All Forum Posts by: Alex Z.

I work for Carrot but will try to remove bias. 

I’m a fan of click funnels and what Russell and his team have built. I’ve used it for projects and think it’s great for high ticket sales coaching and information based products. 

But where I see click funnels being a challenge is a robust website with interlinking pages. Imagine having to create a page for every city you want to rank for. 

Also you’d have to create allllll the content on the site from scratch. 

Compare that to Carrot. From the start you get a full website with content that is semi optimized and interlinked. Then you can use content tools and SEO tools from carrot to extend your website into new markets. 

We run a script to see what websites are ranking in the top US metros. Carrot shows up in 45% of the top 10 results across the country. Clickfunnels hardly ever shows up.  

Short answer. Clickfunnels is a powerful tool but not the tool for a content marketing based lead generation website most investors need for motivated sellers. 

Hey Robert, 



SEO is funny because everyone has their own flavor of what works and what doesn't. I'll start by saying there are much more qualified SEO experts here who will hopefully chime in. 

In my experience, the best SEO strategy is listening to what Google is prioritizing and making sure that is on your website. 

Speed & mobile user experience

Google has mentioned page speed and mobile user experience (source) as an important part of their ranking algorithm. They even have a tool called PageSpeed Insights to help you out. We see a majority of the traffic coming to Carrot websites coming from mobile so it's important to make sure the website converts on desktop as well as mobile. 

EAT (Expertise, Authority, Trustworthiness)

Google has made a couple of big updates to their algorithm in the last 18 months (you can read about them online if you'd like, search for "helpful content update"). 

The core of these updates is rewarding websites that exhibit high EAT factors. Read more about EAT here.

For real estate investors the best way to increase your EAT score is 

1. Make sure you are getting Google reviews and displaying them on your website
2. Blog or write content from experience and share before/after pictures or situations where you have helped
3. Show your face on your website
4. Be clear in your bio or website about how long you have been in business, and any accreditations you have.
5. Link to relevant content in your website that helps build authority or expertise. 

I would say that is the "new" stuff or the "SEO stuff" you should be focusing on. Of course, there is a lot of older SEO best practices that still remain true

1. Select the right keywords
2. Good meta tags, description, etc. 
3. Build backlinks
4. Have an internal linking strategy
5. Don't keyword cannibalize your content

The way I think about SEO is what is Google's business model. It's giving people highly relevant content to a search query. So how is my website helping Google execute its strategy?

 You are both correct. It has to do with the data being toggled on/off. Here is an example from a personal Carrot site of mine. Notice the colored background on the data point corresponds to the graph. 

Hey @Tommy Harper

Full disclosure: I work for Carrot. I also have Carrot website and primarily focus on SEO.

I'll start by saying that Carrot isn't for everyone (and that's okay). But we are proud of what we have built. 

Hopefully, you can find some more Carrot customers (or non-customers) to share their experiences. But just wanted to hit on a couple of things to help you with your research. 

We view SEO as 3 distinct and critical parts (each with its deeper nuance)

1. Speed

2. SEO

3. Conversion 

Speed

Carrot has invested quite a bit of money in our servers to be lighting fast and also in our websites doing some complicated stuff to ensure your website loads for users (computer and mobile) because Google has made that clear in terms of ranking a website. An example of this would be loading the first view (form) and loading stuff as a user decides to go down the page. You can use a tool like https://pagespeed.web.dev/ to check out the page speed of some Carrot websites and our competitors. Speed will slow down the more tracking codes and big images your stuff on your site. We've published some speed tests on our blog and Carrot usually performs at the top. 

One alternative is self-hosting which can give you speed but usually comes with a dedicated server and those are costly (I know because I host personal non-RE blogs on them). Talking thousands of dollars a year.

SEO 

SEO can be complex - but we try to give you a leg up by giving you pages that are SEO optimized and inter-linked when you create a site. Of course, you can optimize from there based on your market and real estate strategy. I know of a couple customers who are doing really well with some niche situations like selling a house in retirement. We have no shortage of content and guidance in our platform to help you figure out the work that is required with SEO. But make no mistake, you will either need to roll up your sleeves or outsource the work. But we try our best to guide you along the way and not make the website a stumbling block for having awesome SEO. 

Conversion 

You asked about SEO but Google can tell when a website has quality content and a user converts on the website. We focus heavily on split testing to ensure our websites have the best-performing elements. I common mistake we see is having a really big complicated form that a user doesn't want to fill out. We keep ours front and center and simple with a clever 2 step process. This increases conversion. Another mistake we often see is websites that don't consider a mobile user and how they would interact with a site. We take a lot of time and care into testing and thinking about those things so you don't have to. 

*Final thoughts*
Carrot is a tool. The more time/money you spend to get good with the tool the more results you can achieve with it. In terms of SEO, if you Google "sell my house fast" + any market in the US you will likely find a handful of Carrot websites in the top 1-5 spots. In fact, I know several markets that #1, #2, #3 are all Carrot websites for a bunch of competitive keywords. So the results somewhat speak for themselves. But don't want to oversell the fact that SEO takes time, money and experience. So just make sure you know what you want from your website performance. 

Happy to answer any other questions. 

Hey BP, 

Our small team has contacted several lenders looking for competitive rates in PA. 

Our focus is on properties between 2-10 doors where the lender will underwrite the key principle and the property's cash flow as opposed to all LPs in the deal. 

Would love to make some connections and have some rates quoted to us. 

I have a couple of partners and we are looking to buy some smaller Multifamily units (<20 units). 

We have a mortgage broker we enjoy communicating with (haven't used him yet), but I am curious if his rates are coming in high?

We are currently being quoted 7.5%-8%.

Maybe it's our criteria that are causing the high rate quotes? Would love to hear what others are getting in this market.

Our criteria

1. Consider the cash flow of the property

2. Don't require every partner to go through full underwriting (speed and scale). Asking to underwriter the principal buyer.

3. Typically looking at 30-year fixed and some I/O type loans

I have never used the service so I can't speak to the quality of leads or the customer buying experience. But I am aware of the marketing behind the leads and understand it to be sound. If there is a lead in your area might not hurt to test it out and report back in here?

Like you I've seen the domain name pop up a couple of times. 

When running the numbers on possible SFH I am using 20% over my primary residence insurance.

I am investing out of state and live in an HCOL area and am looking in a lower cost of living area. Is there a better or more accurate way to budget insurance without getting quotes from insurance companies?

@John-Patrick D. Bailey - yes that is certainly one way to do it. Start with answering a simple question for yourself. 

"Why do you want to wholesale real estate"? The answer to that should help you figure out a goal. 

I'll use myself as an example...I want to wholesale real estate to use my love of marketing and technology to create revenue that funds buy and hold properties. 

I have been a paying dealcheck member as well. I really like it and haven't found anything better. 

I like the customization and amount of options you get. I always adjust their default numbers and double check the Zillow imports. 

Recently I've been pulling from Roofstock into Dealcheck because I think Roofstock's numbers are a little off and DealCheck is easier to capture properties for review later. I also like the thresholds feature.