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I'm an author, web developer, and real estate SEO consultant. More importantly, I'm a father to six great kids, a husband to a beautiful wife, and a self-confessed Jesus freak.

Formerly an architect and director of marketing for Bastien and Associates, Inc., a successful architectural firm, I directly contributed to the bottom line by helping to bring in millions of dollars of design work through effective website communications, media outreach, and a focused marketing strategy. I now enjoy helping busy real estate agents achieve success on the web by providing specialized marketing consulting services along with search engine friendly real estate websites.

My passion is helping small businesses carve out a niche to compete head to head with larger companies.

Real estate websites expertise

My qualifications include developing websites that rank well in the search engines. My portfolio consists of real estate websites, architect websites, non-profit ministries, personal blogs, and business blogs. I am particularly experienced in marketing for the real estate, architectural, and engineering professions.

Professional status

In 1999, I received my California architect’s license. I have been a past member of the AIA (American Institute of Architects), and SMPS (Society for Marketing Professional Services).

Education

California Polytechnic University, Pomona: Bachelor of Architecture (Graduated 1995).

Public relations

I have successfully pitched feature articles to The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Business Journal, and other publications. My clip file includes publications such as:

• Associated Press
• Architectural Record
• Building Design & Construction
• Budapest Sun
• Daily Variety
• Hollywood Reporter
• International Variety
• LA Times
• LA Business Journal
• OC Architect
• OC Business Journal
• Orange County Register
• El Pais
• El Periodico
• USA Today
• Wall Street Journal
• Western Real Estate New
• Yuma Daily Sun 

In the community

• Advisory Board of the Treasure Valley God and Country Festival, a Christian concert and civic event attracting nearly 10,000 people from the Boise area each year.
• Secretary of the Nampa KID Soccer league.
• Active in church and personal ministry.

Personal stuff

On top of all this, I am blessed to be married to my wife Diane for the past 18 years, and have six homeschooled children that enjoy family time, Christian music, fishing, camping, snowboarding, and seeing the great outdoors.

Need more info? Have questions?

Request a proposal

If you are a real estate agent, you need to get Idaho MLS listings on your website. But how do you do that? It's easier said than done.

Most companies that host MLS listings for Realtors use either frames, Flash, or Javascript. This either places your MLS listings on someone else's website (the company hosting the database), or makes your listings completely invisible to search engine traffic.

These approachs are horrible for search engine optimization for several reasons:

• All the traffic goes to the domain of your MLS hosting company. For maximum search engine visibility, you want as much traffic as possible to go to your own real estate website domain.
• Frame navigation can be ugly and awkward. Not every browser supports frames, and they don't all support them equally. They might look fine in one browser, and ugly in another.
• Search engines have trouble indexing framed sites because they are actually several pages blended together.
• Search engines don't follow Javascript links at all, making them useless for gaining search engine visibility.
• They also cannot index Flash sites, because Flash presentations are more like a movie than a collection of targeted pages.
• Needless to say, if Realtor websites can't be indexed easily, they will not rank well.

Frameless IDX/MLS Listings

One solution is Frameless IDX/MLS Listings hosted on your own domain. I specialize in designing search engine friendly websites for real estate agents using this technology. With this approach, your visitors can search the entire Idaho MLS right on your site using your own domain. Your content website will be something like www.yoursite.com, while your MLS search will be something like mls.yoursite.com or idx.yoursite.com.

Visitors will never again have to leave your domain to go to your MLS hosting company website to search for Idaho real estate.

Hosting your own property listings

Another popular property listing solution for real estate websites is to host only your own listings or only those from your brokerage office. This is a solution like the one you find on this site, and can be highly customized. I can set up a property listing system just like this one on your own website, so you or your agents can log in, create a profile complete with photos and logos, and start adding property listings to it.

This is excellent for keeping home buyers on your own site looking at your own company's listings. Leads can be set up to come to your main office, or to individual agents. And the best part is that it's completely search engine friendly. You have complete control over the listings and how they fit into the look and feel of your site without sacrificing search engine visibility.

If you'd like a proposal for how I can get your real estate website climbing up the search engine rankings, please contact me.

Introduction to real estate websites

Wondering why your real estate website is not ranking well in the search engines? Wondering why you're not getting any leads from it?

I'm Kevin Harper, and I've been doing websites specializing in marketing real estate and professional services for a long time. A former architect and director of marketing for a major architectural firm, I helped bring in millions of dollars of projects from all over the world with search engine friendly website design, quality writing, and smart lead generation.

My real estate sites are specifically designed to produce traffic and leads for you. If you are a real estate agent in this competitive market, you need a custom, search engine friendly website with no boiler plate content. You need live MLS listings that generate traffic and leads for your business. And you need someone to help you get it done.

My real estate websites are easy to manage, but unlike my big corporate competition, they are not boiler plate, and they are both search engine friendly and user friendly. Each website is built from the ground up using a state of the art content management system. My sites can be used as blogs, MLS listing websites, helpful articles for your buyers and sellers, or any combination. You control menus, content, listings...everything.

Diagnosing your website problems

I know exactly why your MLS website doesn't perform well in the search engines. I can do an SEO evaluation of your site for you and write a detailed report explaining why. In most cases, I can write this report in 24 hours so you will have a detailed list of improvements you can hand to your web designer. (Don't have one? Contact me!)

The most common reaon websites perform poorly is that they are written poorly. From content to HTML coding, a website is essentially one big writing project, yet not everyone who needs a website is an experienced writer or HTML coder. So they settle for boiler plate content and HTML coding that is unclear to both visitors and search engines.

When you hire me to build your website, you can be assured that I will write plenty of custom content for you, geared specifically to your targeted real estate service areas and specialization.

Real estate SEO

I build only search engine friendly websites using thorough, conscientious real estate SEO techniques. That means my websites are built to perform well on search engines like Google from the very beginning.

I start with powerful content management system called Joomla, then I go under the hood to tune it up for optimum search engine performance. I leave no stone unturned using my 35+ point checklist to ensure that my sites are built for high ranking. Then I submit my sites to the search engines and go through Google's back door to tell it about every page on my site. Within days, the site is indexed by Google.

With some well-placed inbound links, the site is off and running up the charts to compete with other sites for the number one spot in its chosen target market. I've successfully brought my client's site to #2 for the term Idaho Real Estate, and I intend to get him to #1 (ahead of Realtor.com) If you want results from your real estate site, then please contact me to discuss how I can help you.

Request a Real Estate Website Proposal