Z57 sites

[Real Estate Forum]

How would you rank something like this http://www.nellyshomeguide.com/ ?

[Phoenix Realtor]

What do you mean? Elaborate Mike, maybe then someone will jump in.

[Real Estate Forum]

Someone asked me for advice and I have never seen such crap before lol

[Real Estate Forum]

Mainly I am wondering if it is even worth putting effort into it. Of course getting backlinks and the usual stuff can help. Sorry about being so vague, but I cannot see a site like that even getting a good conversion rate at all.

[HHI Golf Guy]

I think that most of us agree that using frames is a very old school design technique, but these frames are hideous. With such a large header, there is barely anything visible on the screen.

SEO wise - most SE's will consider this a spam site. Too much bold text, and take a look at the descriptions on the ALT tags for the images at the bottom of the screen. I never realized that the descriptive text for RealEstate4 was Agoura Hills homes for sale :)

IMHO, purchasing a site like this only makes money for Z57. Even as a passive marketing (non-SERP) web site, I would say that the chances of making a sale because of this site are somewhere between slim and none.

The sad part is that 95% of all real estate web sites out there are just like this. It makes it harder to convince agents that real estate web marketing (http://www.thekosloffgroup.com/real-estate-internet-marketing.htm) really does work.

[Phoenix Realtor]

I have to say that my framed site is working very well for me. But, that site stinks... although mine out of the box probably didn't look much better. So, with a few years of working everyday and night on it, it could pontentially produce a lead. :D

[STVP]

Matt what you have done with your template is remarkable. however not many realtors have the time and dedication and knowledge to follow your tracks. You can rank a template with enough links and content, but if your starting from scratch would't you agree that having a custom design that spyders better is a smarter move. Why make yourself go through pain. Can some people give me a second opinion on this or am I crazy.. ;)

[Las Vegas Homes]

I feel that custom sites also are an extension of your personality. I would have to say however that Advanced Access has a lot of content that comes with their packages..lol I have even considered getting one just as a tool to use for my custom sites.

[Real Estate Forum]

I feel that custom sites also are an extension of your personality. .
I agree. I have told myself to be neutral when I have first started this forum. but looking at the z57 site, I can't be. I don't care how cheap their sites are, I would not even pay $2 for one of them - if I ask people to check out my site, or send visitors to my url, I would NEVER want them to see something like that. Let alone the amount of effort it would take to get that disaster ranked :rolleyes:

[Las Vegas Homes]

I do agree with you. The problem as I see it, is these companies are preying on less savvy real estate agents and pushing their product to those that dont know any better. If I had to guess I would say less than 1% of the real estate agents on the internet or that have websites really know what they are doing and what is truly needed to be successful on the internet.

[gemini]

Z75 sites are crap, sorry for my french, but the are - don't get offended those who own them.

I had my own experience with z57 and even made one site rank in top 5 for their main keyphrases in all major SEs incluing Google, Y! and MSN. Now I don't see on the top, but I see it gets about 10K uniques a month and generated 122 leads last month... of cours a lot of them are duplicates, but whatever - I don't work with it for more than a year now.. the owner desided to put things on hold when we got pretty high.. some people are just cheap.

Also, I remember time when all z57 sites were ranking on the search for homes or something like that and their homesearch form was all over the Yahoo. It was really looking stupid and aggravating when you see 8 results out of 10 z57 sites and the same foms - I think they deal with the duplicate content issue since I don't see them anywhere.

Also, I have to admit that we had to sign a separate contract with z57 to get an FTP access so I could re-do most of the pages and make them spider friendly. The biggest pain was to upload my own source pages every time when someone goes into the backend, because freaking thing would update all the pages from their database and screw things back to what they were.. so I was getting quite a bit calls from the owner to upload the pages :D

