Real Estate Lead Generation & Conversion

What do you want from Google?

In my last post I stated that when doing Internet marketing for real estate you don’t want to be found for a very popular search term.  I stand by that statement with two exceptions:  1) You might do this if you are building a brand, like you would at a very large brokerage firm, or 2) You might do this if you have a lot of under utilized resources on your payroll and you don’t want o fire anyone.  Either way optimizing for very popular search terms will not result in a positive return on your investment in the short term.

Before I go into why, let’s discuss “very popular search terms.”  Clearly “Chicago real estate” (with 31.1 million results) or “Las Vegas homes for sale” (with 9.7 million results) qualify as very popular search terms.  What about “Bethesda real estate” (with 869 thousand results) or “Homes for sale in Traverse City” (with 159 thousand results)?  Probably yes, still quite popular.  Even a search for “Granby CO homes for sale” with only 30 thousand results looks pretty popular.  These search results can seem very daunting for those of us with pretty small marketing budgets.  On the other hand I would suggest that this is not where you want to compete anyway.  These simple search queries “,city. +  real estate” are the targets of all the internet aggregators like Zillow and Trulia but this is not where you want to be.

Let’s now switch our focus to “How prospects use the internet.”  We have examined user behavior and classified searches into three phases:

1)       General Searches, like the ones mentioned are the place where many prospects begin their research process. To position your website to be found for this type of search will typically require the largest investment.

2)       Searches for specific locations (subdivisions, in a specific school district, etc.) or Searches for features (waterfront, granite counter tops, etc.) and

3)       Searches for streets or specific addresses

Now let’s build a profile for a typical visitor that comes to your site from each of the Three Phases of Search:

General Search Visitor: This person has typically just started their quest.  They are early in research mode.  They often don’t even know what they are looking for themselves.  Someone searching for a home in Chicago by typing in “Chicago homes for sale” still has to decide on the best area, features, etc.  The one advantage of connecting with a visitor at this time is that they probably have not engaged a real estate agent yet.  If they do give you their information at this time and you are able to set up an appointment you should expect to show this customer a lot of properties before they are ready to make an offer.  Of course there are always exceptions to this rule.   I’m just not sure I would spend the money on SEO to find those exceptions.

Visitor Searching for Specific Locations and Features: At this point your visitor has an understanding of what they want and where they want it.  They are still looking but are now zeroing in on what they feel will be their perfect home.  For example someone looking for “the Links at Poplar Creek” Hoffman Estates has done enough research to know where they want to live and here’s the best part – your website will be competing with under 6,000 other results on Google.  Another actual search example: four bedroom double bay window houses for sale in Birmingham brought a customer to our site. Search visitors in Phase 2 have enough information to be ready to make an offer when they find the right property.  Now is when the guidance and support of a real estate agent is most needed and will add the most value.

Searches for Streets or Specific Addresses: These visitors are in buy mode.  They think they know exactly what they want and have their wallets out and on the table.  The fact that they are still searching on the internet is an indication they still need an expert to help them close the deal on the perfect home.  But these visitors are so far down the search process they are the ones most likely to already be working with an agent.  We can not read people’s minds,  sometimes people start with a narrow focus but then broaden their search parameters.  For example the search: Hazel Drive house for sale in Petoskey brought a visitor to our site that spent the next 18 minutes viewing 45 different pages.  And the visitor that searched for: 9107 East Starhill, Lonetree then spent the next hour and a half viewing different homes listed on our site.  BTW only 21 websites showed up for this search.

Okay now we know what Google wants and we know what we want from Google, next we discuss how to match this up and achieve SEO success with your website.

Successfully converting real estate leads requires both short term and long term tactics. In a previous post, statistics that confirm why it is so important to contact leads immediately were presented. However, few sales will result simply based on an initial contact. Thus, a long term follow up plan is required outlining how leads will be contacted and the information that will be communicated to the prospects during the relationship building phase of the process.  A good summary of Employing a System for Follow Up was written by Ashley Lickty of GetMyHomesValue and Web Xtreme, Inc.

“A system is simply any formulated, regular or special method or plan of a procedure for obtaining an objective. In the case of real estate, your objective is to convert real estate leads to clients through follow up. Your system of follow up is simply an organized, efficient and general procedure to get in contact with your leads.

Without some sort of system of following up with your real estate leads, it’s very easy to waste precious time because of disorganization. Having a system is the most effective way to streamline your follow up so you still have time to actually list and sell your clients’ homes! After all, with hundreds of real estate leads to constantly follow up with, when are you supposed to have time for listing presentations, settlement, advertising homes for sale, etc?

