticipate all the various ways a person might fully state their problem. We only need to identify the most important keywords used within these problem statements. These will be the keywords we’ll use for our Adwords ads. So here are the searches we could have for the following problem descriptions:

• I only have $X for a down payment from my own savings

• Mortgage limited down payment• Mortgage small down payment• Home financing limited down payment• Home financing small down payment

• I am borrowing $X from my parents for my down payment

• Mortgage down payment borrowed• Mortgage down payment family loan





• I have sizable investments I can’t cash out right now

• Mortgage non-liquid investments• Mortgage non-liquid investment funds• Mortgage unavailable investments• Mortgage unavailable investment funds• Mortgage investment funds collateral

• I want to pay my home off in full within X number of years

• Mortgage paid in full X years• Mortgage fully repaid X years• Mortgage X year repayment schedule

How Your Keyword Phrases Trigger Ads

When you create an ad in Adwords you can control who your ad is displayed to. There are two areas where your ad will be displayed:

• The Google Search Network• In Google searches under the Sponsored Ads section

If you allow your ad to be shown in the Google Search Network, (e.g. Web pages using Google AdSense for displaying Adwords ads) Google will display your ad only on web pages containing content very similar to your ad. For instance, your ad may appear on a local real estate lawyer’s site, a local mortgage broker’s site, a local home inspector’s site, or on any other real estate professional’s site who is in the same geographic area as you. If your competitors are using Google AdSense on their site your ad may occasionally appear on their site!

For ads appearing under Google searches in the Sponsored Ads section the rules are very different than the Google Search Network for which ads are displayed. For the Sponsored Ads section, there are three different types of keyword matches Adwords uses for determining if your ad will be displayed to someone doing a Google search.





The three match types are:

• Broad Match• Phrase Match• Exact Match

It is important you have an understanding of how each of these match types work, the pro’s and con’s of using each type, and under what circumstances you should use each search type. All 3 types are useful for real estate professionals.

Broad MatchThis is the most commonly used type of match used with Adwords and it will get your ads the widest exposure. When you use Broad Match, Google will display your ads for keyword searches that are the same or similar to your specified keywords. Broad matched keywords match to Google searches with keyword misspellings, plural keywords, similar keywords and different keyword orders.

For instance, let’s say you specified the following keywords for Broad Match for a given Adwords ad:

• Toronto real estate

Your ad would display for anyone searching for any of the following keywords in Google:

• Toronto real estate (exact match)• Toronto property (similar words)• Toronto condo (similar words)• Toronto real estates (plural words)• Toronto rela estate (misspelling)• Toronto real estat (misspelling)• Toronot real estate (misspelling)• Real Estate Toronto (different word order)





Advantage of Broad Match PhrasesThe main advantage of using Broad Match keywords for your ads is your ads will display for a lot of varying keywords so that you don’t have to anticipate every possible keyword phrase someone might type in.

Disadvantage of Broad Match PhrasesThe main disadvantage of using Broad Match is your ads will sometimes display for searches not directly related to your business and what you offer. The result: you’ll get semi qualified or unqualified prospects clicking your ads, wasting your money and time.

There is no way of knowing all the words Google thinks are similar to the keywords you specify for your ad. For instance, using “Toronto real estate” under Broad Match your ad might appear under searches for “Toronto commercial real estate” or “Toronto farm land.” If your business seldom or never deals with these types of properties then you wouldn’t want to have your ads displayed under any searches related to these keywords. So when you create keywords for your Google Ads to be found under, think about how relevant those keywords are to what services you offer. You’re better off focusing your keyword phrases towards your best types of prospects only rather than trying to appeal to everyone else.

It’s possible to use Broad Match keywords and yet have your ad not appear under some Google searches. This is done by using negative keywords. We’ll discuss in depth how negative keywords work and how they can be useful for your campaigns later in this eBook.

