Hey All,

I have had this homepage for awile. Currently I am working on a new website since I am recently licensed in NC. In the meantime I was hoping for a little feedback on my existing site. Since I have joined the forum I realize it needs a lot of work. I was hoping on a little feedback on what to change on the homepage.


Any suggestions, comments or reviews are greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Kevin

TheRealOuterBanks.com

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Kevin O'Brien
Outer Banks Property Management
Outer Banks Vacation Information
"It's always a great day in paradise"

Kevin,

Took a while to load for me. Also, the site seems to have too many small pictures, no real text content. I would take the google ads out, weather reports, and make a better site nav.

When REW came out with there no-set up fee template, I went with it because it took all the hard work of trying to design a nice looking page out of my hands.

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jason + associates
Keller Williams Realty Peachtree Battle
2345 Peachtree Road.
Atlanta, GA 30309
iPhone 404.895.9618

I live and breathe Atlanta Real Estate with a specilization in Buckhead Real Estate
and Atlanta Condos. Your referrals will be treated with the utmost care and consideration and are always greatly appreciated.

Jason, I think this members site is actually ad revenue driven, thus it would not make sense to remove that which generates his / her income.

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Webmasters who spend their energies upholding the spirit of the basic principles [Of Google] will provide a much better user experience and subsequently enjoy better ranking than those who spend their time looking for loopholes they can exploit. Google.com

Thanks Jason,


I was wondering about the page loading. It seems to have slowed down in last week or so. Not sure what I changed that has had that affect.

I had the same thought about swapping out alot of the pictures for text. I think the lack of text may be a negative for the SEO of the page.

I think I am going to remove the weather module also and change that to a static page. I am currently working on my Real Estate site. Hoping not to make the same mistakes again.



Web,

You are correct. This site is driven by Ad revenue. I was unlicensed when I became interested in creating a site in September so I had to go with a general information site. I am hoping to avoid many of my mistakes as I am working on my new RE based site.

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Kevin O'Brien
Outer Banks Property Management
Outer Banks Vacation Information
"It's always a great day in paradise"

Are you a licensed Realtor now?

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Webmasters who spend their energies upholding the spirit of the basic principles [Of Google] will provide a much better user experience and subsequently enjoy better ranking than those who spend their time looking for loopholes they can exploit. Google.com

Yes, I am. I am licensed in North Carolina now. I will be mainly concentrating in Vacation Home property management instead of RE sales. I think that may be why I am having a little bit of a difficult time differentiating my new site from RE sales sites.

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Kevin O'Brien
Outer Banks Property Management
Outer Banks Vacation Information
"It's always a great day in paradise"

I'd link the photos on the left side to the same page you have a text link for in the text by the photos.. Many people want to click on a photo. I'd also align the text for those photos at the top of the pic, not the bottom. As it's aligned now, it kinda funks up where some of the text line breaks are. (the linked text "dogs" and "trails" for example are on a second line.

I'd also lose the Digg submit button. It's not really the kind of page people typically Digg.

I like the header graphic and menu structure, though the login function in the header confuses me as there isn't any indication on the home page about what or why I'd want to log in.

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Jay Thompson
web: ThompsonsRealty.com
blog: PhoenixRealEstateGuy.com

Even though the site may be ad driven, many of the ads seem to conflict with the purpose of the site in getting local property managers to list their rentals on your web site. Instead, they direct visitors to local competitor's sites. If you can better focus the AdSense ads to exclude ads for websites in your same market area that also offer vacation rentals, that would help. I know AdSense will allow that kind of site-exclusion targeting. The AdSense ads on your site should maybe be targeting other vacation destinations, like Florida, Hawaii, and other beach communities. And you could also rotate the ads to target mountain / ski resorts in the winter.

Basic layout needs to be tuned up. Putting the photos and text in a 2-column table would help get them lined up properly. Links in the photos, for sure, as Jay suggested.

If I was considering advertising my business on a page on the site, I wouldn't like Google ads at the top of the page. The same for some of the local attractions pages. On your inner pages, placing the ads on the right side might be more attractive.

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Ron Goodman, GRI, REALTOR®
Prudential Colorado Real Estate
Denver Colorado Real Estate and Homes for Sale,
AdWords PPC Consulting and Support for REALTORS®

Phoenix,


Thanks. I know I needed to change some things with that part of the page. I just was stuck on where to make some changes. That makes alot of sense. I guess I look at the page so often on my browser I tend to forget how many different people use different browsers. I definitely wanted to clean it up. I also missed giving people a reason on why to become a member. Not sure if I can remove the digg button. I will have to look into it with Joomla.


Ronnie,

That makes a lot of sense. I never thought about targeting those Ad's. That really is true. Why list your home on my site if for the price of one PPC they receive the person as a visitor anyway.

Yes, the layout is pretty rough right now. After looking at it for a couple months I realized how bad it was. With the Ad's I will have to look at making some changes, in the page setup. I am hoping to eventually replace all Google Ad's with ones I generate. Thought it may be worthwhile to have the Google Ad's in the meantime. It may be like you said, keeping local business's from advertising since Google Ad's are already there.


I appreciate all the feedback guys. It really helps.

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Kevin O'Brien
Outer Banks Property Management
Outer Banks Vacation Information
"It's always a great day in paradise"

The worst thing you can do is drive people on your site to your competitors, especially local ones. Fix that and you'll be set if you take the advice from everyone else here.

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