Hannush Web Blog

Day two of my test on “real estate” in Google AdWords.  I believe my theory is holding true.  During the first couple of hours of my AdWords campaign on “real estate” Google’s algorithm had not yet figured out that even though my product was potentially good for the real estate market, I didn’t have the word anywhere on the page my ad was pointing to.  AdWords like relevance and I am being punished now for not having relevant content to the keyword mentioned.  During the last 15 hours I have received 131 impressions compared to 17,000 in my first 2 hours.  My cost per click (CPC) went from .35 cents to 1.50 and my ads slipped from #2 to #20.

With only 1 click-through in that entire time, I’m sure Google is starting to sense that my content is probably not relevant.  A few more click throughs with no lingering view will probably start to affect my quality score, which has been 7/10 for the last 2 days.

I’ll keep watching it the rest of the weekend…but the lesson is, you might get a quick hit by going outside your market with Google AdWords, but it probably won’t translate to success…and Google will catch up and adjust accordingly.  Its a smart little algorithm, I’ll tell you.

How do these Google AdWords work? Tonight “real estate” was my test.  While promoting our new site evolveyoursearch.com in an AdWords campaign, I had a client ask me about positioning for the real estate market.

Just for kicks (and because, of anybody nowadays, Realtors should be looking for every edge out of the Internet that they can get), I put my Google AdWord under “real estate” just to see what the cost would be per click.

Amazingly my minuscule 35 cents per click was enough to get me to #2.  I thought, hmmmm, what’s this about.  So I left it there.  Funny thing is, I ended up getting 17,000 impressions in 3 hours.  Amazing.  Of course, as predicted, my ad…which was titled something like “Evolve Your Search Results” wasn’t a grabber for the people searching for houses.  But I found it very interesting to see how quickly Google let me in at .35 cents and then an hour later, it was $1.25 a click to get on the first page results and it was down to 5 impressions an hour.

Here is my theory.  We are fairly certain that AdWords are influenced by the content of the landing page, the amount of competition for the keyphrase, the text of your ad, as well as the speed of the page to load.  Could it also be that Google doesn’t always know how relevant the page is until after a lag time after the ad has been up?  How else could you explain such incredible action and then none, within the span of a couple of hours?

Good question.

Well, I’ve decided to experiment with “real estate” this weekend, and hopefully I won’t lose my shirt.  I’m going to do my best to stay away from shady mortgage companies and see if there are any spikes in my traffic again, or if this was just an initial burst.  I’ll keep you guys updated.

Meanwhile, I have a few posts coming up to help those wanting to learn more about what these things called Google AdWords are…and what you should focus on to win with them.

I’ll get to the free part in a minute, we have to give you some reason to plow though another blog post…right?

After many weeks of blood, sweat, and tears (no, we didn’t torture ourselves by listening to the 60′s band for that long) I am proud to say we finally finished the development on our new web/search engine marketing report.

It started as just a simple report we were putting together for our own clients when they needed to review their site for a redesign or to find ways to improve search engine placement.  But as we continued to develop it, we found an enormous value for anyone redesigning their site.

Rather than just focusing on the statistical information of user trending available in Google Analytics, we created this to work as a companion report.  It looks deeper into the human factors that might keep people from investigating your site once they find it…things like how fast your web pages load, or is your navigation simple to use, or do you have a shopping cart that has holes or is hard to use.  Plus we look at how your site is doing in all the major search engines, not just Google.

Okay, now the free part.  We think this report is going to be so helpful, we are offering a free version of it that will show a brief look at some of the statistics the report will make.  It will also show that we actually make recommendations and explain the statistics we provide, giving you benchmarks of success.  To get the free version, all you have to do is put in your name, email address (we need to verify your address works so we can make sure you’ll receive the report), and the web address you want us to review.  Just go to http://www.evolveyoursearch.com and fill in the form to the left.  Then within a day or two, you’ll receive your report by email.

Let me know what you think, with comments to this blog entry.