By having your own organized plan of follow up, you can dedicate certain hours in your day to your follow up of real estate leads. There are services out there that “sell” follow up systems to real estate agents, but they’re really not necessary for everybody. If you’re already disciplined and organized, there’s no reason you can’t formulate your own system of follow up, like designing several email templates, dedicating a certain amount of time each day to phone calls and creating an easy to access, track and monitor database of your real estate leads which includes all the important contact information needed to get in touch with them.

A system can be something as simple as creating a schedule for yourself and then rigidly adhering to that schedule. Having a systematic approach to following up with your real estate leads is the best way to maximize your conversion rate and minimize time spent following up.”

RISMEDIA, March 9, 2010—Online marketing is–in comparison to the business of selling real estate–a relatively new thing. Just 10 years ago, it was not an important part of any agent’s marketing for many reasons. Now, with a majority of North Americans having access to high-speed broadband Internet, online marketing is one of the most important parts of any agents marketing; after all, with more than 80% of all residential home sales beginning online, if you can’t make it work for you, you are missing out on 80% of the business.

What is SEO?
Please think of the Internet as a giant filing cabinet and think of each page on a website as a conventional manila file in alphabetical order. Currently, more than eleven billion pages of websites are indexed by search engines. That means that when a shopper types in what she wants to see, the search engine must find the proper file and show it as a choice in a fraction of a second. This can’t happen without proper SEO (search engine optimization), because even a computer has trouble indexing 11 billion different files; as the search engine goes to the “location” file and parses down to whatever is being searched for (homes, condos, real estate, real estate agent, etc.), wherever it is, there will be at least 500 real estate agents in the mix. SEO affects which 10 agents are shown first, and so on, with the goal of putting your site on that first page, where the prospect can choose it. You can see the problem: not only is the Internet one large filing cabinet, just getting to the right location in .3 seconds is a chancy thing—especially if your ‘file’ is misfiled. That’s the function of SEO: to put your site in the proper file where it can be found every time under what you sell—in as many different descriptions of what you sell as possible.

Non-agents are making it harder for agents to get onto that first page
These days, large corporations and portals are trying to elbow individual agents off those first pages. The biggest offenders are lead aggregators, who try to have anyone searching for a home anywhere end up at their central site so they can sell that name to their customers—sell it (in many cases) multiple times. These lead aggregators never brand to you, they brand only their own brand. They all have spent huge amounts getting their aggregator on as many different searches as they can—although they have no offices there. (Please note that proper organic search can still outperform the big entities, enabling an agent to be found on 500 or more search terms on the first pages. While that is a good thing for every agent, it is also a clear indicator that in years to come, getting found will continue to get harder and it will become–even more—the province of professionals).

The consumer, however, usually does not want to talk to a faceless corporation so in most cases, they skip those corporate sites and look for a local individual agent to work with, instead. They’ll click on those agents’ sites and if they like what greets them, maybe they’ll stick around. Of course, without SEO, those agents won’t be able to be found on that first page.

Just being on that page is not going to sell houses; more is needed today
Five years ago, if an agent could just get to that first page, success would follow. Today, it’s not enough. These days, it’s all about conversion—from random visitor into lead. Most individual websites do a poor job at converting visitors into leads partially because most websites are simply software templates designed by big software marketers. They sell the same page over and over again in the form of a website subscription and they can’t worry about optimization; standardization is their big concern and that is at odds with customization, which is needed to make the site “stickier,” i.e., to make people stay there and sign in.

Custom sites, on the other hand, have a whole separate set of issues as custom Web builders tend to be more expert in “pretty” than in “effective” and many of them will not “desecrate” their designs in order to implement things vital to success online, like lead capture. Online marketing is not about “pretty.” Forget trying to win that “most beautiful website” award. Try to convert 5% of your unique visitors to sign-ins, instead.

If you don’t have visitors you can’t convert them to sign-ins and without proper SEO, you probably won’t have enough visitors to matter. Even if you do have proper SEO you might not get enough visitors in some cases. You must have a minimum level of traffic; the better and more effective your site is, the less visitors you need and vice-versa. To the extent that your site is more effective, you can do with less traffic—when your site is effective you may find that even 100 visitors monthly produces a steady stream of good leads. Success in online marketing only begins when people register on your site—voluntarily—because they really do want more information.

