For those of you not from Austin, austinhomesearch.com is the local board’s IDX site. They heavily promote it – PPC, bus ads, billboards, SEO, etc… Check out the traffic comparison between them and my little ol’ site:
The traffic bursts on my site were from a few posts I had that went viral. My average traffic is WAY higher, but our median traffic is about the same.
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Congratulations!
That is freaking awesome. It would be interesting to see how much money Austin home search has spent promoting there site over the last year.
Yeah, I’d be curious to know, as well. I know they spend a grip on the billboards alone.
Eric,
Congratulations – your traffic and success doesn’t surprise me. Your site shows up well for a ton of Texas and Austin related keywords.
Eric,
This is great to see that the little guy with ” a lot of know how ” can make this happen.
What is the average traffic (unique visitors) per day? I can’t read the chart very well.
Alexa doesn’t show actual traffic #s. It’s not the most accurate metric in the world b/c it only counts people who have the alexa toolbar installed. It gives a % of total traffic. In this case, the median for both sites is around .0015% of total traffic. I’m really not comfortable posting my hard #s here, but they’re pretty decent!
Eric – fair enough. I will give a my site a try for some relative benchmarking using the tool.
Appreciate the explanation.
The spikes from the viral posts are also impressive. Congrats.
While the Alexa’s result aren’t the end all, the graph does show nice organic growth. Keep it up!
The search feature on austinhomesearch dot com stinks compared to some third party search providers. I’d like to see the bounce rate for the site.
It seems to me that the board should abandon its marketing efforts efforts and focus on something more beneficial to its members.
Congrats Eric… I am always happy to see someone taking on the big guy and winning.
I can never get my head around alexa, I know it’s webmaster focussed, but results like this always make me smile. Well done Eric, it’s great to see you taking on the big boys
That’s a very interesting comparison! I think blogs tend to get more loyal readers?
Is that still ture? I see Austin Home search goes first in Google.
Pamella –
I haven’t had any viral bursts lately, but our traffic is still about the same. Here’s a link.
Austinhomesearch.com ranks #1 in google for the keywords “austin home search,” but not much else. That keyword doesn’t perform very well, either. My sites all perform well for highly targeted keywords, as well as many longtails – that’s why I can compete with the big guys at a fraction of the budget. If you factored in all of my traffic from my other sites, it would be about 2.5X what’s shown on the alexa graph, so I’m actually killing austinhomesearch.com in traffic.
It’s interesting to see that following on from their spikes their traffic came back down to your level.
You’d have at least thought that their campaigns would have won them links, and so move up in the search engines and gained an increase in their baseline traffic.
Or alternatively, your link building is matching them without the need for the viral stuff.
That’s actual my blog with the traffic spikes due to viral content. The viral content built tons of links, but it typically takes ~3 months to see any search engine effects from viral linking.
Looks like its going well for you
I dont trust alexa that much to be honest..
Looks like you have done a great job. If you simply keep the post comming you will get traffic.
Yes I agree you did a good job. I am not reallys into Alexa and doubt the number most people have of their competition….
Did anyone else notice a couple of weeks ago, austinhomesearch.com started doing PPC ads for specific Austin neighborhood names like seven oaks, and covered bridge, and some others. I don’t have a problem with the board promoting it’s site but they should think about the return on investment since it’s our money. My opinion is that when someone types in a specific neighborhood name you better take them directly to a page about the neighborhood or show listings for that ‘hood like realty austin does so well. The Austinhomesearch.com ads would take the user direct to the AHS home page which i’m sure had about a 99% bounce rate within a few seconds. I’m only complaining becuase it’s our money that was spent on those ads.
Our local MLS is soon to launch their ‘consumer site’ which is supposed to be great for all of the agents (lol) who are competing with yet another site…..
I am with you. I would be upset if the regional MLS is using mls dues for PPC – especially with the waste of the ‘disconnect’ between neighborhood pages and the home page….
I will be on my toes here and hope we don’t see the same thing!
mitch – The best you can hope for is that your local MLS launches the new consumer site with it’s own search tool built in house and doesn’t buy a decent idx tool such as one from mlsfinder or REW. The search tool on AustinHomeSearch.com is so bad that most people venture off it in search of a better site with an easier to use, more effective tool to search listings.
Hey Eric,
You want to help me give HAR a run for their money. I have been trying for two months now to get a IDX feed from them so that I can put up a custom IDX but they keep ignoring my calls and give my broker the run around all the time.
I sure would like to put up numbers anywhere close to them but it is difficult doing so when they play the agents around here. Anyways great job and I wish you luck in the near future.
James
Hi Eric, great sight. That’s great on your traffic. I’m a new agent and am wanting to get my sight set up. I see that you used mlsfinder. Who designed and is hosting your sight if you don’t mind me asking? Again, great job on the sight traffic!