The next area of improvement is in conversion. Like you indicated, these 50+ Nhood Landing pages are static and fairly boring.

One idea I’ve had for a long time now but not acted on due to the amount of time involved is to have a “register for detailed nhood report” on each of the 50 pages.

Something simple like enter your name and email address and a PDF report gets emailed automatically. This gives me a live email address for the database.

Easy to implement on the site, but I then have to author 50+ Neighborhood Reports.

This would get my conversions up some % (how much… TBD).

Currently, I’m converting at about 10% which is probably good, but here’s another MULTIPLIER like CTR.

Improve both significantly and suddenly you are swamped!

RM

I think that no matter what you have on our website (search, blog, etc), that it had better be both different and more valuable than the next agent’s.

Yeah, I could tell your #’s were strong. Agree that CTR should increase. Maybe change up the structure of the value in certain places? Get you over that 1% would be a nice increase! Those indy neighborhood posts are where it’s at, IMO. Brings a much more targeted demo. More willing to click-through to obtain what they’re after. Noticed most of your neighborhood sections are static, though. Not many keyword repeats. And details are a bit short. <—– Personal opinion. Not an attack! Have you considered something along the lines of *Got to westcampusliving dot com, click on "Learn", click "Neighborhoods"?? Note to ADMIN: Not a backlink attempt, obviously. Just sharing conceptual approach.

Those juicy details present great opportunity. See you already have the platform for it. Couple those neighborhood keywords against your campaign and targeted traffic increases. And targeted traffic = increased CTR. If your neighborhood strategy is already showing solid return, I'd consider beefing up the neighborhood content.

Great reply, thanks!

I fully agree with you on the KWs and just this past week I reprinted the whole list with traffic numbes from Google. It’s sitting here on the desk and the ones you mentioned, along with a few others, are highlighted.

I have always avoided those main terms from an Adwords standpoint, due to the ridiculous CPC.

Instead I have approx 5,000 long tail neighborhood specific keywords that land directy onto their respective neighborhood landing pages, of which there are 50 something. (big list down the right side)

Last 30 days here’s the stats:

Avg CPC $0.20
Impressions 83,377
Clicks 541
CTR 0.65%
Total cost $110

I have the rest of my campaigns in another Adword account that does about 80% of this one, totalling about $200.

My CTR needs to be better and I’ve got some ideas on that.

Also, I would like to attract more out of towners. Currently this is about 20% because of the neighborhood strategy.

All this is well worth it. My yearly ad budget is being returned at about a 100x multiplier. LOL!

I know we all want the traffic for free, but until this happens, I pay and keep working on SEO.

Until recently,I have not done a lot of work obtaining backlinks, where it’s all at.

Thanks again,

Rob

And you say “Atlanta Real Estate” is the holy grail. Those keywords were searched 246k times in July. Compare that to “Atlanta Homes”, though. Searched 450k times in the same month. Nearly double the action with the same advertiser competition. But take “Atlanta homes for sale”. Also searched 246k times in July, but has less adv. comp. i.e. – Better value for your advertising dollar. Same goes for the combination of “Atlanta properties” and “Atlanta house”. Both searched a combined total of 246k, and both with less adv. comp.

Liking some of those paid keywords you currently have. Running some good #’s with those, from what I can see. You’ve got an average in that 3-5 placement, leaving competitors averaging out 6+.

For example, golf communities.

This may not apply everywhere but in a metro area with over 6 million people, it definitely works.

Ranking on page one for “Atlanta Golf Homes” for example, would give you maybe 10+ leads per day here. Even with a crummy site.

The holy grail is “Atlanta Real Estate” around here and I’m still working on cracking into that.

Until then, I keep making Google rich!

Rob

If your website is specific to foreclosures or at least speaks frequently about foreclosure issues with tips and guidance, obviously those threatened or seeking to capitalize on the foreclosure market will find identifiable commonalities- you present the solution to their problems.

The only warning I have with niche sites is overdoing it with to many different sites as one can often suffer while another thrives just due to over extending the content producers trying to keep up with every day business, I’m guilty of this problem as are many. The trick is finding the threshold and a willingness to accept limitations.