When I was thinking of what would be helpful to readers of geek estate I came across Sam’s article about ReelGeeks and I thought why not tell everyone my recent experience with Real Estate Webmasters (REW).  I will preface this with I finally brought my site live last week and I have no vested interest in the company, nor will I receive anything for this, I’m simply sharing my experience.

A little background to start.  I have had my site up for a few years now and have been actively working to get my site to rank in the uber competitive Newport Beach, Ca market.  During this time  I was working with another real estate website/CRM company (I didn’t want to throw them under the bus) who I had a very bad experience with.  They had a great CRM and a decent front-end framework but it was expensive ($360/month) and after two years of really rough customer service, promises unkept and really expensive programming work I decided to bite the bullet and make a switch.

While trying to decide who to go with I was blown away by all the different options out there for brokers and agents.  All of them claim to be great sites for SEO (but we all know 80% of SEO is content and links) but either way the site has to be fast and convert.  I checked out Tribus using IDX broker and was totally impressed by their CRM and their ability to go onto a wordpress site.  It really seemed like a great option but it was a little pricey for me and a few agents.  Eventually I came to REW (the sites that were consistently beating me were using them) and after a decent amount of time thinking about it, I gave them my card and got started.

The first thing I noticed was they really do care about customer service.  Maybe its because they have a large operation and are able to offer support online or over the phone 7 days a week.  Maybe they just have a good product that their employees are fired up about, who knows.  Either way I was able to get all my questions answered quickly and people emailed to make sure everything was going good along the way.  Bringing over 150 blog posts and another 100 pages of content (most with individual IDX results) is no small order.  The CMS is easy enough to use, and like any product takes little getting used to but there are great online resources and again I can call 7 days a week with questions.

As I moved closer to my launch my sales rep moved onto another company and my new rep informed me that some of the things that my rep promised me she was not able to do.  But I again I felt good about my choice in REW as they made every effort and ultimately were successful in making things right.  Lets face it as I consumer I don’t need something for nothing, but I do want to feel like I matter and that in the end I have a technology partner rather then just some company that cashes my checks.

After launch the first thing I noticed in WMT was that my page load time dropped by almost 90% from my old site (great for SEO). I have included a snapshot of my WMT stats and its pretty obvious where the switch was.

In addition the site appears to be converting well.  I fired a little PPC traffic and I do have a small sample size (250 visitors) but my conversion appears to be double what it was on my prior site!

At the end of the day I can say this.  There are tons of options out there as a broker or agent for your website and CRM.  If you are really someone focused on SEO, REW has been as advertised and I couldn’t be happier.  If you would like to ask me any questions about my current or past experiences feel free.