RealTown's RealTalk

John, it seems to me that you created a lot of work for yourself by
having all those different sites (described below). With some content
and some good SEO work, pages within one site can be optimized to bring
in organic traffic for your various long tail search terms. The beauty
of long tail searches is that because the keyphrases aren't competitive,
it's usually easy to get organic traffic to a site by way of longtail
keyphrase searches. None of your sites has had even the most basic SEO
work done on them, such as optimizing the title tags and body copy. With
a little SEO effort, you could probably easily end your reliance on PPC.

For examples of how optimizing one site for various longtail keyphrases
can work, Google each of the keyphrases below and look for MikeMay.com
in the search results. You'll see that this site actually gets better
placement for some of these longtail keyphrases then it does for more
competitive keyphrases such as "fort lee va real estate".

petersburg va historic homes
lake chesdin real estate
fort lee va rental homes
chesdin landing real estate
waterford landing real estate

Also, from a marketing creative standpoint, you might find that your
text might be more appealing to site visitors if you reduce the emphasis
on "I" and write more about how your site can help visitors find
whatever they are looking for. For example, each of the first 3
paragraphs of your PrescottLandMan.com site starts with "I" and toots
your own horn. Approaches like this can be a major turn-off to site
visitors. Note, for example, how the home page text on the site below
puts the focus on the visitor and the Newport area, with only minimal
emphasis on the real estate agent, slanted towards how she can help the
site visitor: http://www.HomesInNewportRI.com/

Suzanne

--
Suzanne Hathcock Stephens
Point2Agent Design Partner
http://www.SuzStephens.com
360-666-0881

_____________________

John Mosier wrote:

I have recently been experimenting with some work using Long Tail search
terms and content.

To this end, I have set up a website that allows me to market in a rural
community that I hope to dominate soon. My first try at this is at
http://Seligman66.com. Seligman is a small town on I-40 between Kingman,
AZ and Flagstaff, AZ. Land there is cheap, $1,000 to $2,500 per acre,
but also quite beautiful but remote. That site has a little content, but
mostly links back to my other websites. I have about 30 listings in the
Seligman Area ranging in price from $18,500 to $875,000.

I am also working on a neighborhood that has much more expensive
properties some of which run to $2,000,000. That is
http://WilliamsonValley.info. Since I do list a lot of land, I also
feature my listings at http://PrescottsLandMan.com. All of these small
websites are custom-designed sites that we program in html, flash and
php as we need to have FTP access to the material we present.

These three websites will appeal to totally different buyers. Each has a
small amount of content, but links back to my main site at
http://JohnMosier.com. Incidentally this site is a Joomla website and
not a Real Estate Specific template site.

I use Google Adwords and the long tail search terms for my neighborhood
sites cost between $0.10 and $0.40 per click while my Prescott Area
links cost around $0.50 per click.

John,

Good points.

In order to stay away from "SEO lingo", I usually use the tems "primary" search terms and "secondary" search terms, with secondary representing the "long tail". Primary terms are things like "City ST real estate" or "City ST homes for sale"

One thing that our free landing page tool does is help you put secondary terms on your pages...for instance, "City St Realtor" is always a secondary term. Our landing page tool helps you get in on the page.

Our landing page is tool, here:
http://www.domaindrivers.com/pagegumbo/pagegumbo-test.asp
http://www.domaindrivers.com/pagegumbo/pagegumbo.asp

The first link is an "example" page, and the second is a live tool that you can use at anytime.

This is all explained here:

Search Engine Optimization Basics For Real Estate-Related Websites
http://www.domaindrivers.com/seobasics-realestate-main.htm

I hope it helps.

Best regards,

Dirk Johnson
Partner - Operations
DomainDrivers LLC
djohnson@domaindrivers.com
703-406-4698
http://domaindrivers.realtown.com
We're an approved RealTalk/RealTown vendor:
http://DomainDrivers.InternetCrusade.com

John,

There are a couple of things that you should listen to where Suzanne is right on. She knows her stuff and I agree with her points. I'd also like to point out a few other points. First of all, your entire platform is wrong for testing purposes. You have to first have a well optimized website or websites to base this analysis. Secondly, saying that "I use Google Adwords and the long tail search terms for my neighborhood sites cost between $0.10 and $0.40 per click while my Prescott Area links cost around $0.50 per click" is almost an oxymoron. Who cares what they cost. That doesn't necessarily represent placement.

