Hello everyone. I just registered on here after reading all the friendly and supportive posts and replies. Looks like a great place for info and opinions...

Anyway, this question I have is really for those that have their own website. I'm pretty decent with working on websites. I have a few already, nothing real estate related.

So, I've seen a lot of website templates that you can purchase online. I was wondering if anyone had a suggestion for a particular place to purchase one? I guess my questions are as follows for anyone that might know and has the time...

A. Is there a template that works really well? I can customize it with my own logo and give it my own look?

B. Once it's up and running do these templates have the ability to add listings easily? Do any of them have a control panel or something to make it very simple to add listing descriptions and photos of the listings so I could just fill in the blanks and create a nice looking listing on my site?

C. Is there anything else I should know before making a website? What important info should be on there? Different sections etc? Are there little things like mortgage calculators and an 'about me' section that one should not be without?

Thanks in advance, I appreciate any advice!
Brian

PUrchasing a Point2Agent.com website will give you what you need at a reasonable cost - buying the upgraded version may give you more power over the structure of the site for SEO purposes.

Thanks for the suggestion. It looks like you get 6 months free and then you pay them monthly? I have my own webserver and would really love to make my own site and not depend on another service once I have it up and running.

I am a Point2Agent user. I can build my own website too, but the P2A features far exceeded my current skills. Particularly useful for me:

The handshake feature allows you to display the listings of others who've agreed to the handshake, so you've always got listings displaying on your site whether you have listing or not.

The syndication feature gets your listings on several other websites with one entry into your P2A site.

Also, if you're pretty handy with SEO, it can work well for you.

There's my two cents. Don't spend it all in one place!

Be unique. Google penalizes duplicate, like point2agent...

^^That's why I suggested to purchase the upgraded version; can't you edit the template then the way you want?

I don't use Point2 as I make my own site and am happy with it but it was a LOT of work and took hours and hours of time to learn.

My website is template. But I have taken the time to build pages upon pages of good information for my site. I never liked the canned website but it truly is the fastest way of having good enough information out there.

I have html knowledge. And it would take me forever to build my website to where it is now.

I figured that my priority is to sell real estate, not spend my time building my website. Building the content, yes. But not the actual HTML coding. Also flash and dreamweaver websites look very cool, but they do not mean a thing to google and other search engines. All said and done, we want to sell real estate, not to have a cool looking website with no lead generation capabilities.

I think rolling your own website is the way to go for lots of reasons.

My suggestion is this:

- get a provider who has fantastico installed
- Use fantastico to install Joomla 1.5 (It is content management software)
- Then go find yourself some templates for Joomla 1.5. There are free ones and ones you can pay for. www.rocketthemes.com is a good place.

That is how I did mine and I have been able to nearly get it to where I want it to be. I place exceptionally well on the search engines for the searches I care about and just about all my business so far over the last 11 months has been from my site.

R

I am currently using Ubertor on a recommendation from poster on this board, pricing isnt bad but it is a little "templaty" if you know what I mean. I am not creative at all so I needed something that does most of the work for me. I was looking at the Top Producer sites when I get more business.

I use Ubertor (did I recommend it?) and I've been told my site looks very un-templatey and unique. Maybe, maybe not... but definitely better than the standard agent sites.

www.charmingolddenver.com

Nicely done.

Yours does look very good, I am trying to tweak mine but I am seriously lacking in the creativity and design department.

Thanks... but believe me, I'm not much good with it either. The only real design element I did was the banner (which wasn't all that hard - I created it in Publisher).

Well I have been trying to "jazz up" my site while maintaining a professional look. I think that it looks much better now, but am still envious of a lot of the ones out there!

Now my only issue is search engine rankings - I really dont understand this SEO business, and I have read so much about it. Do I need to do a pay for click type thing? Or just wait it out and hope I show up somewhere in the top 100 sites?

Anyone do their own site in drupal? If so what modules did you use?

I use a real estate webmasters template site with some customizations and a custom IDX. If you are code savy it may be the company for you. Worth a look

I'm not an expert, but I read some place that the market leading search engine, "G" takes a dim view of pay per clicks.

I dunno...my competitors are doing well with ranking and they do a lot of ppc.

I am using Ubertor, they offer an SEO enhancement for $500 but I am hesitant to purchase it. Other than that I dont know how else to rank high in the Search Engines except to wait it out.

