Days live
7
Spend
$1,364
Clicks
27
Avg. CPC
$50.50
Impr. share
51%
Leads
2
Expert Cash Buyers — Main campaign, June 23–29, 2026 (first 7 full days). "Leads" = primary conversions: 2 tracked phone calls. Two form "1st Step" starts were also recorded as secondary signal.
EXHIBIT G
The turnaround, side by side
The audit's verdict was specific: not a funnel problem, not a landing-page problem — a click-price problem caused by uncapped bidding. The rebuild attacked exactly that. Here is the prior management period next to week one of the relaunch, from the same account.
| What we changed | Prior management · Mar–May | Rebuilt account · Jun 23–29 |
|---|---|---|
| Average cost per click | $99.15 | $50.50 (−49%) |
| Most expensive single click | $472.74 · no lead-class limit | $176.40 · and it converted |
| Bidding control | Max Conversions · NO ceiling | Max Conversions + $350 tCPA cap |
| Daily budget | $493/day · spiked to $1,020 | $275/day · steady, no spikes |
| Account structure | 24 mirrored ad groups, 1 ad each | ~10 themed groups + DSA city pages |
| Landing pages | 1 generic page for everything | 22 city-specific pages |
| Live campaigns | Old sprawl, then paused | Main live · old paused · Branded staged |
Every "rebuilt" figure above is pulled live from the Google Ads API for account 951-772-0978, June 23–29, 2026. The click price is the headline because it is the one number that was broken — and it is already fixed.
$99.15
was: cost per click
→
$50.50
now: cost per click
Inside the healthy band. The audit defined $40–65 as a well-run click price for this niche in the Denver market. Week one came in at $50.50 — squarely in range, on day one of learning.
The lever was the ceiling. A $350 Target CPA cap now sits on the same bidding engine that previously had none. That single setting is what makes $400+ clicks impossible.
Verdict: the click-price problem is solved
EXHIBIT H
Why only two leads — and why that's on schedule
It's the fair question. The honest answer is arithmetic plus timing: two leads on 27 clicks across 7 days is a sample far too small to judge anything except the click price — which is exactly why we lead with the click price.
The prior account's own history is the proof. It took 402 clicks to produce 76 leads — its real conversion rate (about 1 in 5) only became visible across hundreds of clicks. Week one of the relaunch has delivered 27 clicks. At the account's proven ~19% conversion rate, 27 clicks mathematically expect about 5 leads at maturity — and early-week clicks haven't all had time to convert yet, because sellers research and call back over days, not minutes. Two leads in is right inside the normal early range, not below it.
The number not to over-read
On two leads, the arithmetic "cost per lead" works out to roughly $680 — and that figure is genuinely meaningless at this volume. The next single lead drops it to ~$450; the one after that to ~$340. A cost-per-lead built on two data points swings by hundreds of dollars per lead. We will not quote it as a result, and neither should anyone — the click price is the only cost number that's trustworthy this week, and it's down 49%.
On two leads, the arithmetic "cost per lead" works out to roughly $680 — and that figure is genuinely meaningless at this volume. The next single lead drops it to ~$450; the one after that to ~$340. A cost-per-lead built on two data points swings by hundreds of dollars per lead. We will not quote it as a result, and neither should anyone — the click price is the only cost number that's trustworthy this week, and it's down 49%.
There is also a genuinely good signal hiding in those two leads: both were phone calls, and both were tracked. The June audit flagged one open question — that calls looked under-counted, which would have left the algorithm "optimizing half-blind." Call tracking is now firing correctly on the new site, so every lead — form or phone — feeds the data.
EXHIBIT I
The pricing strategy — what your budget is buying
"Pricing" in a Google Ads account means two things: the price you let Google pay for a click, and the price you're willing to pay for a lead. We are controlling both on purpose — and deliberately spending the first few weeks buying data, not just leads.
1
A hard ceiling on the click price — $350 Target CPA
The old account ran Maximize Conversions with no cap — a blank check that produced $300–470 clicks. We kept the same engine but bolted on a $350 Target CPA. That tells Google: chase leads, but never pay more than this to get one. It's the single setting whose absence caused most of the $524 problem — and it's live now.
2
Why not an even tighter target on day one?
