investor carrot websites
Wholesaler · Spokane, WA · Member since 2013 · 6 posts · 1 vote
investor carrot websites
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Trevor MauchPro Member
Investor · Roseburg, OR · Member since 2014 · 141 posts · 149 votesHey Steve! Hope all is well!
I thought I'd chime in here. I'm actually the founder of InvestorCarrot... but I found a few threads here on BP where some of our current Carrot members chat about their experience w/ us... and feel free to connect w/ them directly if you had other questions.
But here's a thread: http://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/80/topics/121972-oncarrotcom---has-anyone-used-for-their-site
That may help you along in your decision :-)
And not if you have, but we actually post our actual conversion and test data on our blog on a weekly basis... and I'd be glad to actually shoot a video for you to show you inside of our database and show you actual tests we're running on actual members websites so you can see realtime conversion numbers.
Not sure of any company in this market willing to do that :-)
But we're an open book. If it's a fit for ya, awesome! If not, no biggie at all.
PM me if I can help you in any way.
- Trevor
36 Replies
- Investor · Dallas, TX · Member since 2014 · 76 posts · 18 votes9y
hey Trevor, I appreciate you taking the time to share your perspective on here.
I do appreciate the apology you offered them and now. But that doesn't change the issues that happened or mean that I can't share my experience with others.
This "he said, she said" with godaddy is one of the issues. Your the first web vendor I've tried to work with that had these problems. At one point I had >50 small sites up (with my day job) and every other vendor could handle what your folks couldn't.
Im sure you have plenty of happy customers and some are affiliated and posted their stories on this forum. Others may have had a better experience and I'm glad they did. And I have a lot of respect for the PR side of our operation and am impeded you'd take the time to defend your company on the forum. But a suggestion - maybe investor carrot should take the time to learn where things went wrong and address those for future customers?
If you want to position the company as a plug and play for real estate investors, that definitely wasn't the experience I had.
- 9yTrevor MauchPro MemberInvestor · Roseburg, OR · Member since 2014 · 141 posts · 149 votes
Hey @Dan K. I totally get ya and really value your perspective a ton. Again any company that does anything worth while will hit things they need to improve... and it's all about how a company acts on those things.
As for the Godaddy issue again, there are probably 50+ people a week that use Godaddy with their new Carrot sites so it's the platform we use the most with our clients and hadn't seen that type of block on a domain on the Godaddy side before. So I'd love to investigate that further with you for sure and dive into your Godaddy account personally to see what the issue is so it'll help us deal with it with any future clients that we see the same thing. Lets connect offline.
On the cancellation side again every Carrot account can be cancelled with one click in the account dashboard... it automatically stops all billing when that happens so we do make it crazy easy. The issue that popped up was the first few times you tried it was on your cell phone... and that was something we honestly didn't have in place... the ability to cancel when someone was logged into the account on a cell phone. 99% of the use of the Carrot platform is usually on a desktop so it was an oversight on our end to double check that. But yep we've got you covered now and we appreciate the help and heads up pointing that out.
We'd be game to have you back sir :-)
I'll reach out directly to you and lets see if we can make this happen my man! We really want to see y'all succeed and hate anytime there's any issues that get in the way of that.
Trevor
- Investor · Katy, TX · Member since 2017 · 27 posts · 19 votes9y
"For me I've depended on the built in SEO that the service provides plus I've created some additional content for the site."
Those SEO features come from them rebranding a free WordPress plugin called Yoast SEO (AKA Wordpress SEO) and claiming it as their own. They're technically not breaking any rules since the Yoast SEO plugin is in the WP repository, which means they can edit it all they like providing they credit the original author in the site code, which they do. But, I find it a little shady that they boast "their" SEO features as a reason to pay for their platform when they simply rebranded a free plugin and slapped "Carrot SEO" at the top.
Those SEO features were not built by Investor Carrot, nor are they limited to being available by paying for their platform. You can use the SEO features they offer by using WordPress (free) coupled with the Yoast plugin > https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-seo/ (free). - 9yTrevor MauchPro MemberInvestor · Roseburg, OR · Member since 2014 · 141 posts · 149 votes
Hey @Rae Hoffman Thanks for posting this through! Really great to get your insights on here for sure.