When creating Broad Match keyword lists you type them into Adwords under the Add Keywords section without any formatting around them. So for the keywords “Toronto real estate” you would just type out one instance of these keywords on one line as follows:





Toronto real estateThe keyword searches you want your ads found under should be geared toward either of two types of searchers:

• People researching buying a home but not yet ready to buy• People ready to buy a home

There can be some overlap between these two categories. Some people will be ready to buy a home but not sure exactly what they want to buy yet. Some people will not be ready to buy a home just yet for various reasons, but they have a very good idea of what they’re looking for home wise and the area they want to live in.

In general, people who are in research mode want general information about the home buying process (especially if they’re a first time buyer) such as mortgage info and they probably know what city they want to move to. People who are further along in the research process and have a clearer idea of what they want desire more specific information like listings in a handful of neighborhoods they’d like to live in. They may even want listings from particular streets or particular developments (e.g. A specific condo building or town home complex).

Many residential developers in your farm area can provide you with turn-key information on their projects you can put on your website for attracting these “ready to buy” buyers. It’s best to not just copy and paste this text from the developer and put it on your website but edit it as you see fit. This will help your ranking for searches for this developer in the organic search results section on Google which you won’t have to pay for traffic from.

If you are just starting with your real estate website or your existing site doesn’t have a lot of generic real estate information then you should focus on adding information to your site that people ready to buy want to see. That is, specific information on neighborhoods in your farm area and the listings available in them. This will drive the best types of prospects to your site: people who know what they want and are ready to buy now. Once you have





lots of information on your site for these “ready to buy” buyers you can then start putting up information for people in research mode.

Don’t make the mistake of focusing on the “ready to buy” buyers only and neglecting or outright ignoring prospects in research mode. If you do, you will miss out on a lot of potential buyers and new listing opportunities. The reason is for many people the research process for buying a home can start a long time before they’re ready to buy – months, sometimes even more than a year before they’re ready to buy, for various reasons. If your local competitors have web sites rife with generic information on the real estate buying and selling process plus lots of timely local information for the “ready to buy” buyers then people in research mode may sign up for their mailing list at an early stage in their search months before they move into “ready to buy” mode.

Let’s illustrate this with an example. A given prospect starts researching in July but isn’t prepared to move until January. In July they do a Google search and find two real estate sites with lots of generic information useful to their decision making process plus these sites offer to send them updates on new listings every 2 weeks for the town/city they’re interested in moving to. That means those 2 competitors of yours will have 6 full months (July – December) for providing that prospect with useful information and building a relationship with them. If those 2 sales reps consistently provide useful information to that prospect for that long it’s unlikely they’ll look for other reps to work with when the times comes to buy. This is a classic example of the old adage “the early bird gets the worm.”

Phrase MatchThe second of type of keyword match is Phrase Match. This match type allows you to be more specific with what keyword searches your ads are displayed for and which searches they aren’t displayed for.

When entering in Phrased Matched keyword phrases, you put quotation marks at the beginning and end of each line. For instance, all of the 3 below keyword phrases would be Phrase Match:





• “Toronto real estate”• “Toronto properties”• “Toronto homes”

For your Phrase Match keywords to be displayed for a given search query the order of the searcher’s words must match the order of your Phrase Match keywords. For instance, the following searches would bring up your ad if you used the Phrase Match keywords “Toronto real estate”:

• Find Toronto real estate• Toronto real estate agents• Looking for Toronto real estate listing agents

Note that in all of the above instances the words “Toronto” and “real” and “estate” all appeared somewhere in the keyword phrase and each word appeared in that specific order.

The following searches would NOT bring up the Phrase Match keywords “Toronto real estate”:

• Real estate Toronto• Toronto properties real estate• Real estate agent Toronto

The reason your ad would not come up for these searches is none of these searches contain the words “Toronto” and “real” and “estate” together and in that specific order. However, if you had specified a Broad Match for “Toronto real estate” then your ad would have displayed for all 3 of these searches because all 3 words are found in all 3 searches. So Broad Match doesn’t take into account the order of the keywords searched for, whereas Phrase Match does.