SEO is getting more complicated and so is succeeding at online marketing
Google, Yahoo and Microsoft know the value of their search engines so they continually make it harder for folks to affect their placement on them. Blogs and social networking are developments to try to get more placement than the search engines algorithms would accord an ordinary site. For a while, that may help with SEO, but the engines are adjusting and will continue to do so.

What agent has the time and/or inclination to try to stay abreast of all these changes? That, dear readers, is why 90% of agents are unhappy with the production from their websites: it’s just too hard to keep on top of all these constantly changing factors for most people to do while trying to list and sell real estate.

SEO is but one part of a balanced approach
You could study SEO for years, only to find out that much of what you learned had been superseded by new developments and algorithms, making what you learned obsolete. You could blog until your fingers bleed and not sell one home online. You could drive yourself around the bend trying—and failing—to succeed online, just like 90% of all agents, until you just give up and admit defeat.

Here’s what you need to do:
-Maintain a good marketing platform with information available to the consumer upon request; get them to tell you what they want and give it to them;
-Make certain that people searching the Web for homes can find your site;
-Build traffic and convert visitors to your site into registrations;
-Learn the proper way to follow up these leads; the timing, the methods and the follow-up techniques.

Do that and the world of buyers will beat a path to your door. If you can’t do that all by yourself, you need to hire an entity or person to do it for you, or you will never get a shot at the 80+% of home sales that begin on the Internet.

Success online is becoming a specialty and you aren’t a specialist in online marketing
You could learn how to do this—but how long would it take and how much would it cost? The right way to evaluate the issue is to decide just what online success would be worth to you, and then decide whether it is worth your effort.

Here’s how you decide:
-How many homes did you sell last year?
-How many homes did you sell last year as a result of your online marketing?
-What was the average commission you made on each of those home sales?
-How many additional units would you need to sell to cover the costs and time necessary to learn how to do this or to hire experts to do it for you? (Hint: It’s less than ONE side in most cases).

The Internet is not going to lose market share
Buyers want to browse the Web and look at homes, but they want a real professional with them when they get down to buying one. That is the fundamental reason that real Internet leads are so valuable; 81% of the time, handled properly, that lead will stay with you all the way to purchasing a home. Life as an agent is so much more satisfying when you always have new people to call on and the Internet can provide those people for you to call on. More than 80% of all residential homes sales start online and that’s not going to decrease. Instead of trying to become a ‘master of the Internet,’ why not just stay a master of real estate sales and consider hiring professionals to do your Internet prospecting for you? Use the Web to prospect; you spend your time selling things to people.

It’s a radical idea to some people. But in reality, it’s the only way to guarantee success in online marketing. Let others worry about algorithms and changing search engine patterns; you hold them accountable to produce buyers for you. What could make more sense?

This article has been re-posted with permission by Author, Mike Parker (mparker@theblackwatercg.com).  Mike is a well known authority on the subject of online marketing services for Realtors® and other real estate professionals. If you’d like a actual demonstration right there at your desk about how you can have strong internet prospecting done for you more cheaply and more effectively than you can do it yourself, click here and an actual live demo will be done for you at no cost or obligation—right at your desk.

The Etiquette of Effective Lead Capture

It’s been written around the Web that 90+% of real estate websites and blogs are not effective at their intended purpose.  This is assuming that your goal for your site is the actual direct generation of business.  If all you want is a billboard to place your listings and show to your listing clients, then most any site will do, and you really don’t need to get into lead capture as a strategy.

However, that’s a great waste of the potential of a real estate website.  Believe it or not, you can generate listing client leads as easily as buyer leads with the right website and tools.  The trick is to entice your visitors to give you their contact information, not steal it from them with black-hat techniques.  The right content, a great IDX search page, featured listings, and special offerings is the way to go.

Though there are ways to do it, you never want a visitor to your site to automatically get an email because you somehow captured their address without their knowledge or approval.  If you are capturing the contact information of a site visitor, it should always be with their full knowledge, and it should happen because they intended to give it to you.  Usually, that will not happen with a simple “Please sign our guestbook” popup.  Why should they … what’s in it for them.

You also do not want to make them jump through too many hoops to get to useful information or search for listings.  It should be easy, and studies have shown that sites with a lot of useful information without login or requirement for contact information will get more traffic and page views.  So, that gets them there, but how do we get that valuable email address or even a phone call?  How de we get the visitor to the next level?

• A very visible email link on EVERY page.

• Your phone number on every page.

• If you use one, have one of the services “Call Me” buttons on every page that connects them from their phone to you.