As you mentioned, the Yoast plugin is in the WP repository and can be edited (which we've done and adjusted some of the functionality as well) and like you mentioned we've given the original author the credit they require in the site code... and in our trainings and anytime anyone asks we're never shy about letting people know it's Yoast as the actual SEO grader on the individual posts and pages.
But, that tool is only one small part of what we do on the SEO side of things in our platform and for our clients... which is why our clients are pulling more top rankings than any other platform. It's our full focus on helping our clients are all stages of doing SEO that have gotten those results over the years.
So yes, it's part of the functionality that helps our clients better optimize content even when they're not SEO experts... but I think everyone would agree that using Yoast alone won't get you good rankings. Here's a few other things we do to help our clients perform better in the search engines.
- Picking the right keywords: Every site starts w/ SEO settings and keywords that better give them a chance of getting in front of the right prospects in their local market. Then from there have training and support to help them hone in their keyword choice further if they want to ramp it up.
- Optimize the content: This is where the SEO Grader / Yoast comes in. To help make it easier for the non SEO expert to optimize content for a specific keyword. Works great for that. Also the social share settings, xml sitemap, and robots meta info is run through this. But the right settings of course need to be selected and tweaked (which we've done).
- Target and implement an SEO plan: Our training, weekly coaching calls, or 1 on 1 strategy calls then help you identify and refine your SEO strategy and action plan.
- Content Marketing: Our Content Pro system w/ localized pre-written articles help add fresh content optimized for long-tail keyword phrases local to their area can help w/ SEO (but in a competitive market if everyone uses the same ones and didn't adjust the content at all, the results will vary)
- Localized "Location Specific Landing Pages: One of the most effective things for SEO for investors is location specific pages for each market. We started doing this 5+ years ago and brought it over into Carrot in 2014 as a feature to make it easier for people to launch, create, and optimize location specific landing pages (the Yoast plugin then helps to optimize the content on that page).
- Coming Soon: Ranking tracking tool, competitive analysis, backlink checker, etc.
So yep, it's 100% correct that the SEO grader on individual piece of content is using the awesomeness of what the guys and gals at Yoast have built, but it's really the whole ecosystem around SEO that we've built that makes up the majority of our SEO resources for our clients.
I just wanted to make sure that people didn't read that above and think just putting Yoast on a site was going to get them ranked high in Google... because they see Carrot sites ranking well everywhere... the Yoast tool is a very small part of what caused that result.
- Investor · Katy, TX · Member since 2017 · 27 posts · 19 votes9y
"Picking the right keywords"
How are you helping people pick the right keywords? Are you just putting a geo-locale in front of the standard ones? There are a ton of articles online for free that teach keyword research, as well as multiple tools that help people get the job done. Some of those tools are paid, but several are free.
"But the right settings of course need to be selected and tweaked (which we've done).
Yoast has a whole (free) guide on how to set them best. I can see you're using an old version of the plugin. Yoast throws an update to their plugin every few weeks - sometimes more often. So, that leads me to ask how you're handling getting new features Yoast releases added into your version, as well as how are you implementing security patches to the plugin?
"but in a competitive market if everyone uses the same ones and didn't adjust the content at all, the results will vary"
Actually, if you're using the same content as 50 other people, it's not just that it won't be effective - you can actually be penalized by Google. Content with no value-add when compared to other sites and duplicate content are two specific items targeted in the Panda updates. So, the guy who uses it first, or with the strongest website links-wise will win that battle and likely do well with it, but any other people using that same content with no edits doesn't simply stand to not do as well - they're running the risk of a penalty.
Additionally, long-tail keywords have been losing effectiveness over the years. The Hummingbird algorithm was released to help determine long tail queries and user intent to help Google determine what the user is looking for and provide more results based on the short tail, with Google inferring the intent of the original long-tail query. Their obsession with AI is only going to further hone that. I'm not saying long-tail keywords are dead, but they're not as effective a strategy as they were say five years ago.
