All Forum Posts by: Trevor Mauch

I LOVE this thread! :-)

@Noah Brinker great question man. 

Jerrylls advice was solid and at the end of the day, there's 3 things you need to look at when it comes to performance on your website. 

1) Tech stack: Is it setup to load fast, clean code, ssl, etc. etc. We've invested hundreds of thousands of dollars into building the best tech stack in out there. Here's a solid article on a study that was put out on website speed of the website builders out there 

https://freshchalk.com/blog/150k-small-business-website-teardown-part-two

It dives into the different website builders (wix, squarespace, wordpress, etc.) and the page speed and time to first bite. Carrot out performed all of the big website builders out there except Google's own websites, which puts you at an advantage vs. most other websites in your market... and on the same level playing field as other Carrot members. 

2) Conversion optimization: There are a ton of easy website builders out there to get a website up and online and plenty of people who can build a website for you. But the whole reason I created Carrot in 2014 was because they just weren't setup to focus on performance... and were really bad w/ conversion. Over the years I've done over 1k split tests and hundreds in the real estate market alone and we continually are improving the conversion of our sites. That's one of the reasons we have restrictions on some design elements that some members have requested... because there's a trade-off between design aesthetic vs. performance. So we focus on performance which means there are more limitations on design in order to retain that performance element. But many of the top investors move over to Carrot because of this one (from their expensive custom sites). 

3) SEO: That's the part we've innovated on the most over the years and the results in Google show it. Jerryll has been crushing it and really helping tons of people do the same. Great work @Jerryll Noorden! 

So focus on performance first, then build your credibility out on the platform to increase the performance from the strong Carrot foundation. 

Reach out anytime if we can help w/ anything man! Good luck w/ your investing! 

We've got you @Account Closed says dive into his guide and into our weekly coaching calls and resources. Another reason trying to build it yourself or going custom isn't a great idea is it'll actually cost you far more to do it yourself or go custom than w/ Carrot to build something comparable. From the tech stack that helps your site load really fast, to the support we offer like Jerryll mentioned, to our training, to the 1k + split tests we've ran over the years to find the things that make a site convert visitors to leads at a high rate, etc. So just focus on being an investor and follow Jerryls guidance above. Reach out if we can help! 

@Mark Sewell thanks for the props man! Ya that CarrotCast episode was fun! 

Man, consistency is the key w/ anything working successfully... and consistency is hard. But it takes time to build up momentum and outlast the others who will quit early. Keep at it man!!! 

@Pratik great question man. The biggest misnomer and misunderstanding on that topic is that people are getting results with Carrot because of the “stock content” that comes on the sites. The SEO results require (in most cases) you to customize the content leveraging our framework and training and the Carrot platform has always been 100% about creating robust, useful, unique content which is what Google is always looking for. Stacked on top of a high converting framework (which is what Carrot specializes in). So yes, if someone sets up a Carrot site and expects to rank well in Google without following our training to customize the content and build in your credibility and brand... then they’ll struggle because of duplicate content. But send PPC traffic to that site and it’ll convert great without having to customize the content. Pull up any of these sites, often times big investors who switched from fancy and pretty custom sites, and you’ll notice how they leveraged our platform because it performs better... but they wrapped their own branding and content onto our high converting and SEO friendly platform. https://www.webuyhomesintucson.com - customized content - personalizes credibility and branding - leverages our content marketing system to save time with content - high performing tech stack - he’s dominating most motivated seller phrases in Tucson https://www.sellnowhomebuyers.com - brought branding to Carrot - built out custom location landing pages per our training - creates unique content with our content tools - controls 30+ #1 rankings for sellers in New York https://www.househeroes.com - uses our content tools to get top rankings for targeted phrases (like “selling a house in florida taxes” and hundreds of others) - customized site content and built out location pages on our system (with unique content) - dialed in branding to stand out All of the sites above closed over high margin 20 deals last year just from SEO (not to mention any ppc they’re doing) The reason I write this is because yes, Carrot sites are everywhere because they perform better. But they perform on SEO not because the stock content, but because people leverage our framework, training, and tech stack to personalize their content correctly to get an edge in SEO over platforms not optimized as well. Believe me, our livelihood relies on helping our clients get long-term results and our strategy has always been based on 3 fundamentals. 1. Focus on conversion and performance over “prettiness”. When there’s a trade off needed, we always choose what performs better. 2. Robust valuable content, credibility, and brand done right will always give you an edge. We strive to make this easier with our tools. 3. The tech stack can give you a massive edge when all other things are equal. And with our scale we have the resources to invest heavily in constant improvements to give members an edge. Great question and I hope this helps!! I’m sure you can see my passion coming through :-) 🥕🥕