Ok I am really getting frustrated! Looking at my Google Analytics report this morning to see where an traffic might be coming from - it shows that my keyword hits were "Brazosport Movie times"!!!!

I am thinking of getting a Yahoo Site Builder website as they allow title and meta tags. Any ideas?

When you register your domain, there are usually a number of services available from the provider. I know 1and1.com as well as GoDaddy both offer these hosted website services and usually for less than $25 a month. They are easy to use and can make getting your site online much faster.

As far as the search engines go, there are many theories on ow the majors search engines rank you. To dispel one myth that was posted above by Greene "but I read some place that the market leading search engine, "G" takes a dim view of pay per clicks." - if this were true, their stock would not be over $300. They derive the major portion of their revenue from search. In fact having your Pay Per Click ad on the same page you score well on the organic side (the left side of the results) increases the likelihood of having your organic listing clicked on.

Here is a way to get your pages to rank better using information from Pay Per Click results.

1. Make sure that the Title, Description and Keywords of the page is descriptive of what you do and the content of that particular page. You NEED to use the most popular search terms you want to be listed for. If you do not know what the "hot" search terms are, use the tool Google gives for this located here:
The Google External Keyword Tool https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal?defaultView=2

(NOTE: you will also want to look at your website analytics to review which keywords people are finding you on and perform the same review as I will show you below on those keywords)

Enter in a keyword phrase (always use at least a 2 or 3 word phrase as that is how the average user searches), such as "buy homes orlando".

Then on the results page where it says "Choose columns to display:" select Display All.

Next, place an amount (try $1.00) in the box under the text: "Calculate estimates using a different maximum CPC bid:"

Then, go to the column named "Approx Search Volume: June" and click on it to reorder the results by the terms that have the most natural search activity. On the left side of the results you will see the terms that are the most popular.

Here is the real nugget: Use those exact terms that have the highest amount of activity and place them exactly as they are (do not mix up the order of the words as it is really important they stay together) into your Description (work them into a usable sentence) and also for your Keywords in your meta tags.

There is also a lot more information on the Google External Keyword Tool that you can use to make better website decisions and not waste money. Such as if you scroll down towards the bottom, Google is nice enough to supply "Keywords related to term(s) entered" and this will show you the BIG BOYS of the keyword terms you entered. Usually you want to be aware of these terms but as they are very broad you probably aren't going to get many buyers or sellers with them unless you are a nationwide agency.

Another useful column is the "Search Volume Trends" which will tell you when the most activity by month occurred on a particular term.

The main thing to take away to be a successful agent in search engines is that you need to think like an end user. So if you want to sell homes in Orlando, FL, then you need to micro focus your efforts on everything Orlando FL related to home buying and selling. Create separate pages on your site (and use the advice above to optimize each page) that address specific topics such as schools in Orlando FL, the history of Orlando FL, the real estate market in Orlando FL, and on and on. The more pages you have and the more those pages are super targeted to the topic the better your search engine ranking will do.

If you need more clarity or are interested in really seeing what the web can do for your business, visit me at www.jimlillig.com and leave me a message and I can explain more of this further with you.

I hope this helps.

Jim Lillig
www.jimlillig.com

Well now I see how my site was coming up under the keywords "Brazosport Movie Times", apparently it is picking up on a blog entry I wrote. My ActiveRain blogs seems to pop up quite a few times as well. Now if I could just get my website to come up under the right keywords.

For anyone that is using Ubertor did you purchase the SEO Enhancement Pkg?

What you need to do is write most of your blogs around your keywords. While it's nice to have local info on your blog, the majority of your blog info should be real estate related. You have to strike a balance so that your blog doesn't appear spammy, but you want your site to come up for Lake Jackson real estate, not Bazoport Movie Times.

Suggestion: write a blog about how many of your real estate customers interested in the Lake Jackson area come up for the weekend and may be interested in local movie times...

Here's a blog I wrote about local stores, but I definitely got some real estate key words in there too:

Karen's Friday Five: 5 Places to find "Old" Stuff

It's not the best example and reading it, I see some other stuff I can do to make it more key word rich, but you get the idea.

Thanks Perky_REALTOR and Jim! I have been studying Google Analytics all day and am hoping to tweak my website without having to spring for the $500 SEO Enhancement Pkg.

I thought my site did include the necessary keywords, but it is only coming up in searches that are totally unrelated - such as movie times or employment opportunities.