Because a brand-new conversion dataset needs room to breathe. Set the target too low on a cold account and Google simply stops showing the ads — it can't find leads under an unrealistic price before it has learned who converts. So we start at a sane ceiling that kills the waste, let the data accumulate, then step the target down toward $250 as the account proves it can hit it. That's discipline, not guesswork.
3
Budget paced at $275/day, not $493
The old budget spiked to $1,000+ on 15 separate days. We restarted at $275/day — enough to gather signal quickly, capped so there are no four-figure days while the account is relearning. We scale this up only once the cost per lead is holding under target.
The unit economics that make this work
A single closed cash purchase in this business is worth thousands of dollars in margin — many multiples of even a $300–500 qualified lead. That's why the goal was never "$100 leads" (no one runs honest Denver-metro search at that price). The goal is a predictable, capped cost per lead that's comfortably below the value of a deal — and then teaching Google to find the sellers who actually close. Early spend isn't a cost; it's the down payment on a system that gets cheaper every week it runs.
A single closed cash purchase in this business is worth thousands of dollars in margin — many multiples of even a $300–500 qualified lead. That's why the goal was never "$100 leads" (no one runs honest Denver-metro search at that price). The goal is a predictable, capped cost per lead that's comfortably below the value of a deal — and then teaching Google to find the sellers who actually close. Early spend isn't a cost; it's the down payment on a system that gets cheaper every week it runs.
| Where cost-per-lead lands at today's $50.50 click price → | If CVR holds at 15% | at 19% (proven) | at 22% (segmented pages) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cost per lead at $50.50/click | $337 | $267 | $230 |
Same arithmetic the audit used to explain the $524 ($99.15 ÷ 18.9%). We've already delivered the cheaper click the model needs; once the funnel fills at this price, the math puts cost-per-lead around $230–340 — less than half of what was being paid. That is the entire thesis, now in motion.
EXHIBIT J
Where the money went this week
The old account burned $300–470 on single clicks for generic and off-target queries. Here is every query that took a click in week one — the spend is now landing on motivated-seller intent, and the most expensive click of the week was a high-intent query that converted.
$176.40
"sell my house as is" · converted ✓
$44.23
"sell my house fast" · core intent
$30.36
"best companies that buy houses for cash"
$22.53
"expert cash buyers" · your own brand
For contrast, the prior account's receipts looked like this: $472.74 for one click on "we buy your house," $435.77 on "sell my home fast," $401.31 on "sell house fast as is." Same auctions — a fraction of the price.
| Search query (week 1) | Clicks | Cost | Read |
|---|---|---|---|
| sell my house as is | 1 | $176.40 | converted |
| sell house | 1 | $135.22 | strong intent |
| we buy houses | 1 | $83.83 | core |
| sell my house fast | 1 | $44.23 | core |
| best companies that buy houses for cash | 1 | $30.36 | high intent |
| expert cash buyers | 2 | $22.53 | your brand |
| i buyers · clearsale denver reviews · century 21 | 5 | $213.25 | prune next |
The handful of research / competitor-name queries (iBuyers, ClearSale, Century 21) are exactly what the weekly negative-keyword review trims as data builds — and note that even these "leak" clicks now run $20–100, not $300+. The leaks are cheap and shrinking, not expensive and structural.
EXHIBIT K
What the audit prescribed — and what's already live
A plan is only worth the follow-through. Here is the June audit's rebuild plan against what is actually running in the account today.
| Audit recommendation | Status today |
|---|---|
| Relaunch with a Target CPA ceiling ($350) | LIVE — $350 confirmed |
| Restart budget at $250–300/day | LIVE — $275/day |
| Pause the old sprawling campaigns | DONE — 3 legacy campaigns paused |
| Collapse 24 mirrored ad groups into focused themes | IN PROGRESS — ~10 active themed groups |
| Drop the HomeVestors trademark terms | DONE — no "ugly houses" spend |
| Build segmented landing pages (Step 7) | DONE — 22 city pages live |
| Wire each ad group to its city page (DSA) | LIVE — "DSA · City Pages" group active |
| Tag every lead with its city for reporting | LIVE — per-city lead capture |
| Audit / fix call tracking before trusting data | DONE — both leads tracked as calls |
| Install + refine the negative-keyword wall | ONGOING — pruned weekly from live terms |
| Restore the Branded campaign ($6 clicks) | BUILT — staged, turning on next |
| Second RSA per theme · value-based bidding · scale | QUEUED — weeks 2–4 / months 2–3 |
The highest-leverage item the audit identified — Step 7, replacing one generic page with message-matched pages — was over-delivered: 22 city-specific landing pages, internally linked and feeding the paid campaign through a Dynamic Search Ads group.