Another key difference between Broad Match and Phrase Match is Phrase Match won’t recognize misspellings or plurals of words. For instance, if “Toronto real estate” was Phrase Matched then your ad wouldn’t come up for any of the following searches:





• Toronto real estates (plural)• Tornto real estate (misspelling)• Torontos real estate (plural)• Toronto rel estate (misspelling)

Using Phrase Match keywords is a good way of limiting when your ads are displayed so you can have a better idea than with Broad Match of knowing exactly what keywords people are using

for finding your ads. Knowing what those keywords searches are, tells you to what extent you are driving qualified traffic to your site. Adwords contains a tool telling you how many clicks you have on your ads and what keywords were used by the searcher for each of those clicks.

Exact MatchThe third type of keyword match type you can use for your Google Adwords ads is Exact Match. With Exact Match keyword phrases your ads are only displayed to people who search using precisely the keywords you specify. Your ads will not display for misspellings , similar keywords, plurals, or singular forms of the words. When you enter your Exact Match keyword phrase into Adwords you use square brackets (IE [ ]) at the beginning and end of the phrase. For instance, if you specify [Toronto Real Estate] for an ad it would be shown under the following keyword phrase searches:

• Toronto Real Estate• Toronto Real estate• Toronto real estate

TORONTO REAL ESTATE

In these cases the exact words were used in the correct order and only those words were used – no more and no less than them. Note that for all three types of searches (Broad, Phrase, and Exact) Adwords doesn’t take into





account what case is used, either by the searcher or the keywords you specify for your ad. That’s why the search TORONTO REAL ESTATE would be display your ad if your keyword phrase Toronto Real Estate was Exact Match.For the following searches the Exact Match phrase [Toronto Real Estate] would NOT be found:

• Toronto Real Estate Agent (extra word at end of phrase)• Condos Toronto Real Estate (extra word at beginning of phrase)• Real Estate Toronto (order of words not matching)• Toronto Condos Real Estate (extra word Condos)• Toronto rel estate (misspelling)• Toronto Properties (not matching to words similar to Real Estate)• Toronto Real Estates (plural)• Toronto Real Estate Mortgage (extra word at end)• Toronto Real Estate Home Inspector (extra word at end)

Advantage of Exact Match Phrases

The biggest advantage of using Exact Match keyword phrases is you can be very specific about when your ads are being shown so that the searcher’s intent and what you are offering are exactly aligned. For instance, differing people using the same search (eg. Toronto real estate) will have different questions they’re trying to have answered. One person may want to get a condo in downtown Toronto; another may want to get a detached home in the High Park area; another person living in Toronto may want to

find a real estate agent in Toronto for helping them find a home in Mississauga. So in using Exact Match keyword phrases you can ensure your ads only appear for the exact types of people you’re looking for. This will increase your click through rate significantly and thereby lower your overall cost per click.





Disadvantage of Exact Match Phrases

The biggest disadvantage of using Exact Match keyword phrases is your ad will not always get displayed for people looking for exactly what you’re offering. For instance, if someone was searching for “High Park Toronto properties” and you specialized in that neighborhood your ad wouldn’t be shown to that searcher if you only had the Exact Match phrase “High Park Toronto homes” or “High Park properties.” So if you used just Exact Match for all your keyword phrases you would have to think of all the different possible ways someone might search for what you’re offering and make Exact Match keyword phrases for all of them. The number of different permutations of related words that could be used in any search quickly gets into the tens of thousands. So it’s impractical to rely on Exact Match phrases because you’ll spend a huge amount of time entering these keyword phrases into Google and still not have your ads shown to lots of perfectly suitable prospects.

Selecting The Right Keyword Matching Types

The most effective Google Adwords campaigns use all 3 types of keyword match types. Each type of match is suitable for some scenarios and not for others. There are many ways of expressing that someone is looking for real estate in a specific area. For instance, here are some of the different ways someone could conceivably search for real estate:

• Property• Properties• Home• Homes• House• Houses• Housing• Detached• Semi Detached





• Bungalow• Condo• Apartment

The list goes on. So you want to use Broad Match for any keywords you want to be found for that could be expressed in lots of different ways and have lots of synonyms. The problem with Broad Match is you can’t know except through trial and error what Adwords considers as similar words to any given word. For instance, in the above list of synonyms for real estate it might only consider half of those words to be similar to real estate. So your ads would not be shown to a lot of suitable prospects. So in cases where a word has synonyms you should Broad Match them yet type out all the synonyms you can think of . There are many great thesaurus online such as the one at Dictionary.com that provide exhaustive lists of synonyms for any word.

