| OK I give up. I received a 36 requests for
website reviews. After 9 reviews of different sites, with different site
providers. Here is my results and recommendations. I am going to rate
providers, tell you the common items overlooked and give you some
information and tools to help your sites. There is a ton of information out there, I will be posting more as I get it together.
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How to Choose a Web Site
Provider
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How to Choose a Web Site
Provider: All the providers I reviewed have one thing in common,
they provided a web site. Don't judge the provider by the website they are
going to give you, pretty is not necessary, ease of use, information
provided, tools and capture points is the key to making a good web site.
So here are the points you should be asking your self. 1. MLS: what kind of coverage are you getting. is the mls (idx) integrated into the site, if it is integrated, what are your capture points, can you offer a little information to your customer before asking them to register or are you just asking before you give anything and hoping they don't just leave your site because your being to aggressive. If it's not integrated (like Hobbs), then you are just wasting your time, there is no way you can hook the client. 2. TOOLS, does your provider partner with offer companies to offer things like community info, crime stats, economy, climate, Mortgage center with calculators and so-on. What kind of tools do they offer you to capture and track and communicate with your consumers. this would be some sort of a lead management system, that would allow you to see what your client is doing on your site to better educate you about there preferences. Is there some sort of an automatic email marketing system, so that you can keep your name name gently in front of the consumer. FHU, Free Home Updates, information packets, well you get the idea, Tools is what sells property. 3. VERSATILITY: can you make changes to your web site yourself without having to interact with the provider. one of the keys to the search engines indexing your site is your ability to add content to your site and you should do so regularly, this can be accomplished as easily as copy and pasting a news article about real estate on your site preferably on a back page somewhere. 4. SUPPORT: Can you call a help desk to help you with a problem or question. Just so you know, My option is that Birdview Technologies and Z57 are the best of the two providers, of-course this is just my option and not necessarily the option of Troop Real Estate.
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Meta Data Keywords: Most common
item missed is Meta Data Keywords, all the providers have the ability to
enter these words, it will be located in your web site assistant (where
you login to edit your site). should be called Meta Data. Recommendations
for keywords are : use no more than 255 characters including spaces, and
try not to repeat words.
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| Navigation: Check your own site on a regular basis, clicking on all the links to ensure that the pages they point to actually work, if they don't work fix them or have them fixed. If you have a link that doesn't do what it represents, it show your client you are not detailed oriented. Also, if your provider uses graphics to link from one page to another, you should either create or have on one page in your site that uses "Text Links" to all your other pages. the search engines reads your site and indexes both your content and your site structure, it indexes your structure by reading your links, if your site only uses images than the search engine may not be able to read your structure. | |
| Link Swapping or Link Exchange: every site needs to be submitted to other relevant sites to increase your exposure. because of this you will need a page where you can put links back to the sites that agree to place your link on there site. so with this, do a web search for link exchange and start submitting your site to other webs. I will also be posting some quality free link exchange partners as I find and qualify them. | |