Realtor-Marketing.com, National Realtor Marketing Resource

-Kaizen-

Thats the secret. It propbably doesn’t mean anything to you now, but it will by then end of this article.

Kaizen (改善, Japanese for “change for the better” or “improvement”) is an approach to productivity improvement. The development of Kaizen went hand-in-hand with that of quality control circles, but it was not limited to quality assurance. Importantly, kaizen must operate with three principles in place: process and results (not results-only); systemic thinking (i.e. big picture, not solely the narrow view); and non-judgmental, non-blaming (because blaming is wasteful).

So how does this apply to SEO, Copywriting. and AdWords, well it means to take an approach that SEO, Copywriting, and AdWords is a process that must never be left alone. It is to be constantly improved upon everyday. Efforts should be made through split testing AdWords ads and page copy to reduce advertsing costs and raise conversion rates. It also means that SEO work is never done. Find new keywords create new pages and ways for home sellers and buyers to find you. The goal is to constantly improve your site making it easier for customers to find you at a lower and lower cost for you while raising your ROI from each visitor. Kaizen from my point of view simply means “Never Ending Improvement” to any project, process, or system.

Just because you created an ad that has a CTR (click-thru rate) of 5% doesn’t mean you shouldn’t continue to split test it against other ads and try to get a 5.1% CTR. Never ending improvement, that is the key to continued success at all things in life.

Deciding which keywords to target with your site is extremely important for Realtors trying to optimize their sites. It is best to pick longer keywords as single keywords are usually poorly targeted and near impossible to rank well for. Longer keywords on the other hand  are much easier to rank well for and almost always have far better conversion rates. (Conversion rate = the percentage of visitors that complete a desired action. EX. 100 people visit your site and 10 purchase a product from you. This would result in a 10% conversion ratio.) The best keyword phrases tend to be 2 to 6 words long. Any longer and you will never see any traffic as no one will search for that phrase. Any shorter and you will never see any traffic bacause you won’t rank well for the word.

Example of Bad Keywords For Realtors To Optimize For:

1. Realtor
2. Real Estate Agent
3. Home
4. House

Example of Good Keywords For Realtors To Optimize For: (area specific keywords would only be good for Realtors in the area named)

1. Anderson Ohio Realtor
2. Find Realtor in Anderson Ohio
3. How To Find A Good Realtor

Area specific phrases work well for Realtors. You will have less competition and will be more likely to have highly targeted traffic that is much more likely to convert for you. And that is the goal of all PPC and SEO efforts, to get conversions. If you aren’t getting new customers as a result of your efforts you need to work on learning more about SEO, PPC, Web Design, and Copywriting to enhance the results of your efforts.

Today we will take a look at one of the things Google AdWords beginners often find confusing. Then I will explain why this initially complex concept is actually great for you the advertiser. Realtors who learn to use this secret can potentially save hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in advertising.

Why do you almost always end up paying less than the amount you bid on keywords in Google AdWords? The reason for this is that with Google AdWords you only pay 1 cent above the advertiser who bid below you. So if for example you bid $1.0 per click on a keyword and another advertiser bid $.50 per click (and you are the only two advertisers) you would only pay $.51 per click to be in the number 1 spot.

There is also a big secret that is the key to getting lower per click prices even if new competitors are starting to bid on the same keywords.

The secret is your Click Through Rate (CTR) which is a major component of Google AdWords Quality Score (Your quality score is made up of multiple components that actually determine you CPC for a position. For now we will focus on CTR but will cover the quality score in a future article.)

Your CTR is much MORE important than how much you bid on a keyword.
The CTR is the percentage of people searching who actually click on your ad. So if for example 100 people search for your keyword “San Diego Realtor”, your ad will show 100 times, and if only one person clicks on your ad, that’s a 1% CTR.

As an example let’s say I have a 1% CTR and I’m paying $1.00 for the number 1 position on the keyword “San Diego Realtor”. Let’s say you have a 2% CTR for the same keyword “San Diego Realtor”. You will probably only have to pay $.51 per click (your Quality Score would actually determine the true cost per click that you would pay but CTR is a very large component of your Quality Score) to get the number 1 position and knock me down to the number 2 position. This basically means you were twice as relevant as I was so you only had to pay half as much as I did! The implications of this are huge; if you understand this concept you can kill your competition.

So why would Google do this? From their perspective they are rewarding the more relevant advertiser which makes their users happy and they are making more money. They make more money because if your ad at $.51 gets clicked twice every hundred times its shown Google earns 1.02 and if my ad only gets clicked once every hundred times shown they only earn $1.00.

When you achieve a high CTR you can pull your bid prices down, maintain your same position, and increase your traffic. The difference can be quite amazing. Here’s an example of two ads that are ALMOST IDENTICAL but one got nearly TEN TIMES the CTR as the other:

Notice what happened: All that I did was add the word instantly and the CTR jumped from 0.25% to 3.1%!

That means that the ad on the right gets more than TEN TIMES as much traffic and I could pull down my bid prices and get that for the same amount of money as I was paying before. Think about how much money this will save you every month and how much that will add up to at the end of the year.

This system based on CTR doesn’t apply to Yahoo’s (formerly Overture) PPC advertising system as with Yahoo the highest bidder always gets the number 1 position. This is why Google AdWords is vastly superior to Yahoo CPC program, if you are a smart marketer.

It is beyond the scope of this blog entry, but there is a simple way in Google AdWords to apply this secret to constantly reduce your costs and increase traffic.