"because they see Carrot sites ranking well everywhere"
With all due respect, I see WordPress sites ranking well everywhere, it doesn't mean WordPress is the reason it ranks. I'm sure there are some IC sites ranking very well - but it's likely going to be the most effective for those first to use it in their area, and to those who get or build links - which is a ranking factor, and a large one, that has zero to do with whatever platform you choose to run your sites on - IC or otherwise.
Additionally, the less competitive the vertical, the lower the bar to achieving rankings - regardless of the platform.
I don't take sites ranking as proof they're successful by default. Just because a site ranks for something doesn't mean it brings qualified traffic or leads. I can - and do - rank #1 for "monkey balls in louisville kentucky" - it doesn't bring me any business. I created that page solely to prove the point that ranking for something means nothing if the term doesn't A) have traffic and B) convert.
Again - to be clear - I'm not saying there aren't multiple IC sites ranking or converting. I'm actually much more confident on the latter part - that your lead generation template designs are good ones conversion wise when the right traffic shows up. I'm just saying that unless you're in the top 10 for keywords that have people actually searching for them (which anyone can use semrush.com to check on a keyword by keyword basis), where the intent matches your desired conversion, it's a vanity metric.
I can't speak to your training stuff, as I haven't seen it. But there's only so much on-page SEO can help you - especially in competitive markets. Links are still one of the biggest determiners as to whether or not you'll rank. And as with content - getting the wrong kind of links can also get you penalized (AKA the Penguin updates) in today's Google. So, for it to be effective, it needs to teach both how to get links and how NOT to get links.
My two cents. - 9yTrevor MauchPro MemberInvestor · Roseburg, OR · Member since 2014 · 141 posts · 149 votes
Hey @Rae Hoffman I love a good healthy discussion :-)
One great thing is that there's no one solution that's the right fit for everyone.
For the people who have the time, patience, and desire to go through all of those free resources to find the right settings, read the right reports / tools to get the right keywords, wade through the right articles... sweet! We actually have all of that available for free on our blog as well. So we totally get the side of the coin that there are free ways to do those things mentioned above. It's similar to a book, or coach, or consultant... I can find almost anything I need online for free... but often times things packaged into a system or a process that make it easier for me as the consumer and help me streamline things is of extra value and worth investing in.
As far as the rankings, by "systems" I should have clarified but I was referring to website systems specific to real estate investing. Wordpress is the dominant force for sure. But the fundamental difference in a WP site vs. something like Carrot is that with WP you have to...
- Find or pay to have a theme built (hope it converts visitors into leads well... most don't)
- Get hosting (most use really low grade sub $10/mo shared hosting)
- Come up w/ the proper content strategy (most don't have the experience to structure the content correctly to perform well or be a benefit for SEO)
- Write that content
- Add a bunch of plugins (which often times increase chance of vulnerability by hackers or slow things down... but all require the site owner to maintain the plugins)
- Dial the site in on mobile (most WP themes don't perform well converting visitors to leads on mobile, at any given time we're running 10-20 split tests across dozens of sites improving performance on our platform)
- Run split tests to continually increase performance
- Setup your analytics correctly (we make it easy or use our built in analytics)
- Continue to update themes, plugins, WP (which isn't hard, it's very easy as you know... but many people don't want to do that)
- Keep up on the SEO trends / market trends (which we help our clients stay ahead of)
- etc. etc. etc.
100% anyone can use free or cheap tools to rank well in Google and in the case of a WP site... the simple fact of it being WP doesn't contribute to it ranking well at all. But what we try to do is help our clients not have to go through the steps above... streamline it for them... let them personalize and customize things within our framework that is proven to work... then train and help them as they implement their marketing.
Just a service focused on people who don't want to have to go it alone or wade through things themselves. For those who want to go the lowest price option and invest more time and want more control... Carrot or a platform like ours isn't the right fit.
With the results side of things... I'd be happy to open up our data set and show you the results of Carrot clients... both SEO wise and actual leads. Upward of 28k-40k leads a month come through Carrot... over 60% from SEO.
We're 100% on the same page that a "top ranking" is completely a vanity metric. Even SEO companies that say "we'll get you on page 1" aren't truly serving the client well because the client thinks "page 1" is awesome...when in reality over 50-60%+ of all traffic goes to the top 3 results... so really if a site isn't in the top 3 it's likely not pulling much unless it's a crazy highly searched term.
