Hello!

I was wondering if you would be kind enough to give me your feedback and suggestions on how to improve two of our network websites - one is a buyer site and one is a seller site. The whole goal of these sites are to attract prospects (which we then scrub, personally verify and screen before they are sent on to agents to establish "warm" contact).

Just Listed Properties (Buyer site)

Free House Values (Seller Site)

Your feedback and suggestions for improvement would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

How do you mean "Improve"? Do you want to be found by more people through search engines or do you want more people to fill in the form?

Requested feedback... A quick search in Google will show there is tons of competition for what you are trying to do. Expect a lot of resistance from many agents who take a dim view of anyone who competes with them for real estate keywords and then tries to sell the leads back to them. I give leads away for free with no referral and no strings attached (like Santa Clause!) and agents are not lining up

Hi Doug,

Thank you for your post. We've got search engine traffic covered (in fact, if you do a search for nearly any kind of real estate related term - we're probably right there at the top!). I want to get more people to fill out the form.

Not agents to fill out the form, but prospects. People looking for their home value, a list of "Just listed" homes, etc. What have you found that makes prospects stay on your site and contact you?

I couldn't see your buyer site - it was coming up as not found - but I find that buyer forms work better in conjuction with an MLS search. Buyers fill in the form after they check out the MLS listings. Having said that, the numbers have declined in the last few months -probably because of the sub prime issue...

I searched google for your main keywords and you weren't on the first 3 pages, so in the world of internet lead generation you don't exist.

I would get ready for the housevalues.com lawyers to unload on you soon

Bring it on! Housevalues is the reason we started our business. Our founder got so fed up with getting lousy leads that he decided to do them one better

OOps, almost forgot to add that I did a search in Google for fixer uppers for sale, and we're third from the top. What search terms did you use Bigtoe? I will definitely look into it if you can't find us. Thanks!

I used the keywords in your meta tags.

I just did a g search for "fixer uppers for sale" and you were not on the first 3 pages for this either.

I think that people hate filling out forms. I wish you the best of luck. And hope that all goes great.

I think it looks good - good, clear headline and title. It meets the 8 second test. The paragraph about "if you're thinking about selling your house this year" I think should come out, but only split testing will be able to tell you that.

I honestly think, marketing-wise, that the long form is daunting. You should have a short form asking for their email address and name (maybe address), and capture that first (That way you can have autoresponders marketing to them), then send them to a longer form asking the details of their place to live.

SEO-wise; good luck. You have very little copy on your landing page in order to rank for anything. You don't have a sitemap, and as far as I can tell, this is a one-page website. However, I don't think SEO should be a realistic source of traffic and advertising method for you since your business model has been done and redone about a hundred times by companies started 3,4,5 years ago. You'd have a VERY hard time competing with them.

Just my 2 cents, and it should be a good place to start. PM me if you have any other questions.

free-house-values has a long ways to go in terms of SEO. I doubt its even pulling 10 Google hits/day. With only 13 backlinks, it cannot compete.

The home page needs a facelift. It looks like an MFA/spam site. The forms look daunting. Give one simple form to fill out and then move the user on to the second form when he/she hits "submit." The page is also missing the "fun factor" - which I think is critical when you're asking people to fill in forms.