• Special reports delivered via email.  BUT!  Every template website in the world has “How to make your kitchen show better.”  You need to do better than that, with useful locally-focused reports like “Negotiations in the YourTown real estate market,” etc.

• Statistics, statistics, statistics.  Buyers want to know what the market is doing.  Sellers want to compare their home to what has sold recently.  Everybody loves statistics if they’re close to buying or selling real estate.  You can offer useful general market stats for free, but offer in-depth stats and commentary as special reports by email.  They’ll give you their email address to get them.

• If your IDX limits the information fields, offer a widget or other way to sign up for more detailed listing reports, more like the ones you see when you log in as a Realtor.  They send you the MLS numbers, and you send them back detailed listing reports.

• You might offer the in-depth statistics as a weekly or monthly email newsletter, rather than a special report.  You just go into the MLS and generate a report of recent sold averages and that becomes the special newsletter with some commentary by you on your perceptions of what they mean.

Note the theme here.  The Internet, and real estate even more so, is becoming very transparent, with great amounts of information freely available.  If you try to force signup to get what they can get freely elsewhere, they’ll end up elsewhere.  Actually, this goes hand-in-hand with positioning yourself as the local area real estate expert.  You do that by providing this special information and extended reports and statistics.

I mentioned buyers and sellers.  Too many real estate professionals think that a website or blog is primarily to attract buyers, and they may not even like dealing with them.  The fact is that a really good website will attract listing clients as well.  If your command of market knowledge, and your reporting of statistics, shows potential sellers that you’re on top of the market, they’ll want you to list their home.

It’s really not complicated to generate leads from a web presence.  You provide information that visitors want, use marketing and SEO to get them there, then offer valuable extras to show you are the expert and to get that contact information.

This article has been reprinted with permission by it’s Author: Peyman Aleagha, Founder and President of RealtySoft.com.

The answer to this question is relatively simple.  While Google has a very complex algorithm it can be simplified into three critical components. Google wants:

1)       Unique content that searches and visitors find useful.

2)       Content that is considered by other webmasters in your community to be credible/valuable (back-links are one of the tools for achieving this).

3)       A website infrastructure must be user friendly so that Google can find and understand the content.

However, anyone who has ever done any SEO work knows that it is not that simple.  The devil is in the details.  The complexity of working with Google comes not from understanding what Google wants but rather from defining what you want from Google.

For example, it is easy to get front page search results from Google, even in the very competitive real estate market when the search term is complex and not very competitive.  As long as your content is relatively unique you can accomplish with minimal effort.  We tested this on a property address: we created a page for 1095 Pine Meadow ct. and within a couple of weeks we were on the front page of Google with our page: http://1095pinemeadowct.agents123.com/.  Interestingly enough, we were able to do this entirely based upon the content of the web page.  We used no inbound links at all for improving the search results for this page.  (During the past week this result comes up between number one and number four, of the organic results on the first page of a Google search.  Of course this will all be changed as soon as this blog post hits because the links from here will give that page a boost.  But I digress from my original point . . .) When optimizing a more competitive search phrase it becomes more difficult to achieve front page search success.  No surprise there.

So how do you achieve success in a very competitive market for a very popular search term?  This is a two part answer: 1) YOU DON’T and 2) YOU DON’T WANT TO.

I will explain “Why” in my next blog.

Lead with Patience. Lead with Persistence. Lead with Perseverance.

Online Leads Management Starts with You!

Do you find yourself  the type of person with a lot of patience?  Are you usually pretty calm, laid back  and typically wait for someone to call you when they need something?

Do you remain persistent by contacting your leads by phone? by e-mail?  Do you consistently develop relationships, nurture them and become a trusting and loyal resource for their real estate needs?

Do you find succcess in feeding new relationships in order for them to grow and develop?  Or do you just hope for the best that they do not wilt?

There are many steps involved in managing online leads successfully.  But what comes to mind are the simple steps that sometimes fall short of making it to most real estate professionals “Make it a Habit” list. Lead management is hard work, usually more difficult that generating the leads in the first place. About 25% of online leads are “sales ready”; about another 25% of your online leads are not qualified at all and 50% of your leads need to be nurtured for the the entire sales process to work successfully.  Let’s start with the basic foundations of following through with an online real estate lead:

Lead with Patience.  Or should we say, don’t stop calling if you don’t get through on your first attempt.   “HELLO?”…..Someone is reaching out to you because they need you.  Whether its a question about a property currently on the market or someone wanting to know if a neighborhood has a homeowners association, making contact by phone increases your chances of converting that lead into, if not an immediate prospect, a future home buyer or seller.     Response speed is your only first impression to an online lead, as you don’t want your competitors to reach them first.   Leads360 recently published some data  stating that repeated call attempts will dramatically increase the number of leads contacted. By making at least six calls, a salesperson can increase their chances over contacting a contactable lead from 39% on the first call to 93% on the sixth. Even a second call will increase the chances of contact by 87%.  Don’t give up – Be Patient – keep calling.

