Could anyone in the forum provide me with recommendations on succesful, cost effective, web site developers/template providers? I am an agent in Park City Utah looking to have an Internet presence attracting prospective buyers primarily for ski properties, second homes, and relo's. There are many providers on the Internet, too many to differentiate. Any ideas? Also, SEO seems to be a critical component for these agent sites to land on the first page and pay per click seems scary to me. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance..

It's kind of hard to recommend web site developers since there are so many. You might want to head over to http://www.elance.com and put up a job to see what kinds of bids you get and from whom (just make sure to be as specific as possible). Then when you start getting some bids, check out their feedback ratings to see how other people ranked their work.

When it comes to web templates, some of the best I have seen come from http://www.templatemonster.com. They are very professional-look and have a great use of Flash. The caveat to using these templates though is they are designed for looks... not SEO. If you plan on getting a top ranking in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages), you will really have to focus on offsite optimization if you use a templatemonster template. Definitely worth looking at.

SEO is a pretty scary topic to discuss when it comes to outsourcing it. There are a ton of companies out there that do horrible jobs at SEO and only do basic things for premium prices (i.e. submit your site to tons of free directories and search engines). I can't really give you any advice on this since I do all my own SEO; all I can say is be careful.