Using Negative Keywords

Google Adwords allows you to specify what words or phrases you don’t want your ads being shown for when someone searches for those specific words. If you know of certain keywords you don’t want your ads to be found under then you should enter them into Adwords right away before starting your Adwords campaigns. Usually you will find out what

keywords you don’t want associated with your ads by looking at your click reports and seeing what keywords caused your ad to be displayed and clicked. Google Adwords will actually tell you the exact search phrase that was used for each time someone clicks one of your ads. The more clicks your ads get, the more you’ll be able to know what keywords you want and which





ones you don’t. This helps increase your conversion rate by excluding the searchers who are looking for something you don’t offer.

Negative Keywords are particularly useful if you’re using a lot of Broad Match or Phrase Match keyword phrases. The reason they’re useful for Broad Match keywords is Adwords will show your ads for words similar to your Broad Match keywords, yet you don’t know exactly what those similar words will be until you have seen the keyword phrases used by people who have clicked your ads.

The reason Negative Keywords are useful for Phrase Match is that someone might type out a keyword phrase matching one of your Phrase Match keyword phrases but add in an extra word that clearly indicates you aren’t offering what they’re looking for and that therefore they’re not a good prospect for you. For instance, let’s say one of your Phrase Match keyword phrases was “Toronto condos.” Someone types out “Toronto condos power of sale” in Google. (Power Of Sale means foreclosure in Ontario, Canada). Such condos are often left by the foreclosed occupant in poor condition – unclean and sometimes damaged and therefore difficult to sell. Yet many people don’t know this (especially bargain hunters) and will still come looking for foreclosed condos.

If you don’t want to be involved with such condo deals then you’d want to have the following negative keywords in your Adwords list (The format for entering Negative Keywords is using the ‘-‘ or minus sign before each word). Those Negative Keywords might be:

• power of sale• foreclosure• foreclosed• foreclose• foreclosing• bank sale





Keyword Phrases For The ‘I Know What I Want To Buy’ Home Buyers

For your Adwords keywords, you should create an extensive list of keyword phrases that describe the real estate in your farm area. Here are the main areas you should research keywords for:

Towns/CitiesYour list of keyword phrases should describe all the town and cities you consider part of your farm area plus all words similar to “real estate.” For instance, for the city of Oakville, Ontario, Canada you should use Broad Match for the following keyword phrases:

• Oakville home• Oakville house• Oakville housing• Oakville property• Oakville properties• Oakville real estate• Oakville town home• Oakville town house• Oakville town houses• Oakville bungalow• Oakville condo• Oakville condominium

NeighborhoodsYou definitely want to have keyword phrases naming the neighborhoods in your farm area plus all words similar to “real estate.” For instance, for the Glen Abbey neighborhood in Oakville, Ontario, Canada you should use Broad Match for the following keyword phrases:

• Glen Abbey home• Glen Abbey house• Glen Abbey housing





• Glen Abbey property• Glen Abbey properties• Glen Abbey real estate• Glen Abbey town home• Glen Abbey town house• Glen Abbey town houses• Glen Abbey bungalow• Glen Abbey condo• Glen Abbey condominium

Using Broad Match for the above keyword phrases would have your ads display for the following very similar keyword phrases which are plurals of some of the above phrases:

• Glen Abbey town homes• Glen Abbey condominiums• Glen Abbey condos• Glen Abbey houses• Glen Abbey homes

Using Broad Match would also have your ads display for any of the above searches if the word “Oakville” was included in the phrase such as:

• Oakville Glen Abbey town homes• Glen Abbey Oakville condominiums• Glen Abbey condos Oakville• Oakville Glen Abbey houses • Glen Abbey Oakville homes

Your ads would also display if people added other words to their searches such as “detached”, “semi-detached”, or “luxury.” Examples:

• Glen Abbey detached homes• Glen Abbey semi detached house• Glen Abbey Oakville luxury condos





Some searchers might add even more specific keywords to their search that describe the Glen Abbey neighborhood. For instance, they might want their new home to be located near a certain school or shopping mall.

