LOL, Sorry Chuck. I just have to let the cat out of the bag 
your just too efficient for your own darn good!
Thanks a lot Batman! 
That’s okay ! I’ll just keep up with my juvenile “talking heads”… 
boys and girls, just do whatever you can. Search engine’s change all the time and you never know how they’re going to select you tomorrow. It’s highly dependent upon your competition. You may be good today and gone tomorrow.
I can only say that I followed Dominic’s instructions and recommendations the best I could with what I had. There is no clear-cut foolproof plan. You can spend a bunch of money and have those guys that call you at five o’clock after work everyday and pay to put you on page 1…
That will only last as long as it takes someone like Dominic to teach somebody how to be bumped out of that spot “for free” !
Rank pays bills, traffic is just traffic…
Janette,what report software are you using?
Just curious because I have not seen it before.
Just something i have learned:
I have found the Alex rating quite unreliable for us inspectors, I believe because it is a nation rating system. Just be concerned up local SEO rankings. I do not do that well in Alex but my site is up in the top in organic search for my area. So do not be concerned about your Alex rating.
I believe Jan uses the Matrix reporting system, if I’m remembering our training…
she and I went to school together several years ago in Denver.
I respect the pecking order of things. From top down, each relies (to a degree) on the item below it:
Profit
Gross sales
of inspections
of clients
of potential customers
traffic
page rank
Dominic and James, you are both incorrect about Alexa.com Alexa.com’s term “Traffic Rank” is a function of traffic, not rank. It has nothing to do with page rank. You are confusing the two (traffic and page rank), with help from Alexa.com who gave it a very confusing title: “Traffic Rank.”
Right on. Rank is bringing more inspections through search engine hits.
Traffic brings people from all across the county seeking information, not necessarily inspections. I don’t especially want a person from Schenectady, NY calling me at 6am in the morning to ask about asbestos pipes since they found an article on my website. Not only does it wake me up, it uses up my cell minutes.
Dom writes:
This statement should be more accurate if phrased: You must be ranked on the first page of Google, and really in the top 5 slots or you won’t get any traffic from people searching for home inspectors on page 2 of a search (because no one searches page 2).
Hi Nick,
Very true, but if you rank well in Google SERPS, good traffic is a given. I should have stated earlier that I was not referring to page rank like those silly Google tools that tells you your page rank is 2 or 3.
Good url’s help too!!
Forgot that part. :shock: Keyword rich domains rock! Just never assume it’s the best domain to use without some research first. In some areas, ‘home inspector’ makes a better domain than ‘home inspection’.
But, Linas, since you and Bob own just about every domain in the WHOIS registry for the entire Milky Way Galaxy, your set for life. 
:margarit:
Jannette, 0 to 4 is quadrupling. So is 10 to 40. What kind of numbers are you talking about?
I have to agree there as well… I have to agree, mostly because I don’t understand. JK… sort of.
After removing the Alexa toolbar 
from my own computer (read something that my alexa rank mattered to my pocketbook hehe…) my alexa “thingy” went waaaaay up for both my crummy sites. I think it’s because having that toolbar can manipulate your own rankings with the toolbars when viewing YOUR OWN SITES… which is pointless of course. The alexa rank has little to do with people calling me… I think
Is this good … or bad??? A case study (mine of course) below
I have had anywhere from 180 to 350 unique visitors a month (last 6 months via AWSTATS CPANEL)… My sites must be really bad, because not that many people call me… except a 2-3 a day The internet ones are not as accommodating as the callers who are referrals, but that’s a different story.
By the way… anyone feel like fixing crummy sites?
Off to the movies… the new one INCEPTION. Good I hope. Don’t forget to email your inspirational Ideas/Rates to fix my crummy sites. I did them myself.
Tim, don’t forget that AWSTATS will include search engine spiders, so make sure to filter those out.
Yes, Alexa rankings is like a Nielson’s Box. It counts people who have the Alexa Toolbar and a few other toolbars installed.
Actual Google Page Rank is completely worthless (not sure if that’s what you’re referring to as people use the term rank and page rank interchangeably). It’s just a fun, somewhat useful, internal ranking and is updated every 6 months or so by Google. Many people want Google to remove it. I’ve seen a PR1 site beat out a PR5 for different phrases. What matters is your actual rank on page 1 (two different things).
Back to my pecking order (where each item is improved by converting the item below it):
Profit
Gross sales
of inspections
of clients
of potential customers
traffic
page rank
There is no doubt that page rank can only improve traffic. But for home inspectors in particular, the next conversion up the pecking order is more important. That being the conversion of traffic into potential customers (calls).
There are 3 main reasons a home inspection site could be suffering from a common problem. traffic but no calls:
-
You are getting the wrong type of traffic (not visitors looking for an inspector). www.nachi.org/articles helps with this by drawing traffic from the right ballparks. In other words, the articles are written so that they don’t attract people looking for pharmaceutical products or pet food.
-
You are getting the right type of traffic (visitors looking for an inspector), but something on your website prevents them from calling you. A simplistic example of this would be that the visitors can’t find your phone number.
-
You are getting the right type of traffic (visitors looking for an inspector), but something on your website dissuades them from calling you. This problem is more common than you think and you can’t solve it yourself anymore than you can smell your own bad breath. Get someone else to look at your website and frankly explain to you what they see and why they don’t think your site is the best inspection business website in the world (which should be the goal for your website).
The three problems can generally be overridden (and thus solved) with a shortcut. That shortcut being to change your website from being simply another option for visitors to find an inspector into a website that COMPELS the visitors to call you. The easiest way to do this is to offer something that would only be of interest (screens in) to visitors about to hire a home inspector (so that it has no value to freebie hogs), doesn’t cost you much, and requires them to call you to receive. A downloadable pdf of local school stats with a more urgent title, a report you author that reveals 12 things every home buyer should know about your town (name the actual town in the title of the report), the NOW book, or some of the articles themselves as pdf downloads. “Are you buying a home in town ? Call me on my cell phone (123) 456-7890 and I’ll get you this…” “Call me 7 days a week but not after 9 P.M please.” These lines assures the visitor that they are going to talk to you (the local inspector) personally and that they are welcome to call you at 7:38 P.M.
I like the look of the site and the colors. I would like to see some more about you and what makes you special. I rarely see inspectors sites with anything more than a flyer and no call to action. They are also rarely clean and organized like yours.
Good luck
Tim
Mold inspection San Diego, Home Inspection Rancho Cucamonga, Home Inspections San Diego
traffic does not pay bill either… Clients booked pays bills
It seems with rank and google power to the side it’s a great source of information to have available to your potential clients.
Is there an easy way to add all the article links to your website without having to go in and individually insert each one?