TIMELINE
Where we are, and what happens next
Google's smart bidding runs through a learning phase before it optimizes reliably — it needs roughly 15–30 conversions over about two to four weeks to understand who converts and at what price. We are 7 days and 2 conversions in. By definition, we are still teaching the algorithm — and that's the right thing to be doing right now.
Now · Days 1–14Gather clean signal
✓
Capped, disciplined spend feeding a clean funnel
Click price already in the healthy band ($50.50), 51% impression share with room to grow, calls tracking, every lead tagged by city. Each conversion teaches Google a little more about the seller who closes — early leads are worth more as training data than as raw count.
Leading indicators: all greenWeeks 2–4Exit learning, tighten the price
→
Step the Target CPA down, turn on Branded, add a 2nd ad per theme
As conversion volume crosses the learning threshold, we step the $350 ceiling toward $250, switch on the $6-a-click branded campaign (the cheapest insurance in the account), and give Google a second ad per theme to optimize between. Cost per lead starts its move toward the $230–340 model.
Expected: cost-per-lead becomes meaningful and trends downMonths 2–3Bid for quality, then scale
→
Value-based bidding on the per-city lead data, then grow budget
Once qualified-lead volume supports it, we feed lead value back to Google so it chases sellers likely to close, not just form-fills — and re-expand budget and geography in ~20% steps while cost per lead holds under target.
Expected: cost per qualified lead keeps falling even as we scaleThe one-line summary for this week
The rebuild did what it set out to do: the broken click price is fixed and inside the healthy band, the account is structured and tracking cleanly, and we're now in the normal data-gathering window where lead volume builds and cost per lead settles. Two leads at day seven isn't the story — a halved click price feeding a clean, capped funnel is.
The rebuild did what it set out to do: the broken click price is fixed and inside the healthy band, the account is structured and tracking cleanly, and we're now in the normal data-gathering window where lead volume builds and cost per lead settles. Two leads at day seven isn't the story — a halved click price feeding a clean, capped funnel is.
THE FULL CASE FILE
The original audit, preserved as delivered
Everything below is the Google Ads audit and city-page addendum exactly as sent on June 9 & 12, 2026 — the complete diagnosis behind the rebuild above. Its dates, figures, and "campaigns paused at time of writing" status reflect that moment; they are intentionally left unchanged so the record stays intact.
Every lead cost $524.
Here's exactly where the money went — and how it comes back.
The previous setup didn't have a lead-quality problem or a landing-page problem. It had a click-price problem: Google was allowed to bid with no ceiling in one of the most expensive auctions in the country, paying an average of $99 per click — with single clicks as high as $473.
Spend
$39,860
Clicks
402
Avg. CPC
$99.15
Conv. rate
18.9%
Leads
76
Cost / lead
$524.54
Full account history, both campaigns, 85 days of delivery. "Leads" = primary conversions (forms + calls + WhatConverts qualified imports).
EXHIBIT A
The math that explains everything
Cost per lead is only ever two numbers: what a click costs, divided by how often a click becomes a lead. One of those numbers here is genuinely good. The other one is the entire problem.
$99.15
cost per click
÷
18.9%
conversion rate
=
$524.54
cost per lead
Conversion rate: healthy. Nearly 1 in 5 clicks became a lead. Motivated-seller landing pages typically run 10–15%. The page and the offer are doing their job.
Click price: broken. Healthy CPCs for this niche in the Denver market run roughly $40–65. The account paid $99 on average — and frequently $200–400+ for a single click.
Verdict: a click-price problem — not a funnel problem
Why that's good news: conversion rate is slow and expensive to improve. Click price is controlled by settings, structure, and query hygiene — all fixable in days, not months.
EXHIBIT B
Bidding with no ceiling
The campaign ran Maximize Conversions with no Target CPA. That setting tells Google: "win as many conversions as the budget allows — pay whatever it takes." In a cheap auction that's fine. In Denver-metro "we buy houses," where the top of the page costs three figures, it's a blank check. The $0.01 manual bids left in every ad group confirm it — smart bidding ignores them completely, so the algorithm set every price.