So you can see why it’s important to use Broad Match keywords phrases in this manner for capturing keyword searches further describing your farm area you may not have thought of.

StreetsSome people may even know the streets or major intersections they want to live on or near. But their search may not include the name of a neighborhood. For instance, someone might search for:

• Oakville Bronte homes• Oakville Dorval condos• Oakville Dundas houses• Oakville Lakeshore properties

The words Bronte, Dorval, Dundas and Lakeshore are all prominent streets in Oakville. If you had only used the above keywords phrases describing Glen Abbey without mention of Oakville in them then your ads wouldn’t appear for the above four keyword phrase searches. However, if you had used the following Broad Match keyword phrases then your ad would appear for the above 4 keyword phrases searches:

• Oakville homes• Oakville condos• Oakville houses• Oakville properties

However, some searchers might omit both the words “Oakville” and “Glen Abbey” or any other words for neighborhoods in Oakville. So your ads wouldn’t appear if someone used the following search terms:





• Bronte Rd. Homes• Dorval Drive condos• Dundas St. West houses• Lakeshore Rd. East properties

So at a minimum you should make a list of the top 20 longest or otherwise most prominent streets for each of the neighborhoods in your farm area. Then match each of those street names with the above list of words for the various ways of describing real estate.

So for Dorval Drive you’d use the following Broad Match keyword list:

• Dorval home• Dorval house• Dorval housing• Dorval property• Dorval properties• Dorval real estate• Dorval town home• Dorval town house• Dorval town houses• Dorval bungalow• Dorval condo• Dorval condominium

If you want to be thorough in this regard, or if you focus on only one or two neighborhoods, then you should create a thorough list of all the streets for those neighborhoods. This entails a lot of work but can be effective. Some people may want to live on a particular street because their close friends or family live on that street or the school they want their children to go to is on that street.





Wikipedia often has a page for local neighborhoods. These pages sometimes contain lists of the most prominent streets in the neighborhood which simplifies your research of local street names.

In some cases, you can find online exhaustive lists of street names for large cities. So be sure to do some Google searching for finding these lists of street names. If you can’t find anything under Wikipedia or a comparable resource then use Mapquest for getting your street names.

Mapquest allows you to zoom in and out of whatever geographic area you pick. So with Mapquest you can view at a high level the major streets in a given area or zoom in to get the names of all the smaller streets in a given area.

Real Estate DevelopersSome people search for their home by developer. A friend of a searcher may live in a great condo with loads of amenities built by ABC Development and they recommend that developer to the searcher. So that person’s search may include the keywords “ABC Development.” That person may even want to live in the same building that their recommending friends are living in.

So you should get an extensive list of all the residential developers in your area and use those developer keyword phrases in conjunction with whatever keyword phrases describe the types of properties they build. For instance, if ABC Development specializes in condominiums and lofts then you should use Broad Match for all of the following phrases:

• ABC Development condo• ABC Development condominium• ABC Development loft

A great way of getting a comprehensive (but not thorough) list of developers in your farm area is by finding the website for a developer trade association. It isn’t necessary for developers to be part of these associations, but there are dozens (if not hundreds) of members in these associations, especially if the association represents builders province wide, state wide or country wide.





To fill in the gaps of developers who aren’t members of these associations your best bet is picking up a copy of any of the real estate focused print publications freely available in your area in those steel boxes similar and near to the ones that house your area’s daily or weekly newspapers.

Note that some people will be even more specific in their search

than searching by developer name. Some search for the names of specific developments built by that developer in your farm area. So for the most popular developers (especially those found in the print publications) you should definitely include all of the names of all the projects for that builder, whether they are pre-construction, currently built but not fully occupied, or fully occupied buildings offering resale units.

Your Website’s Pages For Developers

The great thing with Real Estate Developers is they will have content about their housing units that you can use for your real estate website. So go to their website, take their written content about their developments, and use this content for making a page with this content.