The worst part about it that they almost hasn't change from 2 years ago - everything as crappy at it was... what a pity. I still think that AA is one of the best choices for a real estate agent today - affordable, comes with content, very flexible, comes with greatest marketing tools ever and now they have pretty cool IDX/VOW system built in too. The best part about them - they value client a lot, I haven't seen such dedicated owners, management and staff to their clients. For the past 3 years I've been with them, they almost implemented every thing that has been asked, we went through so many troubles with page indexing and pargerank and AA has spent time and money to find and fix the problem which took them qite a bit of time. AA doesn't leave their customer to hang in the air with their site - they send you marketing tips every week, articles from top internet marketing people on the net etc. AA has extensive newsletters and mailing program built in, so many features I haven't seen in any CMS. Of course there are some difficulties and everything depends on your computer/learnings skills level - it pretty much like that with everything, but being able to built a site from scratch and knowing what it takes to get it out there, if I were an agent I wouldn't think too long about buying from AA. They ROCK!

I also had a chance looking into P2PAgents - looks like they are pretty good too, but very limited on customization. Don't really have experience working with them, but seams like their team working really hard and getting those free sites pretty high in the rankigs.

[Rick&Trina]

After reading several posts on this forum i have realized that i have been duped by my webmaster and thought i was getting a deal. (Stupid) i now realize i just threw away good money. Is it wise to try and assess some damage control and salvage some thing from this site? Can i make it any better for the time being? Helpfull feedback would be appreciated. :confused:

[Phoenix Realtor]

Rick and Trina,

I just read and commented on your other thread...

Ditch the Z57 and come on board with AA (see other thread where I gave you my contact there).

My www.PhoenixHomes.com site and the one my friend Max (Gemini) webmasters www.C21MyrtleBeach.com are both great examples of how far you can take an AA site.

[Phoenix Realtor]

I almost forgot to tell you to look at the cool CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) Max has incorporated into his site www.C21MyrtleBeach.com. Note how the links look when you mouse over, and how the shell seems to drop right out of the picture and into the web page. Preetty cool stuff! Of course, I don't even know CSS well enough to pull something like that off. But, at least AA sites give you the ability to do it if you want to learn it or hire someone to do a custom design for your home page.

Cool huh? Max rules!!!

[STVP]

So this is how you get a homepage link from AA..... :D LOL

STVP

[Phoenix Realtor]

It was actually given to myself and others who won a contest AA held. Brat! :D

Don't you remember me giving the link here so everyone could vote for me. :rolleyes:

[STVP]

yeah I remember bro, we gave you prop's :D

All i'm saying is, I dont think Rick want's to rewrite 600 pages of content, and I dont think he can go back in time and register a URL in 98.
So show some love :( and dont send a bro to visit the other lost soul's. :D

I am playing with ya bro, somebody's gotta give ya some flack. ;)

STVP

[Phoenix Realtor]

Rick and Trina should look into SiteTutor's custom designs. Just look at how well the new Cedar City site is doing!

[frobn]

yeah I remember bro, we gave you prop's :D

All i'm saying is, I dont think Rick want's to rewrite 600 pages of content, and I dont think he can go back in time and register a URL in 98.
So show some love :( and dont send a bro to visit the other lost soul's. :D

I am playing with ya bro, somebody's gotta give ya some flack. ;)

STVPI would agree whole heartedly if the 600 pages of content and the aged url were doing any good. But a PR2? Consider that Google refers to PR as Page Importance and consider the time and effort Google put into PR upgrades every 2-3 months. That said it is entirely possible and not at all difficult to obtain a PR4 with a new site with as little as one content page and 2 external links. For those who believe that PR has been deprecated and no longer has value I want to ask if you if you hosestly prefer starting a web site with a PR2 or PR4?

[Mark Richardson]

Hi Everyone,

I hope it is not in inappropriate for me to post here. I stumbled upon this post accidental and wanted to add to it. We build custom sites for Real Estate agents, and I have notice the amount of Z57 agents switching over to our service has tripled in the last 2 months. Yes they are ugly templates, and hard to market, but why such a dramatic change? Is there something going on at Z57 I don't know about? VERY curious....... Thanks for any input. Mark www.bettersitesolutions.com

[Patrick Mc]

Hello! I am new to this forum and have already learned a lot. I had a Z57 website for a year, it was ugly, and I paid too much for the set up.