Scott, I am national. I could go regional, with A LOT more research, but that step is a long ways away.

OK, I just tripled my monthly budget and I am now appearing at the top of the paid results. Please don't click on my paid link! Its costly!!!

I just looked at your site (by typing it into the address bar!). Very nice site.

Does Pointwide only do property management templates?

Scott, I didn't see your response earlier, apologies.

And thanks for the compliment! Yes, we are property management websites only currently, but plan on expanding into other markets soon.

Can a couple of you do me a favor and google search on "property management websites" and tell me where my paid ad appears? (but please don't click!). I've increased my max bid to, gulp, $7 per click to try and get to the top. Not seeing it on my machine, though....

Just searched. You're at the top my man.

I did this when I was running a gambling related site a few years ago. The previously stated was very true. The first 5 results got clicked a bunch but revenue didnt increase (looky loos). My happy medium was 9-15. That generated a proportional amount of clicks to purchases.

just ad a few more words to the meta section of your index html
stuff like poon tang , gimp , golden shower, etc etc you know what i mean :D

you'll get hits like never before

No problem.

You're currently #1 in rankings as of 2:40pm est.

Thing that pisses me off about Adwords is that the minute my budget is used up, the dorks that don't pay anything go back on top? If I'm a paying customer, then they should have a system of keeping me on top?
I ran it for half a year and just got fed up with it.

I spent over $250,000 advertising real estate and developments this year and the best source was the newspapers in major Cities nearby. Advertising dollars are a real piss off to me!

Nuff said; good thread though, thanks for the read.

Hey Richard,
FWIW, I ran it from here in B.C. and you didn't show up in first few pages.
FYI,
Rob

We have created a similar setup to AdWords for the performance aftermarket.

We look at Google for features and functionality for our product roadmap.

Google uses variables in their results that will drive you crazy. You can be in positions one, two or three in simultaneous searches from three computers. That's on the organic results. On the paid results, you will also be rotated for no apparent reason, but advertisers now have control over dayparts, regionality and other aspects of AdWords that makes it very hard to get a consistent result. It's further complicated by distributed serving -- so that Google may have eight servers responding to searches and all giving slightly different results.

People have made SEO/SEM a full-time job for this reason.

Isn't that the truth.... testing is all over the place. Like a moving target. If I could get consistent results, I could figure this thing out!!!

Thanks, Rob, I think I'm paying for US only.

OK, I hired a SEO company out of India to improve my organic Google results. I am completely amazed, without touching my site, they have improved my organic search results for my key search phrase: "property management websites" from 35th to 4th in just a week. They did it through link-building, which from what I can gather is just really submitting a description of my site to a whole lot of directories. It builds "site significance" with Google's search engine and improves results.

Would a few of you mind searching on "property management websites" (no quotes) and tell me what position Pointwide.com is on your page? Its 4th on my computer, but seems to good to be true!

Motion: not in the first 5 pages of results for me.

"Linkfarms" get busted by Google all the time. There's no substitute for quality content and time in the marketplace. Google has lots of folks on the payroll to improve search result quality. I have an excellent tactic for gaining organic position if you want to PM me. I'm going to be at a trade show for the next 5 days, tho, and may take a while to get back to you.

And correct me if I'm wrong, but won't google "punish" you by pushing you down in the search rankings?

Are you sure about the search results? I've just talked to 2 people and had them search and I am appearing as #4 for both of them.

I will need to check into penalties with the link farms, thanks.

Play with bid matching...you can usually rely on getting a 2 or 3 word phrase for significantly lower CPC by using phrase and or exact matching. Have you downloaded Adwords editor yet? Makes working within your account a lot easier compared to the web interface.

Also, do not set high max cpcs, as the new formula will jack your bids to that in many instances. Are you using DKI in the ad title and text on high converting phrases? This is a great way to get a lot more clicks - but do this only where your CPA is good.

How about campaign negative keywords ie 'free' 'cheap' etc? Just a few very basic tips...

Many people still think of web marketing as being either organic sEO OR PPC, when you really need a comprehensive solution. I'm the web marketing manager for a biz here in RI (a small company that broke 8 figures for the 1st time this year...with 50% of our business coming from the web). We spent $25,000 on Google Adwords in November alone. We measure the performance of every kw phrase on an extremely granular level. It is the single most cost effective way for us to acquire new customers. Get 'em with Adwords the 1st time and rely on their shopping experience, our catalog, new customer welcome plan, email specials etc etc to get them to come back directly in the future...YMMV.

Remember, you cannot game the blue box positions. Not worth it, either. However, you can raise your ad's visibility for free by improving your ad copy, title, landing page, etc. There is evidence to suggest that user behavior may be factored into the quality score. So a high CTR with a high bounce rate is no good.

I'm rambling now...back to work...

Dan,

Thanks for the tips, although you've created A LOT of work for me to try and figure out what you said ;) But still much appreciated.

Motion I got your site as #4

Thanks, Garrett, that's what everyone else is seeing.