Average cost per click, by week
Green band = healthy range for this niche ($40–65). The algorithm escalated as it "learned."
The pacing fed the fire. The Main campaign's daily budget sits at $493/day, yet 15 separate days spent $950–$1,020 — $15,379 total on those days alone. Google is allowed to spend up to 2× the daily budget, and with no CPA target it used that headroom at any price. Receipts from the search-terms report:
$472.74
1 click · "we buy your house"
$435.77
1 click · "sell my home fast"
$401.31
1 click · "sell house fast as is"
$378.90
1 click · "cash buyer for house"
$361.09
1 click · "webuyuglyhouses"
$317.81
1 click · "i want to sell my house urgently"
38 different search queries averaged over $150 per click — together they absorbed $13,704 (34% of all spend) and produced 18 leads. Exact-match keywords fared worst: "need to sale my house" [exact] averaged $282/click; "we buy ugly homes" [exact] hit $331.
EXHIBIT C
Where the money leaked
Beyond the price of each click, a large share of clicks should never have been bought at all. Of the $23.2K in spend Google attributes to visible search queries, $13.1K (56%) went to queries that never produced a single lead. Three leak patterns stand out:
Buckets overlap with the zero-converting total; Google hides low-volume queries, so visible terms cover 58% of total spend — the real leak is proportionally larger.
| Search query that triggered the ad | Why it's a leak | Spend | Leads |
|---|---|---|---|
| sell my house | Mostly people about to list with an agent, at $220/click | $1,098.85 | 2 |
| selling my house | Same generic intent, zero results | $624.68 | 0 |
| we buy ugly houses / homes / webuyuglyhouses | HomeVestors' trademark — fighting the brand owner with QS 3 | $1,029.62 | 1 |
| andrew the home buyer / liz buys houses / watsonbuys / homevestors / prudent / total / joe homebuyer | People searching for a specific competitor by name | $663.82 | 3 |
| how to sell your house for cash keyword | Research-intent keyword kept exact match — $671 per lead | $3,357.73 | 5 |
| sell my condo · sell a rental property · cash offers | Off-target property types & vague queries (some excluded too late) | $402.66 | 0 |
The account also carried 25 keywords that spent without ever converting — $4,372 total — including "cash home buyer" [exact] at $684 and "we buy ugly houses" [exact] at $699.
EXHIBIT D
The Quality Score penalty
Google discounts clicks for relevant ads and charges a premium for weak ones. The account was set up to pay the premium: 24 ad groups — every theme duplicated into an Exact and a Phrase copy — each with a single ad, all pointing at one generic landing page (offer.expertcashbuyers.com). The duplication splits conversion data the bidding algorithm needs, and the one-page-fits-all approach drags relevance scores down on the exact terms that cost the most.
| High-spend keyword | Quality Score | Landing page exp. | Avg. CPC paid |
|---|---|---|---|
| sell my house fast [exact] | 3 / 10 | Below average | $186.26 |
| we buy ugly houses [exact] | 3 / 10 | Average | $139.75 |
| how to sell your house fast [exact] | 3 / 10 | Below average | $63.36 |
| companies that buy houses [exact] | 4 / 10 | Average | $207.31 |
| fastest way to sell my house [exact] | 4 / 10 | Average | $215.76 |
| cash home buyer [phrase] — proof it can work | 8 / 10 | Average | $83.47 |
A keyword at QS 3 pays roughly 1.5–2× more than the same auction at QS 7+. Combine that surcharge with uncapped bidding and you get $200+ clicks.
EXHIBIT E
Geography & device: paying double in the wrong places
Targeting was correctly fenced to the Colorado Front Range — but inside that fence, performance split sharply. The Denver-metro core produced leads at $300–420. The northern corridor and a few zero-lead suburbs absorbed $16,243 for just 10 leads ($1,624 each).
Working — keep & concentrate
- Niwot$229 / lead
- Evans$300 / lead
- Brighton$322 / lead
- Frederick$348 / lead
- Commerce City$361 / lead
- Wheat Ridge$381 / lead
- Lakewood (13 leads)$409 / lead
- Thornton (8 leads)$419 / lead
Bleeding — cut or cap first
- Fort Collins$1,459 / lead
- Loveland$1,265 / lead
- Longmont$2,003 / lead
- Boulder$1,501 / lead
- Westminster$951 / lead
- Wellington$1,158 / lead
- Severance · Aurora · Arvada · Fed. Heights$3,042 · 0 leads
Devices tell the same story. Mobile took 81% of spend at $111 per click → $607 per lead, while desktop converted better and cheaper at $73 per click → $310 per lead. Uncapped bidding overpaid most exactly where competition is fiercest.
