PPC Campaign & SEO Marketing Companies
Investor · Sugar Land, TX · Member since 2012 · 554 posts · 232 votes
PPC Campaign & SEO Marketing Companies
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Investor · Katy, TX · Member since 2013 · 93 posts · 25 votes
9yWhy concentrate on $4/click if it doesn't generate anything? Just because it's cheaper doesn't mean it's better. It's the wrong focus in my opinion.
It's all about ROI just like direct mail. If you can afford spending $1000/month on PPC and you get $10,000 in return then who cares if you paid $100 per call or click? I'm not saying that we all should spend a lot of money per click. I'm saying it's more than just the price/click. Since you want to get into PPC here's a few tips:
Google is your friend even when it comes to price. Your competitor may pay less than you and rank higher than you. It's because of the quality score and that's why SEO and PPC goes hand in hand. Once you manage to create an accurate ad that reflects the content you advertise on the link you have to start focusing on SEO and your overall track record on your google Adwords account. If one ad is misleading/inaccurate and you haven't done anything about it for months Google will punish you, and it'll also hurt the rest of your ads. So by optimizing all your ads they all benefit from each other. Then you need to be patient. Google reward those who satisfy their users over long period of time. Over months you'll see your price/click drop if you have an accurate ad that performs well.
All these factors affect your quality score and at the end determines which position you should have and how much it'll cost you.
I agree that you should focus on long chain keywords. Take over markets with low to no competition rather than try to outbid the others on expensive keywords. A quick way to determine competition is by looking at how many pages exist on Google with the same keyword in title and url and then start to analyze the pages shown on page one how well their page is optimized. Lower amount of pages with same keywords in title and url and bad SEO on pages on page one is a great place to start. It's relatively inexpensive and you'll see results within a shorter timeframe. Plus once you've taken over the market for a lot of those keywords you'll end up getting a higher ROI than with the expensive keywords and you'll stay on top longer.
I hope these tips will help you spend your money wisely on PPC.
14 Replies
- Vendor · Middlefield, CT · Member since 2015 · 55 posts · 50 votes10y
Oops! My post got removed for self promotion! My bad. Let me rephrase:
I've heard great things about @Mary K., though i've never met her in person.
Brendan from SoarSEM does very high quality work: http://soarsem.com
- 10yMary K.Pro MemberInvestor · Ocala, FL · Member since 2015 · 157 posts · 88 votes
Hmm, we are all investors but some of us have additional skills/experience that can help...I see realtors introduce themselves all the time here or mention finance companies by name. Not sure what the difference is?
- 10yMindy JensenPro MemberBiggerPockets Money Podcast Host · Longmont, CO · Member since 2014 · 7k+ posts · 10k+ votes
Hi @Mary K..
You can recommend someone else's company, but you cannot promote your own. If you see someone who is violating our posting rules, please feel free to report the post so we can have it removed.
Thanks!
- Investor · Sugar Land, TX · Member since 2012 · 554 posts · 232 votes10y
Thanks @Dan Barrett and @Mary K.. I'll keep you and those suggestions in mind. I've had bad luck in the past with a $1-2k/mo budget in the Houston market. Competition here is so fierce that the more successful PPC marketers are paying $50+ per click and $20-40k per month to make it work.
- Vendor · Middlefield, CT · Member since 2015 · 55 posts · 50 votes10y
Ahhhh....yes. I have competed in Houston several times in the last year - it's an absolute BLOODBATH right now.
Well, OK, that might have been a bit of an overstatement. :-) But you're right about the competition level getting really hairy.
High levels of competition like you have in Houston really invalidate a lot of the typical approaches to REI PPC, because the standard keyword lists that everyone's using - the "sell my house fast"s of the world - get bid up so high as to be essential unprofitable.
We've done deals affordably in Houston, but it's been tough. The key, I think, is to actually stay away from the "classic" REI keyword portfolio and look for cheaper ways to get in front of the same audience.
Typically, we'll do this by prioritizing the most profitable keywords in phrase match variations, avoiding exact match altogether (broad is still too broad in most markets, though it's probably worth a test in a market like yours).
Another key is going to be finding the place at which you can affordably compete - NOT going after the top positions because that's what everyone else is doing.
We find that the top spots in MANY markets are actually not worth the increase in cost - and that you can actually do more deals by targeting position 2, 3, etc. That's doubly true in a market like Houston, where the higher positions are FAR over priced for the subsequent performance increase they give (you can think of this like stock prices - a stock can be for a great company, but can still get far overpriced relative to it's actual value).
