Website traffic

[rose1938]

How do you ever find the right information on driving traffic to your site. I have contracted with two different companies who promise they can put us at the top of the search engins. When this has failed they or in this case one has comeback and suggested we do pay for clicks, in this instance it was a 100 bucks per click! It would not be so bad if I had not already paid for the placement. Im not computer literate except just enough to get in trouble. Promise me anything, I believe it. Ha! Not now. Between spiders, and bots and all the other crawly things in cyber space I feel I should get out the Raid.
Is there a final solution, or am I stuck with trial and money out the window.
We do show up, but not as promised at the top of Google, and Yahoo, Its probably not fair to use the site promoters name but it begins with Engine----
If you know the secret please let me in on it. From Key words to new website I'm done! help if you can. Much appreciate the feed back on my site from some of the users and I did correct the issues mentioned.
Rose

[Corey Bryant]

No one can promise you they can put you at the top of search engines. They can try but do actually promise it - that is a totally different thing.

There are some companies out there like Web Ranking Consultants and SiteTutor that will help you understand the SEs. And they will try to get you ranked high with certain keywords.

[TipPro]

What is the Web site you are trying to promote, give us a name and quick description. Maybe some of us in this forum can give you a few pointers.

[rose1938]

www.remax-roserealty-canton-tx.com. I would appreciate any suggestions.
Many thanks.
Rose1938

[TipPro]

I actually had some experience w/ running a Google Adword campaign for a Remax realtor before. A very highly competitive field on the Internet but not impossible. You really need to use your imagination. You need to come up with a good combination of keywords, ads, and landing pages.

Your Web site could use a face-lift and some restructuring. You don't want to use your homepage as your landing page (as it is now, it is useless). What you want to do is come up with some niche keywords that relate to your realty company. For example using your local area names 'canton', 'texas', etc..., and then keywords for specific types of buyers like first time home buyers, business, land, etc... The combination of your local area keywords and specific types of buyers will help you get through all the Adword clutter and you will receive more clicks for less money. A good price range for clicks for your type of company would be between $0.10 to $1.50 per click. Start at the lowest and work your way up until you receive a good balance of clicks for your money.

Your site needs great landing pages. These are the pages that people are sent to when they click on your link. They should specifically relate to your ad. For example if you have an ad about the various different ways to purchase land in Canton, the landing page should maybe contain terms or tools that the user could use to figure out how they could purchase land.

Go through some of the other posts that deal with Google Adwords in this forum. You'll will learn many great pointers on how to set up a winning campaign. Google Adwords is a great advertising opportunity for your Web site.

Your site could benifit from some SEO, but that will take time. Running a well designed Google Adwords campaign will get you instant results. By the way I didn't go through your Web site very much, it may need a lot of work. If your Web site isn't functional, fix it before you put money into an Adwords campaign.

[The Old Sarge]

Rose,

I'd have look at your site and see what I could recommend but I do not want to install the flash. Is it (the flash) really necessary?

[kevey]

I had a google adwords thing going last year and just took my time with keyword bidding and raised my bids for certain words that I really wanted by .05 cents each time until I landed on page one.

For you, the phrase "real estate" would be expensive and too general a term. But the phrase "canton tx real estate" would be cheaper, and would drive targeted traffic to you...In this case, that phrase was searched on 60 times last month according to overture. In contrast, the phrase "real estate" was queried almost 2 million times.

You can look for common keywords/key phrases here:

http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/key...ions-overture/

If I found a word (or phrase) was too expensive for me, I just backed out and deleted that keyword. You can change your bids and see the reults within minutes. Up your bid a nickel/dime/quarter at a time until you're on page one. If it's too expensive, delete that keyword/phrase from your campaign and try another.

