New Website, and a whole new approach to the Internet.

When I built my first website I had no idea what the heck I was doing, I went out and found an affordable real estate template website provider and signed up; the .com I wanted wasn't available to I just bought the .org. What the heck, I wanted the name and back then we didn't have .us, .xxx, .info, .mobi, .tv and all the rest.

Hey, maybe I should buy the .xxx just in case.. Anyway, I digress. So I found the Netreal.net folks and started working on building my site and the SEO work that would make it pop.

Netreal.net has some great features, they even offer a newsletter program and a great search tool. The biggest problem with netereal.net, like most template sites is the absolute lack of customer support! 

I tried about everything, they offer a trouble ticket feature where you can file a "ticket" about issues you have with their site. The only problem is they NEVER respond to the requests. God help you if you want to call them, they are in Romania or Bulgaria or some God forsaken hell hole! I actually sucked it up and paid for the international call once.... No Response!

I went so far as to find the CEO of Netreal on Facebook and Linkedin and send him messages begging for them to assist me with the numerous problems I had over the years. Netreal.net and Catalin Tenita NEVER responded or offered a solution. 

You can read my previous posts about how NETREAL.NET SUCKS . Is even more relevant no because Netreal offered NO social networking tools at all!

I was once a prolific blogger, and yes blogging is an integral part of any SEO plan. Blogging successfully requires a real commitment and I no longer have the time to do that.  In fact at one point I thought I had Lost My Blogging Mojo! But the truth is that while blogging can help your traffic and SEO score, it has taken a back seat to really good website creation.

While I have taken an initial hit by moving from my long-established site to a new one, I'm pretty sure I will regain presence quickly with good SEO work and more defined keywords. Several months have now passed since I made the switch, and although I miss some of the search capabilities of the old site I really love the customization and adaptability of my new site.

The biggest hit I took was one that could have been avoided if my new website provider Weebly had an option for a 301 redirect! While I was able to redirect the thousands of hits on my home page at the old .org address all of the hits to the other secondary pages like my property management page were now going to a "Page Not Found" link! With some effort I was able to finally get some the the search engines to start recognizing the new .us address.

Overall Weebly has a great product I'm sure if I were better at writing code I could create certain search features that I no longer have like number of bedrooms or even properties by price. But what I have been able to do is crate individual pages for each and every property which really works out well for marketing!

I had been using Weebly for years to build single property websites, but now with my home site being a weebly site also I can create a page that links directly to that listing site from the home site and still contains all the information required. Another SEO friendly thing about Weebly is that my domain names for a single page or listing can be key words like the http://www.turnkeyproperties.us/commercial-for-lease.html for commercial property or the actual address for others; ie: http://www.turnkeyproperties.us/10807-hillcrest-rd-kansas-city-mo-64134.html .

The best thing aside from the awesome pricing and flexibility is having absolute control of all of my HTML, Keywords, website design and the fact that unlike having a Netreal site I no longer have two mirrored sites competing for placement. Even if you buy your own domain like www.turnkeyproperties.us the Netreal site stays active, so you would have a duplicate site at turnkeyproperties.netreal.net and if there is one thing Google hates it's duplicate content! Whereas the Weebly site acts as a redirect to your actual domain. http://www.turnkeyproperties.weebly.com