As anyone knows that uses Google Adwords, your placement is not predicated just upon your cost of keywords, but of the number of click-thrus as well. In other words, someone in 2nd place may have a more attractive link, get more click-thrus and actually be paying less. So there goes the scientific theory. If you want to do an analysis, you must do it on an organic or natural basis.

In a Penn State study done a few years ago, it was found that 82% of all search engine queries use the organic or natural results as opposed to the Pay-per-click or "sponsored links".

Your study is appropriate. But it must be founded upon the right ideals and model.

Randy Eagar, CRS
President, WebsTarget SEO
www.WebsTarget.com
(800 277-1316

Eileen Landau, Over 800 Homes Sold! wrote:
Randy, Interesting comments. Yeah, I use Google Adwords...and have been
using it for over three years. So, what have I learned? Well, I don't
need to be in top position and pay top dollar. I'd rather be between #2
and #4. I still show up but I pay less. I do check my adword clicks
every day and make changes. I've also noticed that this year my
click-thru rate has increased 300%! So, I guess I've figured a few
things out.

_______________________________________________________________

Eileen, it seems that you may have missed the points that I made in my
original post some time ago and that Randy confirmed. I don't condone
the use of AdWords as as anything more than a crutch to support a site
on a short-term basis while efforts are made to good organic search
ranking. As far as I'm concerned, spending money on AdWords long term is
like flushing money down the toilet. Our enthusiasm for longtail content
and searches is based on our experience of how beautifully longtail
content attracts organic searches, not because it saves money on pay
per click.

SEO'd text content that attracts longtail searches is a great way to get
organic search traffic. It's usually going to be cheaper in the long run
to perform SEO on a site and to develop search engine optimized text
content that will 1) attract the search engines and 2) provide site
visitors with the local information for which they are hungry.

I wrote a blog post on ActiveRain that illustrates the effectiveness of
text content to attract longtail searches on Joe Janus's site. The
organic traffic on Joe's site doubled within just a few months of our
adding content to his site, and I've seen the same thing happen with
several other clients' sites.

http://activerain.com/blogsview/540313/Content-the-Magic-of-Long-Tail-Searches

Right now, all the content on your two sites is basically useless for
SEO because it's in frames, so Google doesn't recognize it. So, for
example, if you would write -- or have written -- SEO'd text about
Naperville instead of simply framing the Naperville web site, you have
some text that Google can grab hold of. (That is assuming that your web
providers will allow you to create non-framed content.)

Basic on-site SEO is not difficult; Randy provided an overview of the
process in a post entitled "Do You Know Your Google Score" a few days
ago. (Again, this assumes that your web site providers's content
management systems are set up so that you can edit the elements Randy
listed in that post.)

Adding SEO'd content can be relatively inexpensive: I normally recommend
that my clients budget $250-500 for SEO copywriting, depending upon how
competitive their market is. I would imagine that a one-time investment
of $500 would be less than you've been paying for AdWords.

Suzanne

--
Suzanne Hathcock Stephens
Point2Agent Qualified Web Site Designer
http://www.SuzStephens.com
360-666-0881

Eileen said: "Also, what I like is that I can raise and lower my daily spend. When I�m on
vacation, I reduce my budget. When I want more buyers, I increase it. And, as I�m the only team member, I have to limit the number of clients that I can work with."

Let me again say that while I think that SEO is the better way to go, that PPC can work as well, as you are obviously proving. However I think that you could give agents reading this post some very insightful information if you could give us what rough numbers you are spending per month on average for your PPC.

You see, most agents are only looking at the "cost" of marketing their website. You have understood that it is not a cost issue but an investment issue, and that this investment can pay off big time (10 fold in your case). Marketing your website is not a matter of "cost", but ROI (Return On Investment).

If you could share your numbers, I think it would be very helpful to those wondering if or why they should follow the path of website marketing (whether SEO or PPC or both).

Respectfully,

Randy Eagar, CRS
President, WebsTarget SEO
www.WebsTarget.com
(800) 277-1316

Hi John;

We typically land our clients on 500 or more long tail searches within a few months that they get found upon. In fact, we have a success story about an Arizona agent you whould probably peruse before committing to anything. If you'd like a copy, just let me know and I will send it along. I can also demonstrate what I am talking about on your computer screen should you like to see how it works. Good luck.

Best regards

Mike Parker"
mparker@theblackwatercg.com