There are two ways you can go about using this written content from Real Estate Developers:

1) Copy And Paste

You can simply copy the written content you find on a developer’s website about a given real estate development and use this content verbatim on your landing page for anyone searching Google for that specific development.





The advantage of this is it’s quick and easy: you copy and paste the written content and then you’re done with it.

The disadvantage is Google will rank your page with lesser points than if the content was different than this page you copied from. Google is always looking for original content and content originality is supreme in Google’s eyes over merely copied content.

2) Modify The Article’s Written Content

Take the developer’s content, re-write it and modify it however you wish. You may want to accentuate certain aspects of the development that you think would appeal to buyers in your area. You may want to emphasize the benefits of living in the area where the development is located. You could do this by mentioning any valuable local resources such as a nearby mall, local schools, or any other local resources worth mentioning that might appeal to your buyers.

The advantage of modifying the written content you have from a Developer is Google will recognize your page as having higher value than a page that was just copied and pasted.

The obvious disadvantage is you need to modify this written content. That takes time, and you may not want to do this writing yourself. That’s ok! There are lots of very talented writers out there such as those at the sites Elance or Freelancer who can modify any copy and pasted written content for you at a very low rate per article so that you have more original content. Google will recognize your page’s original content and rank your site higher in normal search results than your competitors who have copied and pasted the Developer’s pages.





Note that the originality of your site’s content has no affect on your Google Adwords campaigns: how much your Adwords ads are displayed, how much you have to pay per click, and so on. The originality of your site’s content only affects your site’s ranking in the normal, organic Google search results.Keep in mind, there may literally be dozens of your competitors’ sites who have merely done the copy and paste route for their site content, so if you do the same then your site is liable to be just a “face in the crowd” amongst your competitors’ websites in Google rankings and consequently won’t get much traffic from Google. Does Google Charge for Ranking?

The other thing key thing is Google doesn’t charge you anything for having your site ranked in the organic search results, even if it’s the first search result on page 1 of the Google organic search results section. It’s been proven that most people only visit sites that are on page 1 of the organic search results. In fact, a high percentage of Google searchers only click ads in the first 5 results in the organic search results section.

So, as mentioned earlier, your best bet is taking existing content from other sites out there pertinent to your farm area (eg. Content from local developers’ sites) and then modifying that written content somewhat. You can change the existing wording, add to it, or omit certain parts. The more this content gets modified, the more original Google will recognize this content to be, and the more highly your site will get ranked in the normal organic Google search results.

Click Through Rate (CTR)

One of the best things about Google Adwords is you can get high ranking for your ads yet not necessarily have to pay a lot per click for your ads to get this positioning. The reason is Google carefully watches what the Click Through Rate (CTR) for each Adwords ad it displays. The Click Through Rate





is expressed as a percentage and it’s the number of people who click the ad divided by the number of impressions the ad gets (IE the number of times the ad appears in someone’s search results)). So if an ad has 25 clicks from 400 impressions the Click Through Rate is 6.25%.

The higher your Click Through Rate, the more Google will display your ad and the less they’ll charge you per click. So you can be bidding $0.25 per click for a given keyword phrase and your ad may get better positioning than a competitor using the same keyword phrase who is bidding $0.75 per click or more for the ad. The reason for this is your ad has had a much higher Click Through Rate than your competitor.

Here’s another example.

Ad #1 had keywords “Toronto Real Estate” had the ad had 7 clicks from 900 impressions. The ad’s CTR is 0.78%.

Ad #2 also has the keywords “Toronto real estate” and had 3 clicks from 85 impressions. It’s CTR was 3.52%.

Since Ad #2’s CTR rate was much higher than Ad #1’s CTR, Google would rank Ad #2 more highly than Ad #1 even if Ad #2 bid higher per click than Ad #1.

By placing such importance on an ad’s Click Through Rate Google is giving people doing Google searches the power to decide which Adwords ads have the most relevance to their searches by closely watching which ads these people clicked. In fact, this is a more reliable system for ranking content than any artificial intelligence (IE computers) could ever come up with.

