How Well Can A P2A Site be SEO

Morristown · #**1 How Well Can A P2A Site be SEO** 04-06-2007, 12:56 PM

Hello All,

I am just curious as to how well or not so well a P2A site can be SEO'd Was talking with a person who showed me several sites she had done, and I talked to a local agent who is very happy with here. It is unfortunate that the local agent has only been working with the website lady for about 2 months so no telling how well the SEO is working for the local agent. I did notice that the local agent is doing a pay per click campain but anyone can do that.

Any Info on P2A and the viability of using them for a somewhat customized site and over time building search engine rankings, or the limited ability to do such is greatly appreciated.

Jim

webmaster · 04-06-2007, 01:16 PM

Jim,
Because SEO is as much about developing a diverse linking portfolio as it is about what you have onpage, really any website can be "optimized" per se'

However on a scale of 1-10, 1 being absolutely shitty for SEO, 10 being REW sites

I would give them a 5. Certainly you can add your own pages of content, and do some SEO work on them, but they are pretty limited in terms of what you can actually do with them behind the scenes. Couple that with the fact that they are on a rollout (Everything is exactly the same for everyone) - there is the opportunity for them to make mistakes network wide (Which they have done in the past, such as the yahoo ban) - this is not a knock on the company, they are not SEO's and do not claim to be. In fact I love the guys at Point2, for the price they have a great product and great service. The fact of the matter is though, they were not built for SEO and never will be great for SEO, they are more interested in the rich data display and listings side of things (Their words not mine) the only reason they had a front end (The website) to begin with, was so that realtors had an interface to add their listings.

Calgary Agent · 04-06-2007, 01:20 PM

Very few *newer* P2 sites will ever get to the top of Pg 1 for Google, for a variety of reasons:

1/ Templates - regardless of what you do, 99.999% of all P2 sites are templates that resemble thousands of other similar sites

2/ Common IP address - even though P2 spreads the hosting of their sites around on the Akamai caching network, there are somewhere in the neighbourhood of 100,000 (give or take 10-20K) P2 templates out there. With so many of these being hosted on common IP blocks, the SE's tend to depreciate their importance & hence ranking

I know of only a couple of P2 sites that rank well for any given area, and these are older sites, highly optimized, that have considerable "age" authority.

I'd be willing to bet that with the same amount of SEO effort, you'd see much better rankings with other alternatives.

On the other side of the coin, P2 sites are easy to use, and allow newer agents a chance to get some experience with html coding before moving to other vendors sites. You can also build some domain authority for your url while you're optimizing your P2 site, and simply transfer the URL to another site when you're ready.

I'm sure other's here might disagree ..... but that was my experience after using P2 for about 30 months ...

Morristown · 04-06-2007, 01:29 PM

Thanks to both of you for responding. That is what I am looking for actually.

Build domain athority,
get it out there so that I can direct people someplace through my off line advertising. I would guess that 99% of the visitors to my site in the first many months will be from off line advertising.

I will be able to offer IDX and Maping and will offer a CMA tool as well and actually will have access to these for no additional cost to me.

The main thing is that I do not have much of a budget as of right now. I realize the old adage of spend money to make money but there is the point of being over extended as well.

The person I was talking with did say though that she could do a completly custom front page, not a templet at all. Does that make any difference in the rateing of a 5 on a 1 to 10 scale?

JIM

webmaster · 04-06-2007, 04:16 PM

The design side of things has nothing to do with SEO (Or very little) so don't pay for a custom design based on the promise that it will "rank better"

That being said, a nice design does have a lot of benefits, increased conversion, branding etc - if you like his / her designs and think they are reasonably priced it is still worth looking at, just make sure it is for the right reasons.

Morristown · 04-06-2007, 04:40 PM

The design and integration will be a few hundred dollars. Meaning less than $300 but an amount that is not specified yet. I cannot see how it would cost all that much, I already provided most of the HTML it just has to be tweeked to be mine not someone elses. So basically the person is not starting from scratch at all, and the custom page I want is not complex at all, but it looks good and gives the visitor exactly what they want with no confusion.

David Rocci · 04-06-2007, 04:54 PM

Excuse the newbie question - what is a P2A site?

Thanks,

webmaster · 04-06-2007, 05:20 PM

They are a templated website, and listings system. agent.point2.com

Eric Blackwell · 04-06-2007, 06:28 PM

Just my opinion, Summit, but I'd probably give them a 4 on Morgan's S to REW scale (grin). I would also agree that link quality and diversity is a big part of things, that having been said...all else being equal, you'd likely want something more towards the REW end of that scale (grin).
I'd agree that you can develop custom sites any way that you want, but if you've worked with a quality templated site you can do pretty close to everything as well.

Best;

Eric

kid disco · 04-06-2007, 08:42 PM

With all that has been said... and SEO aside... you should also think about what you are going to lose out on in terms of functionality with a templated site like P2A. Once you start getting into personalizing/customizing a template-based site, you'll find that you won't be able to integrate/implement some features that you want to have and other features that will be beneficial for your visitors.

It is a lot easier to start out with a flexible site that will allow you to make the changes you want, than to start out with a template-based site that cramps the development of your website and then go through the process of changing the platform/doing a redesign and waiting out the SEO implications.

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