I’m looking for some help and comments on this website I’m developing.

The url is www.kathymm.ca

I think I’ve covered all the basics but I feel that it’s lacking something but I’m not sure what. I’m prepared to write the entire site, based upon the feedback I get.

Based upon my learning from these boards I’ve added long tail keywords in my sig, but I’m not certain how to apply them to the site.

The history of the site is that it’s been up for just over a year, and I have added content every now and then, but not consistently. I developed it in a website design course I took and it’s being hosted on the teacher’s server. So it’s a small time webhost and the URL is redirected, so it wasn’t showing up on google’s webmastertools.

Hey Kathy, it looks pretty good but I would add 2 things right away.

1. A blog. Many of my agents are now blogging regularly, whether it's stuff they find on the web or just re-purposing other peoples stuff. You can write your own things as well as posting pictures and video's from around town. This will make your website more relevant in Google's eyes and move you up the natural generic rankings.

If you can post something once a week that go along way to getting hits to your website.

2. email capture. The best thing about your info on your site is that it's free for anyone but it may not keep people coming back regularly. If you offered a free report of some kind for anyone that left their email, you might build a decent list online. Then you could market regularly to your list.

Or if you promise a quarterly or monthly newsletter about the market and other real estate stuff that might be a good trade for consumers to leave their email in exchange for that value added service.

All the best.

Kathy, I will say that this is a valiant start, you obviously put a lot of effort into it so far and you are vested into it. I'm not sure if you are looking to optimize it for SE or if you are looking to tweak it aesthetically, so I'll throw a couple of pointers and based on your response I will dig deeper.

* Your meta data needs to be reworked. I'm not sure if you have access to it, but if you do then you need to get some work on it right away. The meta title for all the pages is the same (at least the ones that I saw) and it didn't include enough keywords to make a significant impact. Similar point about the meta description.
* Although I like the simplicity of the colors and layout, some things need to pop out more. For example, the left navigation buttons should stand out more, perhaps use a button (with text) instead of plain text. It will look more custom and make things more searchable.
* As Martin said, you need a value proposition. Give them some bait so that your visitors can bite. Implement some kind of tool to sign up your leads.

Tell us a bit more of what kind of improvements you are looking to make and I will give more specified info.

Thank you both for your comments, I appreciate your feedback.

First off, I’m not Kathy, she is my wife. However her success is my success so I’m taking the lead on some of the marketing efforts.

Currently we are doing some local advertising and direct traffic to the site to provide more information before contacting us. However most of that traffic should be partially familiar with her prior to clicking.

What I would like to be able to do is use it to get client leads with no prior involvement. I was hoping to do with via my content hook of localized articles and market statics.

However, it seems that I’m not getting any traffic. I did a few Google searches and was able to find my site on page 22 at one point, and when I searched for my articles on they were not to be found at all.

So clearly I’m going to need to do some SEO. I’ll start working on the page titles and meta information as you suggested today.

Key Words, how do I use them? Do I include the phrase in the page content, or links to the pages?

Aesthetically, I’d like to add something or even do a significant rework, but I’m at a loss of what to do to add the “pop”. I’ve check out both your pages and they seem to have a better feel then what I have.

Blogging: Currently I’ve setup a facebook fan page, but have viewed this as a way to remind the COI that they know somebody in real estate. Is the best way to do this to set up a wordpress blog, and just link it to/from the current site? As well how will blogging interact with intention to add articles? Should blogging be more Fluff type pieces while keeping the articles more “content” focused?

Email capture, really seems like it should be the ultimate goal, going to need to put some thought into this one.

Wordpress would be the way to go. When ActiveRain was free I would have said ActiveRain - they have great google juice.

Use your keywords within in your text as well as in links. The art of doing it involves putting them in the content in such a way as to not be "obvious" - it should flow well with the text.

Most users have privacy things set up so that their email is not automatically captured. Online people want to see the content and contact you when they're ready. Make it always easy to find your email address. Offer things that they need to email you for.

First Step:
Get your Meta title Keywords filled, with parsimony, but it is crucial

Thanks for the input so far, I've made a bunch of changes and I'm continuing to add more. However I've run into a problem which I need a bit of direction on.

The problem is that my host has setup my site as a redirect to his server, so when viewing my site the <title>line doesn't change at all. In fact I've looked at it and it seems that the <title> & <meta keywords> haven't been changed since the site launched, even though I've updated them several times.

Now because of this when I try to verify my site with Google Web Master tools, I cannot verify. My host provided me with the directory address on the server which looked like "Webhost.net/mysite/" and I was able to get google to verify this address, and upload a sitemap for it.

When I go direct to the site at "Webhost.net/mysite/" I'm able to see the <title> change etc, however is this going to be good enough for Google? Am I going to get dinged for double content some how?

I've spoken to my host about this and he doesn't feel that it's going to be an issue. But I just don't get a warm fuzzy feeling on this one.

I also wanted to add that I've got a google analytics account now, for both address, which 1 do you think I should use?

Any input?

Thanks

I would recommend that you go 100% Wordpress and make sure you have your own domain name and server space (it's like $9 a month for Dreamhost). You'll be much better off. If you have a couple hundred bucks, you could pay a freelancer to help you get it set up and then you could tweak it from there.

Dave Smith in Tuscon is a great guy to contact if that's the route you want to take. He runs the Real Estate Blog Lab. Tell him Drew sent you (and no, I don't make a commission if I send him business).

Best of luck!

Not being able to change your title and meta tags is going to hurt you in SEO, since there is a large emphasis on it. If you can't get your host to do the things you need to do, then you need to change immediately. Most developers are slow and expensive, so I'd be wary.

Thanks for your recent suggestions.

However this thread is a few months old and I have made significant changes from then.

Oh ok. Was the reference still to http://www.kathymm.ca/ ?

jyang, sorry for not responding before, it's been awhile since I checked out this thread.

But yes ... http://www.kathymm.ca is still my main site but it has now evolved into London Ontario Real Estate Agents and London Ontario Homes for Sale. The changes I've made address most of the issues earlier posters pointed out.