Real Estate Marketing SEO Blog

Best Time of Week to Email

Two recent studies from eROI & Return Path as reported at Marketing Sherpa show that that Monday is the best day for email campaigns.

Both studies also found reponse rates best at 10:00 AM every day of the week but Tuesdays when noon is best.

Why I am not the biggest fan of Pay Per Click

Let's get it off the table right now. I am not a fan of pay per click engines (PPC).

No it isn't because I do search engine optimization. I also manage PPC ads.

But I believe that as the PPC model gets more popular, the organic results are getting sloppier.

You see, I understand economics in a street wise way. If you get money in your business for doing one thing really good. And zilch, for something you do really good. Why would you keep doing the non-profitable thing really good anymore?

For those in the back of the class, that means the profit motive sits squarely in the Pay Per Click model.

No brainer so far right?

However, what makes this whole thing pretty to the Corporate Suits that are about to put money into Google's IPO, is the assumption that bidding on the PPC system is on the up and up. Good ole Capitalism at its best, right? Let's not forget that Capitalism has a dark side. Because it seems that the fraud prevention of the Pay Per Click engines are not sufficient.

In a recent Post at Reve News, it is reported that major PPC player, John Carreras went off to an industry Trade Show where most of his competitors would be. John had always been a bit suspicious about his competitors clicking his PPC ads. Upon his return he found that his clicks were off by half. The missing clickers were too busy at the Trade Show to be frauduently clicking John's links.

Another problem with PPC isIndia's Secret Army of Online Ad 'Clickers'. These guys are paid to click their employer's competitors ads!

There is even hacker software that apparantly makes it impossible for the engines to trace. It even changes it's ip adress as it comes from hundreds of places around the globe clicking on your ad.

This problem was made apparent to me when I got solicited by a Law Firm to go back and audit my PPC accounts to see if I had been taken.

It will be interesting to see if these realities ever turn into doubts on the whole search portal model that looks to make Google's, the IPO of the year.

Website Credibility

Stanford has been working on a project of late that is displayed as Ten Guidelines for a Credible Website.

They also offer in detail what you must do to be perceived as credible on the web.

Google IPO : 90's redux

Looks like Lycos sold to an unnamed South Korean company for $95 million. Terra bought the company for $12.5 billion in 2000.

Refer to an earlier Blog on Today's Technology is Tommorrow's Homework. I predict at some point there will be many dissapointed investors after they come down form their Mountainview high.

Search Reference:
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When Does A Search Engine Become The Yellow Pages?

I am waiting for the yellow pages to finally get that the Search Engine's are trying to become what the Yellow Pages already do. At what point does all the paid ads like at Yahoo become meaningless? A Big advertisement if you will. Because if it really is about ads, then why not just go full circle to the online Yellow Pages?

Verizon Super Pages has been implementing a pay per click system. I gotta believe the yellow pages have the headstart, if advertisements is where it is all going.

Search Engines in theory, are supposed to be about relevancy.

Type in "Real Estate Listings" and it should give you a page about/with real estate listings.

However, when you take money for ad space, relevancy dissipates as the dollar speaks louder than relevancy. Sure they try to monitor it to some degree but I think you will agree that these engines, as they move toward portals, are becoming big 'ole ads.

The next Google will be one that offers true search, then they will want to move out of their college dorm lifestyle too. So they will look for their payday and the cycle continues.

Just go back in time and look at the tombstones of engines past. Infoseek, Go, Alta Vista, etc. Good ones have even come along with arguably better search than Google. But alas, they were bought off like the Urban Legend of the 200 mile per gallon car patents that were purchased by petro companies.

AskJeeves bought DirecthitandTeoma as an example.

Google clearly is in revenue mode as their search results have gotten worse and worse over the past yr and a half. Type in "city + real estate" and you get mostly directories. Why on earth would they point people from one search medium to another-possibly competitive directory search medium?

Call me conspiratorial but you see more and more people driving prices up on the Google Adwords as the top positions in the natural results are flooded with junk. Me thinks the junky natural results are for a reason.

Smart moves by Google for sure. In the short term anyway.

But what do they care? They are about to be paid. Wall Street Style.

Real Estate Affordability

Walt McDonald, National Association of Realtors president and broker-owner of Walt McDonald Real Estate in Riverside, Calif., said the typical household is well poised to buy a home in most regions of the country. "The average buyer could afford to buy a home costing nearly 4.5 times their income in the second quarter. Even so, the median-income family spends just over 3.3 times their income for a home, meaning housing continues to be an excellent investment. Affordability conditions are expected to be fairly stable during the second half of the year, which will contribute to a new annual record for home sales," he said.

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