Hey Jean! REI pro is a really great system. Bo and his team is in a really good product and integrates seamlessly with Carrot. We have a good number of clients using REI pro with our system and report good things back to us. I don't think you can go wrong with that set up.

Hey Jake! Hope you’ve  had a great weekend! 

We are glad you were looking at Carrot  and would be pumped to work with you! 

At the end of the day it comes down to results, ROI, and the experience you'll get working with us.

 Check around at most of the successful wholesalers and flippers and you will find most are using Carrot. For a variety of reasons.  The level of support our team provides is one, the Innovacion we have on performance and conversion rate is the biggest, and you won’t find a better system for SEO or conversion rate optimization. 

 There definitely are cheaper options out there, but just like anything when you go cheaper you have to give up things along the way, and one lost deal from under performance equals $10,000, to $30,000 or more.  many people look at saving a few bucks on the monthly payment but after moving over to carrots realize how much money they likely lost with their other website from under formants and in time wasted . 

Hit me up if you have any specific questions! We’re here for you! 

I know Tyler has had that ranking for years (before Carrot even). Just when he switched over he gained more top rankings and in some cases a 2nd page on the same site also began to rank toward the top of the page for the same phrases. 

I know he has other links besides those on that list and as I said SEMrush (and any link research tool) doesn’t show all links and many times they fail to show the full citation profile etc. He links from his agent (non carrot) site, and other links. 

As for what Tyler did, he followed our 3 Lead Per Day training course that’s crazy thorough on SEO, but the thing he did that we don’t teach or suggest is reciprocal linking. That won’t hurt the rankings if he’s already ranked high but the value of too many of them is much lower than a non reciprocal link in a topical article. Google *could* discount those links over time, negating the juice they pass. 

Nothing we teach is a secret Sean and you, or anyone, can access our training and coaching calls the same as Tyler if y’all want to. And we have tons of free content on this too. I

Backlinks of course are part of the equation... and as any good SEO knows there’s hundreds of factors Google potentially looks at. We work hard to give our clients the best shot at doing what Google wants. From the tech stack, the layout of the site to increase engagement, free ssl, content marketing tools and guidance (a site with active content is better than one without), content structure, mobile optimization, fast load times, etc etc etc etc. 

Believe me, I’m not worried about you poking holes and thinking Carrot doesn’t work for SEO... it doesn’t take much effort to search in most cities around the country for top seller phrases and see Carrot sites consistently controlling many of the top positions. And I’m an open book on our aggregate data from our google analytics account. 

We focus on making the fundamentals lower cost, easier, and more effective for people who don’t want to deal with building and maintaining a custom site... then hoping they get the SEO part right. Then we teach people the best practices to outrank others and coach them along the way. 

I can’t and won’t show any of Tyler’s particular data. That’s up to him. And honestly I’m not sure what incentive he has to do so inside of this thread. I can tell you he joined early 2017 (maybe end of 2016?) so those leads are since then. Not all are unique, prob a few dups, some other investors inquiring, a few spam. But he is pulling in $300k+ from SEO in deal *profits* this year + listings, and its from “discovery” phrases primarily (sell my house fast [city] etc. and many other phrases.

SEO isn’t easy, isn’t quick, and isn’t always clear the exact path to get a specific ranking. Patience and consistently implementing a content and backlink and citation plan (assuming the site is dialed in) is the formula. 

But I'm happy to teach you anything we do for SEO and why many of the largest investors are using Carrot to get a better ROI and save time n money.

On your thought about building SEO on a custom site vs Carrot or LP... earlier in this thread you educated people on the cost to setup a good custom site effectively and all that goes into it. 