We think this report will be invaluable as a tool for anyone starting a website redesign.  And the Evolve Your Search site will be filling up with useful supplimental information to help you in your quest for better search results (just like this blog hopefully will too).

Just like Google, we want you to get yourself to the top of the search engines…because having more relevant and real businesses near the top of the search makes finding things easier for everybody.

Happy webbing!

Not a surprise, but Yahoo! is sending out messages to members, letting them know that they are closing down Yahoo! Briefcase on March 30th and that all files will need to be downloaded by then, or they will be lost.

Actually I forgot I even had a Yahoo! Briefcase account.  It was kind of a hassle for what I needed it for.  I mainly used it to upload a file that was too difficult or big to email to someone and then I had to figure out how to get them the link to download it.

Since then, services like YouSendIt.com have made this much more convenient.   I guess again, Yahoo! goes for dumping something rather than evolving into a better solution.

The only thing that scares me is, if they are cleaning up server space…how long until they dump Yahoo! Mail.  That will not be a happy day for me.

While taking a shower the other morning (my greatest thinking time of the day), I stopped to think what caused me to start blogging?

Yes, there were obvious business advantages to it for me, better search engine rankings, etc.  But for me to do it, I knew I had to do it right and I had to be consistent about it.  So it takes a lot to get me off of other things to jump into writing.

But call it a bad economy; call it someone sick and tired of seeing his country wallow in misery instead of remembering what it was built on, INSPIRATION and DREAMS!

The way to these two wonderful ideas and the way to get the country back on its feet again is through creativity, hard work, desire and a dream (in business we call this a goal).

Why are we so tied up in what the television and the politicians are saying?  Yes, its true, its harder for a business to get a loan than ever before…but listen to guys like Dave Ramsey who have been down and found a better way out…you don’t have to be consumed by hard times; you don’t have to be lost in cutting and trimming.

So, to at least try to invigorate my little corner of the world, I thought it time to sit down and send out little notes of my inspirations.  If I could get my own ideas floating out there in the world, maybe someone would be inspired to build the next rocket to the moon, the next superconductor, or at least a half decent web site!

Blogs are great, because with a little effort, you can help your clients, help your industry, help your country become a better place.

Don’t get caught up in the idea that you are sitting down to write the great American novel.  Throw random thoughts out there.  Use your blog as your Facebook, your Twitter (personally, I like keeping all my thoughts condensed in one place and not having a million logins, so this is a great thing for me).  There are no rules, except those that may get you banned from your service provider or your country club.

Have fun with your blog.  Make it your creative journal.  But most of all, get those creative ideas out there.  We all need to get past the bad news going around and realize its the people of this country that will be the thing to lift us back up again.  Blog on.

Tonight, while flipping around the TV, I saw reporter John Donovan of ABC doing a story on Nightline about Twitter.  Okay, so the main stream media is finally catching up to this technology, so does that mean the end of Twitter as we know it?

I mean, think about it…wasn’t R.E.M. a lot better when no one knew about them?  Isn’t it more fun being a fan of a team that is on the rise or a spoiler, more than the perennial champion of the league?  Wasn’t it more cool to drive to Pennsylvania to bring back a six pack of Yuengling beer because you couldn’t get it anywhere…rather than now when it is one of the low priced beers, sitting next to Budweiser and Miller?

When something becomes mainstream, it always seems to find a way to hit the burnout factor and then disappear.  Remember bell bottoms and skinny ties?

Well, for my part, I guess I will be one of those lemmings and will tune in for a while to see how things go.  It’d actually be kind of fun to read a tweet from an MLB player while he’s sitting in the dugout.  Closest I had to that was when C. J. Nitkowski played for the Tigers and ran his own daily web-based recap of lockerroom talk and life in the big leagues (he still has a site by the way, and now he is in the far east playing baseball…so I may pick up on reading him again).

So enjoy it while it lasts folks…because the shine is about to dust off of that new sports car.