EXHIBIT F
What's already working — and must not be broken
A rebuild only works if it protects the assets. There are real ones here:
| Asset | Evidence |
|---|---|
| A converting funnel | 18.9% click-to-lead overall; 65 of 85 people who started the form finished it (76% completion). Tracking is sane: forms, calls, and WhatConverts qualified imports are primary; the form's "1st Step" is correctly a secondary micro-conversion. |
| Proven keywords | we buy houses [exact] $176/lead · how to sell your house fast $127/lead · sale home for cash $151/lead · need to sale my house [phrase] delivered 21.5 leads (the workhorse — overpriced, not wrong). |
| Proven geography | Denver-metro core cities consistently land $300–420 per lead even under broken bidding. |
| Brand protection at $6/click | The branded campaign costs almost nothing ($50 total) — it was just starved at $10/day. |
| One open question | Only 6 phone-call conversions vs. 65 forms. In this niche, calls are usually 30–50% of lead volume — call tracking coverage needs an audit before relaunch. If calls were undercounted, the true historical CPA is somewhat better than $524, and fixing it gives the algorithm more signal. |
THE FIX
Rebuild plan, in order of impact
Both campaigns are currently paused — the right call. Before anything is reactivated:
Week 1Cap the bids, plug the leaks
1
Relaunch with a Target CPA ceiling
Same Maximize Conversions engine, but with a tCPA of $350 — the single setting whose absence caused most of this. Step it down $25–50 every 2–3 weeks toward $250 as volume stabilizes. 76 conversions in 90 days is enough signal, and the restructure below concentrates it further.
Expected: largest single CPC reduction — eliminates $200–470 clicks outright2
Collapse the 24 mirrored ad groups into 12
Merge each Exact/Phrase twin into one themed ad group holding both match types. Smart bidding optimizes per ad group — doubling the conversion density per group makes the tCPA far more accurate, and ends the account bidding against itself.
Expected: faster learning, steadier CPCs3
Install a real negative-keyword wall
Mine the 96 zero-converting queries plus intent patterns: realtor/agent/listing/zillow/condo/apartment, "how to / can I / is it / are…" research stems, mortgage-question phrasing, and a named competitor list. Roughly $7,700 of documented spend maps directly to these patterns.
Expected: ~15–20% of spend redirected to seller-intent queries4
Drop the HomeVestors trademark terms
Pause "we buy ugly houses/homes" keywords ($1,074, 1 lead). If competitor conquesting is wanted later, isolate it in a separate manual-CPC campaign capped at ~$25/click so it can never contaminate the main campaign's bidding.
Expected: removes the worst QS-3, $140–330/click auctions5
Restart the budget at $250–300/day
Hold there until tCPA delivers two stable weeks, then scale. Also raise the brand campaign to $20–30/day — at $6 a click it's the cheapest insurance in the account.
Expected: no more $1,000 days during relearningWeeks 2–4Earn cheaper clicks
6
Geo surgery
Exclude or heavily reduce Fort Collins, Loveland, Longmont, Wellington, Severance, Boulder, Aurora, Arvada and Federal Heights for now ($16.2K → 10 leads). Concentrate budget on the proven Denver-metro core; re-open the north only after CPA holds under target.
Expected: reallocates ~40% of historical spend to $300–420/lead ground7
Segment the landing pages
One page served all 24 ad groups. Build three: foreclosure, inherited/probate, and the general cash-offer/as-is page — matching headline to query. This is the direct lever on the "Below average" landing-page scores behind QS 3 keywords, and it pushes conversion rate past 20%.
Expected: QS 3→6+ on money terms ≈ 20–35% CPC discount, plus CVR lift8
Second RSA per ad group + tighter copy
Every ad group ran a single ad with shared boilerplate. Add a second RSA per theme with query-mirroring headlines so Google has something to optimize between — a direct input to "Expected CTR," the other QS component scoring "Below average."