The $5k+ for that site build out, hoping the web person knows SEO well (most don’t), the continual updates to the site (Wordpress, plugins, ssl, etc), good web hosting ($40/mo or more for a good VPS), hoping you and your web person create the site to convert high (Jason’s expensive custom site lost to his $99/mo Carrot site. Now he’s completely ditched the custom site and doing SEO for the Carrot site), protecting against hacks, site speed, etc etc. 

So you can either buy and own a custom site that will likely perform worse (or perform great but cost $5k-$10k for a conversion focused expert), have to pay the web person to make continual updates, pay the person to split test... you’re renting server space too... you don’t own that space... and you’ll have to redesign that custom site every 12-18 months to catch it up to mobile and Google changes at further expense... 

... or, be an investor and get the same or better result with a tool like Carrot with less expense and hassle. 

Id love to do a Facebook live on the topic with you and answer any questions you or anyone has on SEO and why our clients consistently and overwhelmingly do extremely well on SEO. I’m sure I’d learn some things and hopefully others will learn a few things :-)

@Sean Dolan hope all is well man! 

@Tyler Ford doesn’t do any offline marketing to drive branded search, but he ranks #1 and #2 for most of his phrases (2 separate Carrot sites) that motivated sellers are typing in in his market.  He’s focused heavily on SEO and doing really well as a result. 

So his deals are coming from organic “discovery” phrases. 

Tons of people use SEM rush and it’s a solid tool but it’s data is highly incomplete most times we use it. Ahrefs backlink data is far better but even it has a lag time on link reporting and both tools don’t do well to predict actual traffic or the terms it ranks for. Gets many terms right but misses most. His sites rank really high for many of the most popular motivated seller search phrases. 

@Tyler Ford if I mentioned anything incorrect or missed anything pop on in! 

Awesome to see you crushing it Sean! 

@Mike Snyder this is a great thread! All kinds of wisdom here. 

Even with a focus on direct mail or radio / tv... there can be a massive difference in performance with a high performance site vs a cheap one not focused on performance. 

I’ll DM you an email a client sent over a few weeks back... they’re the #1 home buyer in their state and already had a nice looking custom site...

... after lots of research moved to Carrot and their online leads doubled. But here’s the deal... they do NO online marketing. They do lots of direct mail and TV / radio and the people who were going online to find them were landing on their old site... not getting what they needed and it wasn’t dialed in for conversion on mobile devices... so he was losing lots of leads and deals but didn’t realize it until he switched to a customized version of Carrot. 

Next, you’re 100% right that most Carrot sites look similar. But it’s because most customers choose not to personalize their sites. The client mentioned above went through our Concierge program where we do the customization for them and bring in their branding and personal story wrapped in our high performing framework. 

I’ll DM you some examples of sites that crush it, retain our high performing framework... but stand out. 

The client Sean mentioned earlier in this thread that he was running the tests on now runs 100% of their traffic (both SEO and ppc) through their Carrot site now as well. 

Let’s chat Mike! 

@Jim Froehlich hope all is well man!! 

I haven’t heard of Investor Lion and their site looks like it’s in pre launch phase. What do they do? 

I’d always be leery of it until it’s proven with high level investors, but podio and investor fuse and a couple other podio based CRMs are the ones we see the most successful investors use. 

If you’re looking for more “all in one” the problem you run into is the system is likely good a a thing or two and bad / mediocre at the rest. Which is why so many  Systems keep popping up. 

If I were to start from scratch here’s what I’d do: 

1. Focus on leads FIRST: then on managing leads second. too many people try to build out the perfect system before they even have enough lead flow to worry about managing leads.  

We Had a client at our CarrotCamp recently who did $650k in wholesale fees in Dallas in his first year in business and he literally used a whiteboard and our internal lead manager to manage his leads and deals. 

He has investor fuse now, but he just worried about pulling in leads first and mastering that... vs trying to build a perfect all in one system before he truly knew what he needed to serve his business. 

My advice is that if you haven’t truly implemented the proven systems you’re already using... that lion investor may be a shiny object distraction and won’t solve things. 

Take that same $1k and put it into PPC marketing following our training and coaching calls and turn it into deals. 

Reach out and we can dial you in man!