Any Recommendations For Revamping Website?

Question

Right now we just use our current one for informational purposes only. Most of our marketing is direct mail and many of our sellers first go to our website to learn more about us.

However, We want to graduate to a website that actually brings in traffic. One that shows up in the top rankings on search engines. We are NOT looking to do this ourselves but outsource it to someone. Anyone got any suggestions? I'm not up on the latest web technology in regards to one's business so perhaps I should educate myself on the basics. Any recommendations for that also?

Thanks in advance.

Ibrahim Hughes · Answer

Thanks @Todd Hutcheson for the advice. And someone mentioned that @Aaron Mazzrillo may have the highest 'vote-to-post' ratio on BP but I think you have everyone beat here. LOL. Happy Living & Investing.

Todd Hutcheson · Answer

Start with setting up a google+ account for your city. If you use a local address that is verified and name your company " sell ( ) home fast" or " I buy Homes ( city ) you will have a great chance of people finding you for your city. As far as website goes, buy a old domain with lots of links to it. Only way you can get ranked against the big sites like mine. I own ibuyhomes.com, the longest continuous run national site. Your site specifically does not have a form, phone number, h1 tag and a bad meta description. Also you need at least 2000 words on the home page about buying and selling homes. Hope this helps.

Account Closed · Answer

It all depends on what you want done also. In reality, SEO (in terms of optimizing your pages) is only a small piece of the puzzle nowadays. To actually rank it's all about content marketing (inbound marketing). Any good SEO firm bundles this all together as you can't have one without the other, the days of tricking search engines with keyword stuffing and meta tags or private blog networks it gone. Only the sub $500 are offering that but Google is out in force penalizing people who use services like that. I have been working with Gregerson Solutions for a long time and they have always done a great job on my account. They do web design as well as content marketing/SEM.

Joshua Dorkin · Answer

@Scott Costello - I'd say that $500/month is below what I'd be willing to pay for an SEO person. I've found that the only people qualified to do that kind of work tend to go for several thousands a month to start. I've seen the work of countless people who charge less and most use outdated techniques that are dangerous to your site. Of course, that's why I haven't hired any of them either ;)

Tom Sylvester · Answer

@Ibrahim S - I would recommend writing down your goals and working backwards to see how a website fit into your strategy. You can spend a lot of money on SEO to drive traffic to your website, so you want to make sure that the time/effort/money is driving to your business goals.

Jaren Barnes · Answer

@Ibrahim S If your looking to bootstrap and do it your self, the best education for website building/ blogging that I've found by far is www.fizzle.co You can get started for $1, and then after it's only $35 per month and its worth every penny.

Account Closed · Answer

This will answer most of your questions: http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo

Justin Gazabat · Answer

@Ibrahim S have been reading and studying social media marketing for the Last two months as I indented to come back to Real Estate With an Arsenal in order to re- solidify my knowledge and presence in a market i have largely been absent from for the last 5 years. That being said, I have found a lot of good information regarding web design and user buy-in/ opt-in and conversion through Kissmetrics. They are not a real estate specific web site, nor a place to build a website. Rather they understand how to test conversion rates, and what gets peoples attention. @Eric Liu, @Joshua Dorkin , and @Scott Costello are Correct in saying to be careful of using anyone who doesn't have a Firm Grasp on Google Analytics. The tricks of the past, including Back linking to an old established web page that you don't own can get you in to trouble with google now and you site can get lost in the Abiss

Ibrahim Hughes · Answer

Thanks Jaren. I'll look Into it.

Scott Costello · Answer

@Ibrahim S I'm actually in the middle of testing out a lead page service and building my own site by hiring an SEO guy. I'm about 6 months in and to be honest the lead page service site is doing much better right now. I think in the long wrong my "own built" site might work better though, but it's a lot of work building it from scratch. Lot's of article marketing. The going rate for an SEO person is about $500/mo You could find cheaper, but you get what you pay for most of the time and have to watch out for "SEO experts" who use spamming tactics or "Black Hat" tactics.