Expected: incremental QS and CTR gains9
Audit call tracking before trusting the data
Verify call extensions, call-reporting, and WhatConverts number pool coverage on the new landing pages. If calls were leaking untracked, the algorithm has been optimizing half-blind.
Expected: more conversion signal → better smart biddingMonths 2–3Optimize for lead quality, not just lead count
10
Move toward value-based bidding
WhatConverts already imports qualified leads at a $500 value. Once qualified-lead volume supports it, feed those values (and eventually appointment/contract stages) back as offline conversions and bid to value — so Google chases sellers likely to close, not just form fills.
Expected: CPA per qualified lead drops even if raw CPA plateaus11
Scale what proves itself
Re-expand geography and budget in steps of ~20% only while CPA holds under target for two consecutive weeks. Test mobile-speed improvements on the new pages — mobile is 81% of volume and currently converts worse than desktop.
Expected: growth without re-igniting CPC inflationTARGET
What the same funnel delivers at sane click prices
Cost per lead is mechanical: hold the funnel's conversion rate and lower the click price. Every cell below is the same arithmetic that produced $524.
| Avg. CPC → | $99 (was) | $80 | $65 | $55 | $45 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| At today's 18.9% conv. rate | $524 | $423 | $344 | $291 | $238 |
| At 22% (with segmented pages) | $451 | $364 | $295 | $250 | $205 |
Milestones we'll hold ourselves to: under $400/lead within the first 30 days of relaunch (tCPA + negatives + geo alone), and a steady-state of $250–325/lead by days 60–90 as Quality Score and the new pages compound. May was already trending the right way ($435) purely from less April-style bidding.
Honest benchmark
Denver-metro motivated-seller clicks are among the priciest in Google Ads; $200–350 per raw lead is what a well-run account in this market looks like. Anyone promising $100 leads on Search here is describing a different business. The win isn't a magic number — it's cutting the cost of the same lead roughly in half and then bidding on lead quality.
Denver-metro motivated-seller clicks are among the priciest in Google Ads; $200–350 per raw lead is what a well-run account in this market looks like. Anyone promising $100 leads on Search here is describing a different business. The win isn't a magic number — it's cutting the cost of the same lead roughly in half and then bidding on lead quality.
ADDENDUM · JUN 12
Step 7 is built — 22 city landing pages, now live
The audit's single highest-leverage page fix was Step 7: stop serving one generic page to every ad group. That work is done — and it went further than three intent pages. 22 city-specific landing pages are live, each with localized copy (real neighborhoods, ZIP codes, county, seller-motivation angles), a unique local hero, and a two-step form that stamps every lead with its city for clean attribution. This is the direct lever on the "Below average" landing-page-experience scores that produced QS 3 on the most expensive keywords.
Why this attacks the $524 directly
Quality Score has three inputs; landing-page experience is one, and it was dragging the money terms to 3/10 — the surcharge that, stacked on uncapped bids, made $200–400 clicks. A searcher in Thornton who lands on a page that says "Sell Your House Fast for Cash in Thornton" — with Thornton neighborhoods and ZIPs — is the textbook definition of message match. Expect the same auctions to clear materially cheaper as relevance rises from 3→6+.
Quality Score has three inputs; landing-page experience is one, and it was dragging the money terms to 3/10 — the surcharge that, stacked on uncapped bids, made $200–400 clicks. A searcher in Thornton who lands on a page that says "Sell Your House Fast for Cash in Thornton" — with Thornton neighborhoods and ZIPs — is the textbook definition of message match. Expect the same auctions to clear materially cheaper as relevance rises from 3→6+.
Build-outWire the pages into the relaunch
12
Point each ad group's Final URL at its matching city page
The old account sent all 24 ad groups to one URL (offer.expertcashbuyers.com). In the rebuilt 12-group structure, geo-segment so the searcher's city resolves to its own page. Where a single group spans the metro, use the closest core-city page or build city-level groups for the Tier-1 markets below.
Expected: QS 3→6+ on money terms ≈ 20–35% CPC discount + CVR lift13
Launch the proven geography first — now with a dedicated page each
Exhibit E's winners already converted at $300–420 on the generic page. They now each get a message-matched city page on top of working geography — the cleanest compounding win in the account. Start here: Thornton ($419), Wheat Ridge ($381), Lakewood ($409), Frederick ($348), plus the Denver-metro core.
