G Dewald | Union Street Media

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Sorry I answered the previous similar request too quickly. There's a group specifically for this type of question. If you ask there I'll do my 15 minutes for you as well. G. Dewald | Union Street Media | USM Blog

Can't wait to hear Merlin at Connect. He's got ways of dealing with this. And here's a relevant Joy of Tech to file away in the humor file as well. G. Dewald | Union Street Media | USM Blog

Hey Sidney, I'd love to (in my previous line of work I had a reputation as being a particularly cruel site-reviewer so I'll try and be as nice as possible :) ). Here goes: Technical Stuff: 1) There is no web site analytics installed on the site. Properly using web site analytics is like listening to your customers. It lets you know what brings them to your site, what they find interesting, whether they like you enough to continue coming back and also track whether/how/and from where they ask you to contact them. Google Analytics is free. There are other great tools as well. Super easy to configure, if your code provider can't do this for you get in touch with me and I'm sure I can help you out. 2) Your MLS search is "iframed" in. That means the data resides somewhere else and will not help you with your SEO and you will may have minimal opportunities to style the look of the search. 3) The code is not standard and written according practices that were current around 1999 (aka table-based layout). This means that the page takes longer to download and Google won't like it as much as a current-practice (aka CSS/XHTML or "semantic") site. 4) There is a bug of some sort on your MLS search page that makes the page significantly longer than the content requires. Usability Stuff: 1) There's a lot of text on that homepage. Once you have your analytics installed you will be able to see how long people spend on your home page. I will go out on a limb and predict that it will be significantly shorter than the time it takes to read the page. I also predict that if you focus the text your bounce rate (the number of people who see that page hit the back button immediately) will be lower on the home page if you focus the text. You should install analytics so you can measure these results: I could be wrong (but I bet I'm not). Also, that text might help you for SEO and you may feel the tradeoff is worth it. Compare the number of people who stay on your site (i.e. people who don't bounce) with focused copy vs with the copy you have to determine if the SEO value is worth it. 2) There is a lack of clear headline structure (a simple way of doing this is main headline quite big, secondary headings big, tertiary headings maybe just bold) to guide the visitor (the person who didn't just turn around and walk away from your). In fact, it's kind of a mish-mash of bolds, all caps and italics and practically no use of size. 3) The main nav is not very distinct from the rest of the site, again making it difficult to figure out what to do. 4) Good job on the big buttons for MLS search and all that. That's probably what you want them to do anyway. I bet people click on those buttons in droves (if only to escape the wall of text on the home page). SEO text stuff (my specialty is on-site optimization but I know a few tricks... hopefully you'll get more good SEO advice from other community members): 1) The phrase "los angeles" is 6.6% of your home page. This above what many SEO pros consider to be good (i.e. you may be running the risk of convincing search engines that you are spammy). 2) Your meta description is stuffed with keywords. The meta description is what Google and other search engines use to make the text that appears below your main link on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). There is little/no value for improving your SERP rank based on the meta description, but it is a great place to put a convincing 160 characters to entice people to click on your link instead of one of the other 9 on the page. See how your meta-description looks and then determine if that is the right message. Congrats on launching a site! It can be a hard slog to get even that far. And it's neat that you have links to the auto-translate tools (I didn't take time to test them, I could've only helped with three of them anyway). Well, that's my 15 minutes, I hope it's helpful for you. G. Dewald | Union Street Media | USM Blog