If you are a Realtor that isn’t using AdWords yet you can very cheaply.

Some people refer to it as Search Engine Positioning, Search Engine Placement or Search Engine Marketing. No matter the name, Search Engine Optimization or SEO, for short, is a method of website promotion focused on helping your web site rank favorably on search engines under targeted keywords that are most important to your real estate business and real estate customers.

SEO is a way of making sure home buyers and home sellers can find your web site. Research shows that internet users aren’t likely to go past the first three pages ( or top 30 results ) of search results when searching for information. That is why it is so important to make sure your website is well optimized for terms that not only get you traffic but terms that get you leads. If you have two terms you want to optimize for and one gets 1000 visitors a day with 3 successful leads being generated and the other only gets 250 visitors but gets 10 leads for you put your efforts into optimizing for the 2nd better converting keyword.

A great tip is to start with AdWords to find the keywords that convert (generate leads for you) and generate reasonable amounts of traffic and then perform seo to your site around those keywords.

In future posts we will talk about specific SEO techniques to help improve your sites ranking in the major search engines like Google, Yahoo, and MSN.

There is one key concept that Google wants you to understand when using AdWords that can save you quite a bit of money.

If you understand this concept, Google will reward you by giving you lower prices on clicks. If you DON’T get this right you’ll pay too much for your clicks and you will end up very disappointed with your online advertising efforts.

The one thing that matters to Google is RELEVANCE. Realtors marketing with Google AdWords must make sure their ads are relevant to Google users. You can think of this as giving Google users exactly what they want when they search.

If you understand Google’s history and the search engine business this concept will be easy to understand.

Google started late into the search engine game after Yahoo and Excite were already well established. At the time, few people would have bet that Google would overtake them all - but in less than five years they did exactly that.

So how did that happen?

Google’s mission was to build a search engine that would give users exactly what they were searching for, as fast as possible. If you were searching for “California Realtors” they wanted to give you the very best and most popular California Realtors websites on the very first page of results. They acheived this by developing a powerful algorithm for figuring out who visited websites and why, and used that information in their search engine. It was Googles ability to give users relevant results that allowed them to overcome their competition.

So when Google began to sell Pay Per Click advertising they wanted to make sure they continued to give their users relevant results even if they were ads. Google acheived this by rewarding advertisers for being relevant, and letting their users who are searching vote. If an ad gets clicked on, it’s relevant. If it doesn’t, it’s not. It’s that simple on the surface.

The higher your CTR (clickthrough rate - i.e., the more Google Searchers who see your ad and click on it) - the less you have to pay for the position you want. But, if you write low CTR ads, Google will make you pay more to get your ads to show. This system is good for Google’s users, advertisers, and Google. So everyone wins except the poor copywriter. It is this system that sets Google’s PPC system leaps and bounds ahead of Yahoo’s PPC system. It allows you to take on advertisers with a much bigger budget and win.

What it all boils down to is that your ads and your content MUST be relevant to the keywords you’re bidding on. Your message must match what the person is thinking.

So, what were they really thinking when they typed in “California Realtors?” That is the question. Figure that out and put it in front of them, and you’ll win at Google AdWords. Write an ad that matches exactly what they’re searching for and you’ll beat your competitors to death.

If you want to setup an account now and start generating leads.

Pay Per Click ( PPC ) is a quick and simple way to bring targeted traffic to your website. This is great for Realtors who are looking for a near unlimited source of buyers and sellers. You can use PPC to market your listings or to build a list of highly targeted prospects.

So how does it work?

Basically, you the advertiser pay a rate you specify for every visitor who clicks through from the search engine site (Google, Yahoo, etc..) to your web site. It’s simple and quick. Each unique keyword phrase (e.g. Florida Realtors) has its own bid price. You set the budget and decide how much you want to spend a day. Most PPC programs offer tracking code so that you can calculate roi and other useful statistics which can be very beneficial to those who don’t have their own ecommerce team.

Ex. You want to get people looking to buy a home in Naples Florida to visit your site and see your listings you have in Naples, FL.

1. You purchase the keyword “homes for sale in naples FL” from Google AdWords and set that you are willing to pay .10 cents per click on your ad that shows when a user on Google searches for “homes for sale in naples fl”..
2. A potential home buyer goes to Google and types in “Homes For Sale in Naples FL”.
3. The google user see’s your excellent ad that you have written and clicks on it. You are charged .10 cents by Google and then the Google user is sent to your website. You can send the visitor to any page on your website. Since you want them to see your Naples Fl listing’s you have them sent to www.yoursite.com/naples-listing.html and they see all of your listings in Naples FL. If they find any of them interesting the give you a call or email you.

Its that easy. There are many PPC programs you can advertise with but the biggest are Google and Yahoo. Many of the smaller programs also work well but it is easiest to start with these two programs first and then expand once you have had some success.

Welcome to the Realtor Marketing blog and forum. The blog covers all aspects of lead creation from online marketing, print marketing, tv marketing, and any other form of marketing imaginable. The blog will mainly focus on E-Marketing via search engine optimization, pay per click marketing , and other online marketing strategies. We will offer tips and strategies we have used and will also feature interviews with industry experts. All in an attempt to help you get more buyers and sellers.

We also offer a forum for you to share your experiences good and bad with other realtors from all over the nation. This forum will also allow the community to help each other avoid various pitfalls all Realtors run into from time to time marketing.