Expected: the working geo gets cheaper, not just relaunched14
Re-test the "bleeders" — the page was the missing variable
Fort Collins ($1,459), Loveland ($1,265), Longmont ($2,003) and Westminster ($951) bled under generic page + uncapped bids. The audit's Step 6 said cut them for now — correct then. With a tCPA ceiling and a dedicated city page removing the relevance penalty, re-open them in a controlled test (capped budget, tCPA on) rather than excluding outright. If CPA holds under target, they convert; if not, the tCPA simply starves them.
Expected: recovers the northern corridor without re-igniting CPC inflation15
Use the per-city lead tag for reporting & value-based bidding
Every form submission now carries a hidden City field, and notifications route to the team with the city in the subject line. Feed that into reporting so cost-per-lead is visible per city from day one — the exact signal Step 10's value-based bidding needs to chase closeable sellers, not just form fills.
Expected: per-city CPA visibility → faster, smarter geo decisions16
SEO now compounds the paid spend (already in place)
The 22 pages are internally linked: each carries an "Areas We Serve" cluster to the other cities, and all 91 blog posts now link into the matching city pages with a cash-offer CTA. Paid traffic warms a page that is also building organic authority for "sell my house fast [city]" — lowering blended cost-per-lead over time.
Expected: organic share grows under the same ad budgetTARGETING
The 22 live areas, by priority
Every page is published and crawlable at /sell-my-house-fast-[city]/. Tiers are from the local-market research; prior $/lead is from Exhibit E where the city appeared in the old account.
| Area | Live URL | Tier | Prior $/lead | Restart action |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Thornton | /sell-my-house-fast-thornton/ | Tier 1 | $419 | Launch first |
| Westminster | /sell-my-house-fast-westminster/ | Tier 1 | $951 | Launch + tCPA |
| Arvada | /sell-my-house-fast-arvada/ | Tier 1 | 0 leads | Re-test, capped |
| Denver | /sell-my-house-fast-denver/ | Tier 1 | — | Launch (confirm footprint) |
| Greeley | /sell-my-house-fast-greeley/ | Tier 1 | — | Launch first |
| Fort Collins | /sell-my-house-fast-fort-collins/ | Tier 1 | $1,459 | Re-test, capped |
| Longmont | /sell-my-house-fast-longmont/ | Tier 1 | $2,003 | Re-test, capped |
| Lakewood | /sell-my-house-fast-lakewood/ | Tier 2 | $409 | Launch (west — confirm) |
| Wheat Ridge | /sell-my-house-fast-wheat-ridge/ | Tier 2 | $381 | Launch first |
| Loveland | /sell-my-house-fast-loveland/ | Tier 2 | $1,265 | Re-test, capped |
| Broomfield | /sell-my-house-fast-broomfield/ | Tier 2 | — | Launch |
| Northglenn | /sell-my-house-fast-northglenn/ | Tier 2 | — | Launch |
| Erie | /sell-my-house-fast-erie/ | Tier 2 | — | Launch |
| Windsor | /sell-my-house-fast-windsor/ | Tier 2 | — | Test with north |
| Lafayette | /sell-my-house-fast-lafayette/ | Tier 2 | — | Launch |
| Louisville | /sell-my-house-fast-louisville/ | Tier 2 | — | Launch |
| Frederick | /sell-my-house-fast-frederick/ | Tier 3 | $348 | Launch first |
| Firestone | /sell-my-house-fast-firestone/ | Tier 3 | — | Bundle (Carbon Valley) |
| Dacono | /sell-my-house-fast-dacono/ | Tier 3 | — | Bundle (Carbon Valley) |
| Mead | /sell-my-house-fast-mead/ | Tier 3 | — | Bundle (Carbon Valley) |
| Berthoud | /sell-my-house-fast-berthoud/ | Tier 3 | — | Low priority |
| Johnstown | /sell-my-house-fast-johnstown/ | Tier 3 | — | Low priority |
Domain prefix https://expertcashbuyers.com. "Re-test, capped" = re-open under tCPA with a controlled daily budget rather than the audit's blanket exclusion, because the landing-page variable that drove those CPAs has now changed. Confirm the buy-box truly extends to Denver proper, Lakewood and Wheat Ridge (west/south of the stated Northern Colorado core) before funding them.