Lead with Persistency.  The driving source to lead conversion is persistence.  Doubtful or fearful attempts to make contact with a lead will only set you up for consistently poor habits.  Don’t let any leads fall through the cracks.   Getting into a good habit of persistent contact attempts will help you stand out as a real estate professional.  As part of your daily routine, calling, dialing, driving, meeting, showing face and discussions will give you the best chance to sell yourself as the most qualified real estate professional for the job.   Surprisingly, as many as 50% of leads can be closed with a persistent approach.  Persistence is a key to ensuring that every lead that can be closed will be closed.  Regardless of the quality of the lead, if you have valid contact information, use that information persistently until you make contact.  Don’t give up -  Be persistent.

The question of how much should a real estate broker or agent pay for Internet leads is a frequent topic of conversation.

The answer is “it depends”. The quality of  leads vary dramatically from lead generation firm to lead generation firm. In addition to the charge from the lead generation firm, there are the costs incurred and time involved in working the leads. For a low quality lead that is being resold to numerous real estate professionals and that has a liklihood of closing of under 0.5% (1 out ot 200), one dollar may be too much tp pay. On the other hand, a fresh lead that is requesting a showing of a specific property on a specified day may be worth over $100. 

Ben Roberts, TheExitPro, has researched the cost of leads from a sampling of the top lead generation firms. With his permission, his research is being republished here. We are  publishing an except from Ben’s article on the prices of some of our competitors in the lead generation space in part because we are very confident that the quality and the pricing of the leads Broker Dynamix  provides to our clients compares favorably to the lead generation service  of these competitors:

Realty Generator (market leader) – $15-$30

Is generally on a small brokerage basis and pricing starts with $1500 a month ‘maintenance” plus whatever PPC advertising you’re going to do through them. I will say, their system does work but it takes several months to see leads coming through the funnel turn in into closed business. A 12 month contract is required for a minimum of $18,000 without advertising. You’re paying some major bucks in the meantime so make sure you have cash in reserve. You can also drive the price per lead down if you can drive your own traffic to the site via organic search.

GetMyHomesValue.com -$225-$400 (per month) Average is 4-7 quality clients a month

GMHV is a service that calls it’s lead generation efforts referrals… that’s fine I guess since that’s what they are. They give their clients exclusive access to a zip code or designated area for a monthly fee. The contract is month-to-month. They claim 4-7 quality leads per month but some agents get as many as 60 quality leads.

HouseValues.com (market leader) – $30-$50

HV (I had HV in 2006 so I know this one intimately) provides similar lead generation as GMHV but they don’t ‘vet’ their leads the way GMHV does. Leads are sold in blocks with a guaranteed minimum ($99 gets you 3 minimum, etc). You can get HV in a 6 or 12 month contract. Let me know before you sign up (if you do) and I can make a $250 referral off you… which I will promptly send to you in the form of a cashier’s check. There’s sticking it to the system

Lead to Realty – $49.95 ($39.95 for EXIT Agents)

At least LtoR spells it out. $40 bucks. That’s what they charge EXIT agents for a lead. Converted or not. You can return leads based on your ability to contact, the lead working with another agent, or they aren’t buying or selling. That’s not bad. They have 18 different ‘landing pages’ that target specific buyer and seller targets like Luxury Buyers, Foreclosures, Tax-Credit, etc.

A key characteristic of real estate agents that are successful at converting online leads into sales is that they follow-up immediately. Real estate leads contacted within less than 15 minutes convert at the highest rate. The prospects recall filling out the form and their motivation for doing so. The value of real estate leads degrades by 10% or more if not contacted in the first 15 minutes. The rate of decay slows down from the 15 minute mark until the lead switches activities (leaves work, turns off their home computer. etc) This period of slowing degradation typically lasts about 3-4 hours. Contacting a lead more than 4 hours after submission results in another 10-15% decline in conversion rates. Real estate prospects are bouncing around the web, looking at multiple sites and often filling out multiple forms. If you don’t contact them within four hours, they may not remember visiting your Website. If they are not contacted same day, they probably will not recall your site or why they filled out the form and you will have given other real estate professionals an opportunity to get their foot in the door. Failure to contact a lead during the day of registration degrades the value of the lead by 40-50% versus contacting them within 15 minutes.