We're 1000000% on the same page here and our focus is and always has been on results... which only start w/ the ranking as you know. Then goes to converting the visitor into the lead (28k-40k/mo w/ us), then converting those leads into profitable deals.
So yep, we're speaking the same language :-)
Again, I always love good healthy convo and your points are 100% valid.
Just different solutions for different people and I'm happy anytime to dive in and show people our data and results if anyone is curious or wondering.
Thanks for spurring the convo Rae! Good stuff.
- Investor · Katy, TX · Member since 2017 · 27 posts · 19 votes9y
Thanks for the response. :)
"which often times increase chance of vulnerability by hackers or slow things down... but all require the site owner to maintain the plugins"So how do you keep the old version of Yoast you're using updated and secure as I asked above?
"the simple fact of it being WP doesn't contribute to it ranking well at all"
Well aware. My point was that IC may or may not be a significant ranking factor as well for all the reasons I noted above. Correlation /= causation.
As I said, I have no doubt your sites convert well though. But a quick search on envato market will give you a list of tons of plug and play lead gen optimization WP themes for a small one time fee.
I guess I just don't see WP as hard thing to learn as you imply, and again, if they're using your content without editing it, it isn't just that "results may vary" - it puts them at a risk for a Google penalty. IC is very easy from what I can tell, so you get points there. But I don't see a true value - from purely an SEO standpoint - in the out of the box content you provide. I do see a risk though.
The real estate sector is very unsophisticated as far as SEO strategy and implementation overall, so it's bar for ranking is lower than most other industries I've worked within - and I've been in the industry for almost two decades (which I'll give you might warp how easily I view it to do all this on your own). Again, the correlation / causation thing. Not trying to be an ***, but if you have a very weak level of competition to rank, and a large percentage of the most active investors are using your sites, it's easy to look a bit more effective / the causation than you may truly be.
- Investor · Katy, TX · Member since 2013 · 93 posts · 25 votes9y
Buying into these solutions are like getting your car fixed at the mechanic. You don't really know what you get and have to rely on what they say. Because you don't understand this world you don't know what to look for.
Last time I checked, Google didn't like duplicate content. Websites built by the companies you guys mention all have the same (or almost identical) content, which Google doesn't like (SEO talk). It'll affect you negatively on the search results. Back in the day it was 60% or 70% of your content that had to be unique, and I know things chance all the time, but one thing is for sure, Google is only getting better at what they do. They want to show good quality content when you use their search engine. If you have almost identical content to 6,230 other websites (see attached picture) I doubt Google would see that as a plus.
The only way to make sure this won't affect you negatively is to prevent Google from being able to read the generic content that is on all websites that they provide, and only letting Google's bots see the unique content you have on your website, which is probably close to non (expect contact page), because that's why you choose their solution.
If SEO is not your main channel of traffic (which it probably shouldn't for most that has no clue about SEO) then I'd say their solutions are probably a great way to get an online and trustworthy identity.
I'm interested to see actual examples of how good people rank on Google.
Here's just an example of websites all using the same service.
- Investor · Middle River, MD · Member since 2017 · 191 posts · 127 votes8y
Originally posted by @Luan Becerra:
Hi @Trevor Mauch:
I actually use your website for my business and it has been working well for me so far. I love the template you have set up, very informative support and tutorials and easy to customize. I have the Pro package and am really satisfied.
Sell My House Kauai is my main motivated seller generating website, and I love it.
Although, now that I am getting my Hawaiian real estate license working with KW Kauai, I will need a whole remodel of my current website to format the code of ethics and way of working agency/brokerage style to help buyers and sellers. My question is does your company do this? By "this" I mean, actually design agent websites, not just investors. Let me know!
Thank you very much,Aloha
What did you end up doing? Your domain won't come up now. I am an agent and also an investor. I don't see why you can't have one website as an investor and another one as an agent. That's my plan anyway. As long as you disclose both when you meet with someone it should be fine. Curious what you are up to now since getting your license.
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