Episode #98 – What Do I Do If My Keywords Aren’t Getting Any Impressions?

You're listening to the “REI Marketing Nerds” podcast, the leading resource for real estate investors who want to dominate their market online. Dan Barrett is the founder of AdWords Nerds, a high-tech digital agency, focusing exclusively on helping real estate investors like you get more leads and deals online, outsmart your competition, and live a freer, more awesome life. And, now, your host, Dan Barrett.

Dan: All right. Hello everybody, and welcome to this week's episode of the REI Marketing Nerds podcast. As always, this is Daniel Barrett here from AdWordsNerds.com, and as always, if you want to talk to me or my team about improving your online marketing for motivated sellers, the place to go MotivatedSellerLeads.com. [01:01.1]

Now, let's talk. This as a question that came in directly via our Facebook group, which is the REI Marketing Nerds Facebook group. You should find us on Facebook and join if you haven't joined already. But I had a question come in. This was from Jolene. She said, “What do you do if a keyword isn't getting any impressions?” Let's break down this question because it's a common problem that people have when they're looking for motivated sellers on Google Ads and I can definitely help.

So, let's break this down. First of all, what's an impression? Okay, an impression is a view on an ad, so if somebody sees your ad, meaning your ad is visible on their computer screen—right? They can see it on the screen—then you will receive an impression. So, you can kind of just think like an impression is a view on your app.

Now, let's say you are targeting a keyword in Google Ads. Let's say, “I sell my house fast” or whatever, and it says zero impressions. You run it a week, zero impressions. You run it a month, zero impressions. What does this mean and how can we fix it? [02:08.4]

Now, just by itself, no impressions means nobody is seeing the ad, but this is a very critical point and it's something that a lot of people misunderstand. I don't want to take a moment to belabor this point because this is really going to help you improve your lead generation if you understand this. It means that nobody saw the app, but that is not the same thing as saying nobody searched for that keyword. That’s a really, really important point.

What most people think is if the keyword says in Google, “This keyword had zero impressions,” meaning nobody saw my ad for this keyword, that means that nobody searched for it, but that's not necessarily the case. There are many reasons you might, for example, miss out on impossible impressions or miss out on someone that's searching for a keyword.

It could, for example, that you hit your budget cap, meaning you spent your budget for that day, and so Google stopped showing your ads. [03:06.7]

It could be that your ad was displayed, but it was displayed at the bottom of the page or on page two, and so the person never saw it like they searched for it, but they never scroll down to where your ad was, and because your ad was never visible, you didn't get the impressions.

So, if you want to fix a problem of saying, Hey, this keyword has zero impressions, we have to understand what kind of problem we have. Do we have the kind of problem where no one is searching for this keyword or do we have the kind of problem where people are searching, but I am not visible? And this is really important to understand because you solve those problems in different ways. Okay?

If you just have a situation where nobody is searching, okay, nobody's searching for a keyword and there are no impressions, you can add more keywords. You can expand your target area. You can change the keyword match type, let's say, from exact match to phrase match, or from phrase match to broad match. These are ways of getting more potential searchers into your account to see your ads. [04:17.2]

So, that's how you solve that problem. But what if people are searching for the keyword, but you’re not visible? The way that you figure this out is there is a metric in Google Ads called “search impression share,” and here's what this means, search impression share. Let's say, 100 people search for “sell my house fast in a month” in your target area.

Okay, so 100 people searched for it. If you showed up 10 times, meaning your ad was visible on the screen 10 of those 100 times, your search impression share would be 10 percent. The search impression share is just the percentage of possible searchers that saw your ad. [05:02.3]

Right, so if 100 people searched and 20 people saw your ad, your search impression share is 20 percent. If 100 people searched and 100 people saw your ad, the search impression share is 100 percent.

Here's why this is important. If a keyword is getting zero impressions, but you have, for example, a very low search impression share, that means other people search for it and just didn't see you. If you have zero impressions but 100 percent of the search impression share is zero impressions, that means that nobody searched. This is how you tell the difference between your problems, how you tell the difference between, Hey, I didn't get any impressions because nobody searched, or I didn't get any impressions because I was never visible.

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Let's say, it's not that nobody's searching, the problem is people are searching but I'm not showing up. I have a low search impression share. What do I do? There are two primary ways we lose search impression share. The first is because of our budget. If I hit my budget every day, let's say, I have a $10-a-day budget. My ads start off in the morning and they run, let's say, till 11:00 AM, and then I spend all my money and my ads stop. Obviously, I'm not going to get an impression from anybody that searches for my keywords after 11:00 AM. So, we say that we lost search impression share due to my budget. [07:04.0]

How do I fix that problem? You raise your budget, right? If your problem is you're running out of money, put more money in the machine. Now, let's say you're not hitting your budget, okay, so I'm not spending all my money every day. What could be the problem? In that case, if we're losing search impression share, it is typically due to rank, and what Google means when they say “rank,” they mean where your ad is showing up on the page.

If you're showing up in the very tippy top spot, you have a rank of one. If you're showing up on the second page, all the way down to the bottom, your rank might be 12 or 16. So, rank is how high are you up on the page? The higher up your ad is, the closer to the top, the more likely people will be to see it, because most people just don't scroll down all the way or don't go to the second page of Google. I think I've made this joke on this show before—where's the best place to hide a dead body? On the second page of Google. [08:02.1]

All right, so we know that the higher up our ad is the more likely we are to get impressions. If I'm losing impression share due to rank, it means my ad is too low and people aren't seeing it. How do I solve the problem? We solve the problem by raising our bids. Raising our bids on our keywords will push our ad higher up in the ranking and a higher percentage of people will see it, and our search impression share will go up.

It’s very common for people to come to me and say, I don't have a lot of impressions in my market. I don't have a lot of traffic in my market, but much of the time, this is a solvable, fixable problem. The question comes down to what kind of impression problem do you have?

Do you have a problem where no one's searching and you need to add more keywords, change your match type or increase your target area, or do you have the kind of impression where people are searching but they're not seeing you, in which case you need to raise your budget or raise your bids? And that's how you fix a problem of not getting impressions on your keywords for motivated sellers in Google. [09:09.8]

If you liked this episode and you got any value out of this, I highly encourage you to come and talk to my team. This is all we do all day. It’s to talk to real estate investors about getting leads online. It is what we love. So, if you'd like our help, MotivatedSellerLeads.com, that's the place to be. Go and request a time with our team and we'll be happy to help you out. MotivatedSellerLeads.com.

This is Daniel Barrett from AdWords Nerds, signing off. Have a great weekend, everybody.

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