An article by LeadQual describes how speed wins when it comes to converting online leads because “Internet leads die a quick death”. LeadQual’s research indicates that “the first to contact a lead increases conversions by 238%”. While the above referenced study is in regard to leads in general and is skewed based on lead generation companies that sell their leads simultaneously to multiple sources, results for real estate leads are similar. The LeadQual article was based on a study by Dr. James Oldroyd of MIT on lead response management.

A survey by the California Association of Realtors reinforced the importance of response time:

86% of leads felt that response time was “extremely important” when deciding on their real estate agent

31% of Internet homebuyers  expected their real estate agent to respond instantly to their online inquiry

96% of Internet home buyers expected a real estate agent to contact them within 4 hours of their online inquiry

Following up on leads immediately after they were submitted will significantly increase your online lead conversion rates and increase the number of homes you sell.

The following article is a reprint of a post by BethAnn Long. We liked it so much that we judged it to be well worthy of being reposted. Published with permission:

My business is split about 60/40 between:

• Category A: People I know and their referrals (60%) these are warm sources and
• Category B: Internet leads and online sources, and what I call cold sources (FSBO, Open House)(40%)

With Category A, I have one way of doing business and keeping in touch.
• Mailings
• Phone calls
• Lunches
• Socializing
I have found after dozens of closings from online buyers that ” Courting” Internet leads is an art- not a science. It takes some intuition to capture their attention and stand out above the other Realtors you know darn well they are in touch with at some level. Here are some things that I find works in my courtships that have led to engagement and ultimately to “consummate” the relationship with a transaction!:
• Assume they are cheating on you
• Think of these leads as a BLIND DATE, sometimes it works, other times…NOT!
• They are asking for an ” open” relationship- you need a commitment
• Be patient, but not stupid
• Don’t assume they are bad leads too soon
• Offer something of value, such as a relocation packet or to send them listings via e-mail
• Don’t be pushy, but know your boundaries
• Know when to move on
• Politely ask for a complimentary telephone consult and ask them about THEM before giving them the agency speech
• Try to find a common denominator such as sports, kids…
• If a phone number is given, do call right away. Be engaging, thank them for visiting your site and get them on some kind of follow up routine. Hand written notes are a favorite
• ASK ASK ASK for contact info
• Get them on an automated drip e-mail
• You win a few- you lose a few
• All is not fair in love and Internet leads or listing regimen so they keep seeing YOUR NAME!
• They have a fear of commitment for good reason usually
• I DO NOT show homes to anyone unless they work with me exclusively, but it takes TIME and persistence to develop Internet leads
• They may be looking as far out as 18 months before buying. Have a long term plan to stay in touch.
• Be professional at all times
• Internet leads are people too!
• Don’t rely solely on Internet leads- get out among the people and shake a lot of hands!
• Never, ever jeopardize your safety
• Patience, Persistence, Professionalism are required
• Like courting is real life, it requires a lot of “hand holding” before you get to first base!
I have made several wonderful transactions from Internet leads. And yes- I have had a few go south on me. I am learning as I go to treat each one as potentially valid until I learn otherwise. I am careful with my time on these, and so far- so good!

BethAnn Long
Spokane Realtor, Tomlinson South Inc.
www.BethAnnHomes.com

It required a couple of years to pass for me to get over my anger at Yahoo for totally scrambling up a 40,000 keyword account during the Panama update. But over the past year or so, Yahoo has gradually become my preferred source for PPC advertising. Now I am sorry to learn that Yahoo Search Marketing is going to be swallowed up by MSN Adcenter. Yahoo has become my preferred PPC advertising vehicle for three reasons:

1) Although it only delivers a fraction of the traffic of Google PPC, for many categories the cost per click is significantly lower and the ROI is higher;
2) The 40 character title limit allows for better copywriting opportunities than the restrictive 25 character limits of Google and Bing;
3) Yahoo tends to serve ads based on longer tail keyword terms than Google and Bing.

The consolidation won’t occur until late in the 2010 at the earliest, so I guess I can continue to appreciate the unique features of Yahoo Search Marketing for a few more months.  Call Broker Dynamix at 1-847-680-8811 or visit our Real Estate PPC and Search Engine Marketing webpage if you would like to learn more about taking advantage of the unique features of Yahoo Search Marketing during the next few months prior to the consolidation with MSN (Bing)