Anyway, not to bore you with nerdy stuff. You're in a tough market for PPC, for sure. Have you considered trying a primarily organic route, and using PPC in a more targeted way?
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- Investor · Sugar Land, TX · Member since 2012 · 554 posts · 232 votes10y
@Dan Barrett, by organic are you referring to SEO? I have used SEO services when I was doing PPC. I also have 2-3 blog posts per week to help with SEO.
I actually get a few SEO leads per month, but 9-10 are in different cities or states.
- Vendor · Middlefield, CT · Member since 2015 · 55 posts · 50 votes10y
@Chris Bounds huh....really? That seems like a large amount of out of state stuff if you're not getting that many leads each month... :-/ Are they looking to sell/buy in your area?
Anyway, by "organic" I really mean anything that's unpaid, but in practice that means SEO, yes.
If your rankings are improving and you're getting leads, awesome! You might look into leveraging your PPC data to help with your SEO at that point, or double down on what you're doing. My gut feeling is that in such a competitive market you will have to really work hard to out-compete everyone else who also wants that organic traffic near you...
- Investor · Sugar Land, TX · Member since 2012 · 554 posts · 232 votes10y
Thanks. Right now I'm a heavy direct mail marketer, but in the near future I plan on looking at adding PPC (again) to my overall marketing strategy.
- Vendor · Katy, TX · Member since 2015 · 390 posts · 218 votes9y
@Chris Bounds PushFire here :) We've actually just increased our minimum management fee to $1500/month (that doesn't include advertising spend), so if your total monthly budget for PPC is $1K-2K, we're not the right fit for you, not yet anyway. ;)
And, we don't provide SEO as a service anymore to businesses we don't have ownership in, but we know some great people who do good work.
I'll send you a private message with who we refer prospects with budgets outside of our minimum for PPC and a couple SEOs who are local and really great. One is actually speaking at a Meetup tomorrow night, I'll send details. Thanks for considering us, and thanks for the mention!
- Vendor · Katy, TX · Member since 2015 · 390 posts · 218 votes9y
@Chris Bounds and we're averaging $4/click in the Houston market over the last 30 days. Which is an important point to be be made here. The difference between a good and bad provider is $50/click vs $4/click. Y'all need to keep that in mind when you haggle prices, or think someone is "too expensive". Same goes for the cheap sheetrock guy, cheap plumber, cheap electrician...
And I should also mention that because we have a client in Houston, we won't work with any other clients in the same farm area. That's the primary reason, before budget, just wanted to clarify that.
- Investor · Sugar Land, TX · Member since 2012 · 554 posts · 232 votes9y
Thanks @Sean Dolan!
- Investor · Katy, TX · Member since 2013 · 93 posts · 25 votes9yWhy concentrate on $4/click if it doesn't generate anything? Just because it's cheaper doesn't mean it's better. It's the wrong focus in my opinion. It's all about ROI just like direct mail. If you can afford spending $1000/month on PPC and you get $10,000 in return then who cares if you paid $100 per call or click? I'm not saying that we all should spend a lot of money per click. I'm saying it's more than just the price/click. Since you want to get into PPC here's a few tips: Google is your friend even when it comes to price. Your competitor may pay less than you and rank higher than you. It's because of the quality score and that's why SEO and PPC goes hand in hand. Once you manage to create an accurate ad that reflects the content you advertise on the link you have to start focusing on SEO and your overall track record on your google Adwords account. If one ad is misleading/inaccurate and you haven't done anything about it for months Google will punish you, and it'll also hurt the rest of your ads. So by optimizing all your ads they all benefit from each other. Then you need to be patient. Google reward those who satisfy their users over long period of time. Over months you'll see your price/click drop if you have an accurate ad that performs well. All these factors affect your quality score and at the end determines which position you should have and how much it'll cost you. I agree that you should focus on long chain keywords. Take over markets with low to no competition rather than try to outbid the others on expensive keywords. A quick way to determine competition is by looking at how many pages exist on Google with the same keyword in title and url and then start to analyze the pages shown on page one how well their page is optimized. Lower amount of pages with same keywords in title and url and bad SEO on pages on page one is a great place to start. It's relatively inexpensive and you'll see results within a shorter timeframe. Plus once you've taken over the market for a lot of those keywords you'll end up getting a higher ROI than with the expensive keywords and you'll stay on top longer. I hope these tips will help you spend your money wisely on PPC.
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