With the run up to Christmas and the holiday period looming, big shifts are happening in the property market. Some agencies are pulling back on their spend to re-focus their efforts for the busy spring period; whilst others are doubling down on their paid exposure to take advantage of the lack of competition at this time of year.
Below we’ve looked at 3 agencies in the London area and across the UK to see how their Google ads management strategy has changed for this period.
Yopa’s 2022 Decline
Dropped 28 rank positions this month almost out of the top 50 in the greater London area. This fall is likely due to a mix of market conditions, the season property cycle and the dramatic drop off we saw in their paid efforts.
Their paid search exposure accounted for 40% (over 2000 search results) of overall exposure in November but this has dropped to just 15% (600 searches) for December.
Searches are generally lower at this time of year, CPC decreases due to the reduced competition as many agencies and homebuyers pause efforts for the Christmas period. A few of the larger agencies have capitalised on this and have captured some additional market share. Foxtons have once again increased their Google exposure for the Capital.
Currently, Yopa’s paid search term distribution falls around the “local estate agent” keywords, with a little budget put towards the high return, valuation keywords.
Last month, the largest share of paid efforts was focused on these local keywords, we saw a great split on the location based searches too (i.e. Estate Agent Banstead).
As a digital agency without physical branches, we are not surprised to see that their strategy is focused on capturing these local/location leads. Other digital agencies such as zoopla follow a similar strategy to capture potential clients that they would have otherwise missed.
Yopa also very cleverly highlights their staff online, using SEO to rank for branch related search queries.
Chestertons
Chestertons have seen declining searches since the start of this year. Their Google rank has also suffered - stagnating at the start of year around 50th and falling to 80th by November.
Their search distribution is mostly focused in London, which is the only county/ area they rank higher than the top 50 on the Google SERPs. For the nearby areas they are ranking at 200th.
December is the first month Chestertons have not run any paid search adverts this year. This is not surprising, paid search is not a huge part of their Google marketing strategy and with the Christmas break coming up, it’s a great time of year to save your media spend for the busy spring period coming up.
Even with a Google Ads management agency, you still have full control over your ad spend, you can choose to pause your account, move budget to different campaigns at different times of the year but we still recommend listening to your account manager when it comes to changes as they see your account every day and know how the market shifts seasonally.
Specifically in London however, Chestertons’ performance has improved, marginally, moving up 5 spots in our rank table.
Michael Antony - The Power of PPC
Average position on Google has improved by 40% since our data run in September.
Covering over 20 locations with just a small number of branches in the south of England, their most visible location is the county of Buckinghamshire.
They have a huge paid exposure, accounting for ⅓ of their Google visibility in 2020 but now covering almost 70%.
Interestingly, where most agencies focus their paid efforts on the high return valuation keywords, MA concentrates their paid exposure on the local keywords “estate agent near me” & “local estate agent”.
This could be the reason they are fortunate enough to show for so many locations despite their relatively small size.
Due to their aggressive paid efforts, MA are fortunate enough to rank 1st on average on the google results page.
The only area Michael Antony could do with more coverage is in their map listings, this is likely lacking due to their small number of branches but their performance is strong.
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