So how do you boost your Click Through Rate? There are several things you can do:

Laser Focus Your Ads On Your Farm Area

There’s an old adage that says: “If you chase two rabbits, both will escape.” Don’t give in to the ever so common temptation of trying to broaden your

Ad 1

Ad 2





farm area into areas you’re not that familiar with. Rather, stay focused on the farm area you’ve always worked and know so well and only have your ads display for people looking for real estate in your farm areas and nowhere else. Chances are, few of your competitors will have done the same focusing, and so your ads will stand out for people searching for your farm area. This will improve your click through rate and lower your costs per click.

Have The Searcher’s Keywords Appear In Your Ad Title

Just as with newspaper articles, the first thing people see is your ad’s headline, so it’s critical you hook your prospects’ interest with these headlines. A little known fact amongst Adwords advertisers is you can have a searcher’s exact keywords appear in your ad title and in your ad body. These are known as Keyword Insertion Ads. For instance, if someone searches for “Toronto real estate” you can have the words “Toronto real estate” appear in your ad title. The only restriction is ad titles can only be 25

characters max. So if the length of all the keywords in someone’s search is more than 25 characters than a pre-defined backup ad title will display. By showing someone an ad with a title that exactly matches what they’re searching for you can dramatically boost your Click Through Rate (CTR).

Here’s what to type out in area where you enter the keywords you want your ads to be found under to get Keyword Insertion ads. The assumed search query in the below examples is “toronto real estate”:

Keyword: toronto propertiesWhat the searcher sees in the ad title: toronto real estate (all lowercase)

Keyword: Toronto propertiesWhat the searcher sees in the ad title: Toronto real estate (this is Sentence case IE first word capitalized, all other words lower case)





Keyword: Toronto PropertiesWhat the searcher sees in the ad title: Toronto Real Estate (this is Title Case IE the first letter of each word is capitalized)

Keyword: TORONTO PropertiesWhat the searcher sees in the ad title: TORONTO real estate

Keyword: TORONTO PropertiesWhat the searcher sees in the ad title: TORONTO Real Estate(first word is capitalized, all other words have first letter capitalized)

Keyword: toronto PROPERTIESWhat the searcher sees in the ad title: toronto real ESTATE(last word in search is capitalized)

Keyword: TORONTO PROPERTIESWhat the searcher sees in the ad title: TORONTO REAL ESTATE(all letters in all search words are capitalized)

Keyword: toronto PropertiesWhat the searcher sees in the ad title: toronto real Estate(if k and w are different capitalizations, then w only affects the last word)

Use Negative Keywords

Another way of improving your Click Through Rate (CTR) is by using negative keywords. Recall that negative keywords are words you specify that (if searched for) will prevent your ads from being displayed. The more you laser focus your ads on your farm area, the less need you’ll have for using negative keywords. However, there will be times when your ads display to the wrong people (IE unqualified prospects) and they click them, costing you money. So keep an eye on the clicks your ads receive and the keywords searched for that resulted in each click. If any searches resulting in clicks contained keywords that didn’t describe what you offer then add those keywords to your negative keyword list.





Offer Useful Real Estate Related Information

A recent study of the types of searches done on Google revealed 80% of all search queries are information, 10% navigational, and 10% transactional. For real estate professionals that means 8 out of 10 are looking for real estate information and have not yet decided on what they want to buy, whereas only 1 in 10 people are certain of what they’re looking for and are searching directly for it. Consequently, your ads and landing pages should be heavily slanted towards providing people with useful real estate information.

Probably the most compelling information you can offer someone is a market watch report on the local real estate market. Nowadays, you don’t even have to create these reports yourself. Companies like Mission Response offer turn-key real estate market watch reports for any area in Ontario, Canada.

Alternatively, you can offer the following informative documents to people:

• How To Get The Highest Price For Your Home• How To Get The Best Deal On Your Next Home Purchase• How To Get A Mortgage

We offer people who use our Moneymaker website comprehensive and up-to-date reports in PDF format on all of the above 3 topics. These reports can be pivotal in getting people signing up for your email mailing list. And having people signing up for your mailing list is really the WHOLE point of having a real estate website in the first place!

How Top Real Estate Professionals Get Great Leads on...

Documents

Transcript of How Top Real Estate Professionals Get Great Leads on...