I think your missing my point. The adwords keyword tool shows search volume and adwords competition for any keyword combination you throw at it plus it provides you with other similar keyword combinations as well. Even if your not interested in adwords you should be using this tool just for its ability to show search volume for specified keywords. They dont actually give you numbers the numbers involved but they provide you with indicators.

People are indeed searching for those terms in quite good numbers and whilst some of them have high competition, many have not.

Finding a range of keywords with low competition would not be that hard, at least at this moment in time. Obviously that is fairly fluid thing.

The niche for this site is Luxury.. so a check of the google adwords keywords tool finds a large number of luxury based keywords with good quality traffic but with very little to no competition. Very little competition means they dont have to pay a fortune for each visitor.

As an example “Luxury Homes Sydney”, “Luxury Homes Rent” and “Luxury Beachfront Homes” have good traffic but no competition but a search would find dozens if not hundreds of other keywords that will work with them.

My issue is that they don’t seem to be offering anything different from the competition except LESS property. This will mean that they will pay good money to attract visitors that will not stay long and will not return… which is exactly what happened to Myhome.

They should try and be innovators in the Niche. They dont have to have the most million dollar homes but they have to have the best experience if they want to survive.

Virtually all luxury homes buyers will have broadband and just about all luxury homes will have professional shots so why not have high res photos available so they fill the screen not small 800pix photos.

The could do full screen slideshows such as this (maximise your browser before clicking) http://glennbatten.smugmug.com/photos/sspopup.mg?AlbumID=1578729

Overlay their logo and web address on each photo. Photos of presitge homes are likely to be downloaded and be passed around and used as screen savers so make sure their logo and web address is on each photo.

Once the site gains enough momentum they might be able to dump the adword campaign.

That would be where I would start anyway.

It has been a long time since anybody used hits as a measure of a websites performance.

I think if they want agents to take their statistics seriously they should provide unique browser figures in line with the other portals. The only problem with this of course is that UB’s may be very unimpressive unlike the using 297,000 hits.

Anyone have any constructive ideas on what would be the most effective marketing strategy for an independent/ small agency site like this one?

A this point of time it would appear that some agents wanting to get a piece of the top-end markets could use this portal as a listing tool. However, at the end of the day we all know that vendors require much more than that. Still provides some revenue streams to the owners which ever so slowly will attempt to re-coup costs. Although I must admit a tough ask as it identifies very little points of difference from it’s more logical competitors.

The next step following a launch is the much more difficult test of time where previously many have stood before and now cease to exist. At this point in time from our perspective it is a lukewarm response. I believe it simply struggles to re-inforce that it dares to be different and offers consumers that fuzzy feeling.

Way too much of the old with very little of the new.

LuxuryRealEsate.com (US based) opened up back in 2004 here in Australia, now have 30+ agents and more than 480 listings. One site in this niche is enough.
http://www.luxuryrealestate.com/australia/