The single most important indicator of the online presence of a company is the traffic to its website. We found that the “leaderboard” revealed some interesting insights:

• None of the 50 websites of property developers that we studied had a traffic of one million (10 lakh) visitors per month
• Only 16 sites got more than 50,000 visitors per month
• Well-known brands like Raheja and Indiabulls did not make it to the top 20

The queries and terms that people enter into the Google search box tell you a lot about what their intentions are. You need to pay close attention to these keywords to determine the intent of the consumer. We found that:

• The most common type of property that consumers are looking to buy is, as expected, flats and apartments.
• Search for land and plots outstrip those of commercial spaces. While the number of searches is more in metro cities, Tier-2 cities like Jaipur, Indore, Kochi and Goa are growing fast.
• The interest in renting and buying properties is nearly equal, if we consider search volume.

Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising is just as important as SEO when it comes to search engine marketing. In fact, one of the quickest ways to reach your audience, increase traffic and gather leads is Google Ads. As we found that only 7% of traffic to the top Indian real estate companies’ sites comes from search ads, there is a lot of room for improvement:

• Many big brands aren’t running any ads on Google at all. As a result, they might be missing out on a lot of opportunities for brand awareness and lead generation.
• Google Ads for Real Estate are cheaper than other sectors like Insurance, IT & Telecom, Marketing, Travel and Education.

While we’re on the subject of paid promotions using Google Ads, it follows that we need to stay on top of our competitors’ strategies. In traditional marketing, it’s easy to track and view your rivals’ ads. Although it’s not so simple in the digital world, Real is Business makes it possible to view the ad copies your competition is using and how well they’re working for them. Again, we find that real estate advertisers have a long way to go here:

• Ads are not location-targeted. For example, ads for residential projects in Mumbai are showing up in searches for property in Gurgaon.
• Branding is suffering because some advertisers are not bidding on their own brands ( otherwise, other companies will bid on their brands and steal traffic) while others are showing up for brands in altogether different industries.
• Only about a third of the companies in our top 20 have allocated a reasonable budget to PPC with Google Ads. This represents a vast opportunity for others.