REW helped me build www.RegentPG.com starting in August 2007. It has been about 10 months and although I'm still making improvements, the site is live and kicking. My goal with the site is to bring in as much traffic as possible and then to capture business by presenting a quality image, providing helpful information, and by offering a user friendly property search function. Please let me know what suggestions and comments that you have to help me make the site more user friendly, more SEO friendly, and generally more helpful to the public. Thank you in advance for your candid feedback and tips.

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Brian Talley
Real Estate Broker
Regent Property Group
Providing Austin Real Estate services by an experienced Austin Realtor providing free access to
Austin Real Estate Listings.

I am really not a fan of the homepage in it's current state, I know you are in the midst of making modifications to try to improve the SEO of your design, but it really seems that it is taking steps backwards from an aestethic perspective (Looked a lot nicer when we finished the build portion) - screenshot here http://www.realestatewebmasters.com/...entpg-main.jpg

I think the danger here is that piece by piece you are adding things based on things you are attempting, or advice you may be getting from others, but really I think it is heading in the wrong direction.

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@Brian ~ I am going to have to agree with Morgan that it looked better before. I would get rid of the html text that you have above the flash slide show. In fact, I would go back to the original design and then add your SEO driven content below the main design.

Just my 2 cents. I do like the color scheme and theme.

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Ryan A. Martin - Windermere Real Estate / Whatcom Inc.

Your Bellingham real estate professional specializing in the listing and sales of Bellingham condos. Also check out my Anacortes real estate website for information about Fidalgo Island and Anacortes, WA

That is an interesting perspective and much appreciated. Yes, I've wrestled over whether to make the changes to my home page that I've made more than anything else on my site. I suppose the bottom line is the need to improve rank and the challenge is balancing the aethetics. If I'm doing something different that has or will make no difference with SEO, please let me know and I'll consider changing it.

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Brian Talley
Real Estate Broker
Regent Property Group
Providing Austin Real Estate services by an experienced Austin Realtor providing free access to
Austin Real Estate Listings.

Just an objective point of view here...but I have to agree with Morgan on this one. I've always admired the original site design and considered it one of REWs best designs. I can appreciate the SEO/aesthetic balance you're talking about...but, in the end, feel that site design and aesthetics are just as important as SEO. A clean, easy to navigate site creates conversion. And, at the end of the day, your better to focus on driving less traffic with higher conversion rates than you are trying to drive more traffic with lower conversion rates.

Great design creates a "sticky" experience for folks that find you. And a "sticky" website creates more closed transactions. Great SEO allows folks to find you in the first place. They go hand in hand. I think RyanRE is right on. Build your SEO into the design that works best.

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Joshua Keen
The Keen Team @ RealSource Brokers
Intown Atlanta Real Estate
Intown Atlanta Real Estate Blog
Atlanta MLS

Got it. So any specific suggestions to improve upon things from here?

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Brian Talley
Real Estate Broker
Regent Property Group
Providing Austin Real Estate services by an experienced Austin Realtor providing free access to
Austin Real Estate Listings.

Just want to make an additional note - the design you see in the screen is a lot of our work, however the original concept Brian came to us with (Had a local designer come up with the mockup) so although we did a lot to clean it up and improve it, we are not responsible for the initial ideas - we deserve credit, just not all of it

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I like it still...even if it's not an REW original

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Joshua Keen
The Keen Team @ RealSource Brokers
Intown Atlanta Real Estate
Intown Atlanta Real Estate Blog
Atlanta MLS

Honestly I think the biggest disconnect is the light text on the black background, the rest of the site is so clean and consistent - http://www.regentpg.com/our-ceo.php for example - the homepage I think looks like it was done by a different designer, or with outside influence and it shows. I really liked the featured listings, and think they made the homepage.

That property search button - not a huge fan, seems to stick out (Which I suppose can be a good thing) - but I might try some revisions on that.

The neighborhoods and recent posts I would have in the bottom of the body area, not in the top - the featured services, I get trying to push them, but I don't think that is as tight as it could be -

Still I think think biggest thing for consistency for me would be using the website styles (From internal pages, H1's white background, etc) on the homepage as well.

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I would use a lighter background for your home page like webmaster suggested.

as far as SEO goes, you've got a pretty good structure already!

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Allow potential buyers receive more info (video & pictures) through text messaging: Real Estate Text Messaging