Welcome back! We’ve come a long way so far, and made a LOT of progress. But we’re not quite done yet, so listen up…

In our last article, you got a great introduction to Keyword Research, SEO (Search Engine Optimization)-both On-Page and Off-Page (remember?), and how to get started on getting a ton of FREE Traffic to your website.

Go back to last month’s issue for a refresher on that – it’s worth the read.

So now we come to the next part, and that is:

How to Get a Ton of Laser-Targeted Traffic to Your Site-FAST!

Before we embark on this particular adventure, I need to set the stage properly.  It’s important that you have your On-Page SEO stuff taken care of first. Again, On-Page SEO is what you do ON your web page that makes it optimized for that particular keyword. This includes putting the keyword in the first and last sentence of that page, bolding it a time or two, italicizing it, underlining it, and all that other stuff we covered in the last article.

Why is that so important? Because if you DON’T do that first, you’re going to pay a LOT more for your traffic than you would if you DID do it first, because of how Google & other search engines have set things up. So do it first, ok? Ok.

So here’s the secret website you’ll need to go to so that you can get started: http://adwords.google.com

This is Google’s Adwords product, and it’s responsible for the majority of Google’s income.  You’re going to be advertising here to get some traffic. This type of traffic is called “Pay-Per-Click,” or PPC. It is exactly what it says it is – When someone does a search on Google (or their partner networks), it gives them the search results, which include these paid ads based on the keyword that they bid on. When that person clicks on one of these ads, Google charges the advertiser a certain amount – anything from $.01 to $50 or more, depending on several factors.

In other words, the advertiser PAYS PER CLICK. If no one clicks that ad, they don’t pay! Simple. 

But I’ve got to warn you- setting it up is anything BUT simple.  There’s a few important things you need to consider first, such as your ad budget, which keywords you’d like to bid on, what pages you’re going to send the traffic to, etc.

So let’s start with the first part: Your Advertising Budget.

Remember, this is PAID traffic, so your budget is an important consideration.  I suggest you start off with your estimated MONTHLY budget, then divide it by 30 to get your DAILY budget. For example, if your monthly budget is $300, divide that by 30 days, and you’ll get a daily budget of $10 to spend on your ads. That’s a very reasonable number.

If you do this right, you should get some very targeted traffic to your site very quickly.  For example, if you’re looking to buy houses in Marietta, GA, you could specifically target THAT geographic area with the keywords people are using to search for how to sell their house. Get YOUR ad in front of them at the right time, and BAM! They click on your ad. You get traffic to your site. They fill out form. You get lead. They sell house. Repeat.

So here’s how to get started:

First, go to that AdWords link I just gave you & get an account set up to use with it. I strongly suggest you get a Gmail account for this, because of all the free tools they offer. You can get one for free, then link it to your new Adwords account.  To get set up with Adwords is a relatively simple process. Get your account set up and linked to it, then click on the ‘Sign up Now’ link and follow the instructions there to get started.

You’ll need a credit card to link to your account, along with an email address. The last time I checked, they also required you to pay $5 to get set up.

Use the keywords you’ve acquired and get started putting things together.  Start out with ONE keyword first – just to get familiar with things. Make sure you have the PAGE of your website optimized properly for the keyword that you’re about to bid on. Otherwise, your per-click cost will be really high.

Here’s another important tip: Are you buying houses all over the world? Probably not, so make sure you specify EXACTLY where you want your ad to show up when you’re setting up your campaign. Using the example of Marietta, GA, you’d use the built-in tool to select the specific areas or a radius around an area that you’d like your ad to appear.

Google is smart – they know where you are! (yikes!) But they know where your visitor is, too. So use that to your advantage.

Using that tool, you can have your ad only appear to your targeted market – people looking to sell their house in or around Marietta, GA (in this example). If they lived in Saskatchewan, they wouldn’t see your ad, and therefore, your costs will be lower (a good thing).

Here’s the sad reality of using Google Adwords: It’s tricky. It’s not easy to figure out. It will drive you crazy and possibly make you lose hair or sleep… or money!

But if you learn and use it well, it will be one of the BEST things you can do to get a huge return on your investment.  If you should need more help (very likely), you can always turn to YouTube tutorials or Google searches.  This will take time, but it’s well worth it.

Another option you have to use this is to simply hire someone to handle your advertising campaign FOR you. Someone who knows how it works and can keep your costs low. If you don’t have much time, but still want/need to get that fast, targeted traffic, this would absolutely be the best way to get it going.  You’d find someone & pay them either a flat fee or a percentage of your monthly ad budget to set up, manage, tweak, improve, optimize, and run your ads for you.  This person would actually make you money!

And there you have it!  You now know how to set up a website, what to put on it in order to get people to take action, and how to get the traffic to your site!  Congratulations – how does it feel?  Are you ready to take on the world yet?

To be completely honest, I could write dozens of these highly-informative & content-rich articles, and you could read them all but still not get the true understanding of how all this works… UNLESS you actually take the time and DO what’s taught here! Go ahead & try it out for yourself to see what you can learn by DOING.  That’s my advice.

This concludes our “Real Estate + The Internet = The Perfect Marriage” Module.

But don’t worry! In the next article, I’ll continue to share some great tips & ideas on how to use the internet to help with your real estate business and crush the competition.

So stay tuned.

Until Next Time,

Tony Pearl