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[OregonLO]

I thought I'd post in this thread..

I guess there are pros and cons to each way about it. The pros really benefit in a custom sites.

Your site is unique and will get a better organic ranking in the search engines, that along with custom content you will really help your site. looks more proffessional and people will like it better. It'll generate more traffic. More traffic = more leads and more leads = more business...that's always a good thing.

Cons: It costs more, takes you a little bit to get things going before you'll see some of the long term benefits. You might have to pay someone to write content...

Pros for a template: Fast, easy to maintain, doesn't cost nearly as much, simple if you just want it to refer clients to so they can do an online application or would like some information.

Cons: It won't sit high in the rankings, most likely it has been sold over and over again, in my opinion its wasting money, it won't generate you NEARLY as much business...

anyone care to elaborate on this with me?

[mypeople]

i generally agree with your comments. personally, i would always go with a custom site. even custom sites these days are not that unique in most cases. templates are boring and look like scams sometimes.

better to pay a little more and have a classy site that suits your services/business. :)

[mypeople]

how many of you who have web sites here used a template? how many had custom sites built?

also, if you used a template are you happy with the business results?

thanks in advance for any replies. :)

[berniecmps]

I am not a big fan of template websites.(even though I currently have one through Al-a-mode, only because at the time I did not know better, and paid for 2 years up front..:eek:)

I know many experts will say that template websites can rank just as well as custom websites, but in many of the markets that I keep track of, custom sites have the top 10 rankings.

For instance in the Las Vegas Market, the top real estate agent websites are custom:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&l...as+real+estate (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&rls=GGLJ%2CGGLJ%3A2006-41%2CGGLJ%3Aen&q=las+vegas+real+estate)

I highly recommend spending a little more money and creating a custom website. Most compaines that offer template websites use duplicate content on all the template sites. Duplicate content is not good.

[LOTrainer]

I am not a big fan of template websites.(even though I currently have one through Al-a-mode, only because at the time I did not know better, and paid for 2 years up front..:eek:)

I know many experts will say that template websites can rank just as well as custom websites, but in many of the markets that I keep track of, custom sites have the top 10 rankings.

For instance in the Las Vegas Market, the top real estate agent websites are custom:

I highly recommend spending a little more money and creating a custom website. Most compaines that offer template websites use duplicate content on all the template sites. Duplicate content is not good.

I firmly agree with this, Bernie! I have a template website for my clients right now, and it acts as more of a brochure site than anything else. So, that is my next goal in my Loan Officer world - create a kick-butt website for my clients.

[berniecmps]

LOTRAINER,

I can relate to what you are saying hopefully we can find a good company that knows what they are doing, and be able to help in SEO as well....

[LOTrainer]

LOTRAINER,

I can relate to what you are saying hopefully we can find a good company that knows what they are doing, and be able to help in SEO as well....

I agree with that, and I can only hope that someone is willing to step up out there and really help out a relative "newbie" when it comes to SEO "stuff".

[MorSystems]

Your content, meta tags, and cross linking with other sites are what is important for your search engine ranking. Having a template site vs a custom site has nothing to do with how well you will rank.

Custom sites will most likely cost you thousands of dollars to have the site created and then after that you will still be paying a monthly hosting fee. With template sites, you have the ability to add your own custom text, logos, meta tags for the search engines to your website so that you do not have to pay your web designer by the hour to do these things.

Our template sites also come with a SEO admin area which allows you to enter your own words into your websites meta tags. You can do this one time and apply to all of your pages or you can go all the way down to a page by page basis. We are also happy to help our clients when they have questions on what to do in this area of their website.

My guess is that most brokers/agents getting these template sites are not spending the time to set up their meta tags (if this is available in the template site they have purchased). If you have a template site, you should check to see if you have the ability to enter meta tag information and do so. And also make sure that you are using words in your content that you would like to be searched under.

Hope that helps.

MorSystems