IMHO the key is to own the obscure phrases that only bring in 5 queries a month, and get 100 of those type of key phrases. That gives you 500 very targeted visitors coming to your site each month. They came to your site because they searched on "Canton Texas Real Estate for New Home Buyers that are ex-military" vs "Canton Real Estate". This is an extreme example...but you never know how people think. It's really a trial/error type of science with a little luck and a crystal ball thrown in for good measure.

[rose1938]

To all
Thank you for your reply. I appreciate the information, Question, Post 120, how do I fix the pages you suggested. This is a real estate site designed for Real Estate, I am limited in what I can do to the design of the whole site, which I might add was not cheep, I can change pages regarding what I say. I can input key words on each page, I can design new pages, but these guys are suppose to know how to design. They are Alamode.com. My home page needs some help? What precisely Can I do! My name is my name. It says Canton, TX Real Estate in my URL. Im not very good at this sort of thing, but I have a girl who can help me. Most real estate sites I see look about like mine can you point to one you think does it right, so I can look at it for comparison, that would really help me a lot. As for key words, I need to know which words work the best, I have used Engine Seekers.com to do this for me and they say my key words are ok, What do I know? This is also the company I pay each month to keep me at top of the search engines .
Rose1938

[JPnyc]

The biggest issue I see right now is the Flash navigation. I hear that the bigger search engines are now able to crawl flash, but I'm not sure of that. In general it's still a bad idea to use Flash for anything that is mission critical, meaning navigation or other functionality.

For openers, many people don't care for flash, don't have updated flash players, and lots also disable activeX in internet explorer for security reasons. IE cannot load flash without activeX. There's nothing in the navigation you have there that could not be done without flash, and would be better for your site overall.

[rose1938]

JPNYC
Thank you for your input! I know some people do not have flash, but I thought it looked good. However if it does not enhance the sites useability I don't have to have it. If you check I have taken the flash out. Any other suggestions will be appreciated.
Rose

[JPnyc]

Well you can do basically the same thing with Javascript/CSS/HTML (collectively known as DHTML-dynamic HTML). In fact, since the font you were using was small, you don't even need to have the font as part of the image itself, meaning that you only need 2 images of the button, 1 for moused over and 1 for not. This will mean bare text can be the actual link and search engines will like you better. Do you have any technical scripting experience yourself? This is not THAT difficult a thing to do if you have any coding background at all.

[TipPro]

Before I go into any home page suggestions, what is your main goal for this Web site? Why did you build it?

[rose1938]

Well it is a real estate site I hoped to get customers, buyers and sellers. And I did not build it I just tweeked it. The normal response from a real estate standpoint would be to have a better site than your competitor barring that one that gives information and "tweeks a buyes interest to choose us for their real estate needs..

Rose

[TipPro]

Your Web site is extremely over whelming. I would think that someone would use a realtor to help purchase or sell their home, because it can be a difficult and confusing process. Your Web site reflects this notion!

Your Web site is good enough for a local realty company but if you want to blow your competition away on the Internet, your site needs a lot more work.

An example of a direction you could take is to have two major themes for your Web site. One for buying and one for selling. When someone lands on your home page figure out if they are interested in buying or selling. Once you figure this out change the theme of your Web site accordingly. This does not mean you cannot ask an interested buyer if they need help selling their home.

You want to be clever with your Web site. You do not want to throw information at your visitors, if the information does not apply or would interest them. For example if they start to use some of your site tools (like the mortgage calculator) suggest some other site tools they may be interested in, otherwise only suggest your site tools when it is relevant to the current page they are surfing.

There is so much I could say but I am going to stop here. If you are a serious about your Web site you need to hire a part time developer. You need someone that is local to you so that you could discuss your Web site in person. I recommend trying to find a Web developer that is proficient with user interfaces and site usability.

[kevey]

Like everything else it boils down to the opinion of the surfer. I like the site and can get around easily. I have used real estate websites in the past (realtor.com and various remax sites) and didn't have any problem getting around.

I still think the page is too big for dial-up users, but it does give the info I wanted.