Template Sites Suck
I was stumbling through the Internet today and wound up on a post written by a vendor that supplies custom (well, semi-custom really) web sites to real estate agents. No, I’m not going to link to it because it’s not really germane to the discussion. And it’s strikingly similar to about half a jillion posts and forum entries out there.
The gist of the post I read today and the plethora of others on the topic is that template based sites suck. “They” claim that template sites are bad for SEO, are bad for visitors, are bad for agents. Bad bad bad template sites!
I Dunno…
But are template sites so bad? Personally, I don’t think so, if you work with them. Back in 2006 I wrote a lengthy tome on the good, the bad, and the ugly of template based real estate sites. I just re-read it and it’s not a bad post (if I do say so myself).
I’ve got a “traditional” static real estate web site. It’s loaded with information on communities, schools, the real estate process. It’s got a great IDX search solution — by far and away it’s most popular feature.
And it’s a template site.
No, it is not “Web 2.0”, at all. It’s not all flashy. But you know what? It attracts a lot of visitors, and creates a lot of phone calls. That lousy little template site has allowed me to build up a database of over 4,700 potential clients over its three year lifetime.
I don’t think that sucks.
Reality Check
Here’s the bottom line…. I don’t care if you have a $10/month template based site, or a $40,000 custom web site (and trust me, you can spend $40K—and more—if you want to). If you don’t work the site, it won’t work for you.
Want good organic search placement? Then you need to have fresh content. A site that sits for months on end with nothing done to it will drop in search placement over time, and I don’t care how Web 2.0 it is. This is one of the reasons that blogs “SEO well” — they are constantly updated with new, and hopefully good, content. A blog with a well-worn keyboard behind it will almost SEO itself.
And let’s be real, even if you do get great search results and tons of prospects, if you don’t convert those prospects, then what good is any of it? (more on this another day)
There’s nothing wrong with a fully loaded custom site. They can work just fine, if you work them.
Ditto for a template based site.
It’s not the site so much as what you do with it.
