Prodigy third Generation siding boards and Crane insulated panels are popular in New Jersey, including Bergen, Essex, Morris and Passaic county. However, it's our experience, the full back product doesn't always properly insulate your home for the good money you're paying.

"Here is a little secret about insulated siding panels they Don't want you to know"

Crane Foam Backed Vinyl Siding in NJ

it's not the best insulator

There are 2 types of insulated siding. One has the insulation glued to the back and the other has the insulation slipped behind when siding is installed. It accomplishes the goal of keeping the siding firm and strong but I Don't believe it insulates the house better than dow board insulation. Check out my website http://www.NJDiscountVinylSiding.com for more siding infomation

Save money, it is not always necessary to tear off the old facade to install insulated siding

Why foam backed vinyl siding doesn't insulate well

• House siding types are different and they can't fit in every angle
• Cutting vinyl siding tears off the insulation
• To install you must tear off the insulation with your hands to fit on wall
• The perimeter around windows, the doors and house are exposed for air drafts.

Basic siding insulation boards cover all areas of your house

A house in Ridgewood or Glen Rock NJ has many angles which Alside's Prodigy vinyl siding or Craneboard can't be completely placed in.

We were introduced by this product by a large sales company we worked with. The company was excited with the new vinyl siding material.

Installing siding years ago, I didn't think much about it. We figured a multimillion dollar reputable company knew what they were talking about.

Our Experience installing insulated siding panels

To install this siding it must be cut with a circular saw because each piece is thick. The conventional way of cutting it with aluminum siding shears will not work, unless you tear off some of the insulation in the back with your hands.

Sometimes you must tear off the back insulation to make siding fit The insulation around the pipe has been torn off Prodigy Insulated Siding Panels - NJ Contractors

The shape of the house doesn't make it possible insulate the entire house. I remember applying it on a house in Union or Hudson county and thinking it wasn't insulating well.

If your house is a box than it could be insulated better because the siding is placed in straight rows and there are not many angles to cut. However, if your house is an old Victorian in Wayne, NJ or Clifton, NJ with many angles than there will be many areas the insulation will not stay. Even if you have a boxed house I believe it'still won't insulate properly.

The insulation can't properly fit behind windows and doors.

Sometimes the windows and doors have irregular carpentry around its perimeter and makes it extremely difficult for this thick siding to fit properly. Sometimes you have to tear off the glued insulation from the ends of the panels so siding can flex and be placed properly.

Around the windows and doors there can be open gaps of 2 inches where there is no insulation and it makes it easy for cold air to penetrate. Imagine all the windows and doors in your house having 1 1/2 inch gaps. That's a lot of drafts.

Foam insulation doesn't always press against the window

Factory end of has 1 inch of insulation removed

Even if you Don't have irregular carpentry around them, each end of Crane or Prodigy foam backed vinyl siding has 1 inch of insulation cut back. The reason for this is to interlock 2 pieces of siding together. However, you Don't need to interlock by the windows.

See how it does not properly insulate your house. Also, there are other areas, like the porch, electrical fixtures and corners of the house.

Siding around wiring, looks properly installed Torn off siding insulation, sometimes large pieces of insulation is removed Trying to make siding fit, a smaller piece of insulation is removed Insulated Vinyl Siding Panel Insulation in New Jersey

You want the solid wall look and believe it will insulate your home in West Orange or West Caldwell? Hopefully, this vinyl siding review helps. It is a good product but has a major flaw.

However, we arealized there is a way to apply this material and keep your house well insulated. Check out this simple installation instruction below.

Solution for foam backed siding Apply one layer of fan fold insulation board and foam backed secondary. The insulation boards will cover any areas Prodigy foam backed vinyl siding can't reach to keep house properly insulated.
The entire house has standard insulation panels installed first

The cost of the insulation is around $400 more and worth it if your heart is set on insulated panels. We installed this process on a gutted house in Bergen Couny and it was warm in the middle of winter.

Hey, New Jersey, let me know if you need or have any siding questions.

In the fall of 2012, with the help of my partners, I created a piece of software that helps business owners that want to try to tackle SEO on their own do it better. Our software will audit your website, track your rankings for high-value keywords, analyze your competitors, show what has been changed on your website (helpful if you're paying someone else to do your SEO), and identify opportunities to make improvements.

I'm telling you all of this because of what I'm about to say next...

You Don't need another SEO tool.

That?s right. Most of you searching for a better SEO toolset are wasting your time and money. What you should be doing instead is learning more about how to better utilize two free tools you probably already have (and Don't even know it).

The SEO tools I?m referring to are Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools.

In this blog post, I?m going to provide you with a couple of ideas for how you can use Google Analytics (GA) and Google Webmaster Tools (GWT) to improve your site?s organic rankings (i.e. your SEO).

Getting More from Google Analytics

There are dozens of ways you can use Google Analytics as an SEO tool, but I?m going to share with you my three favorit's:

1. Advanced Traffic Segments

Advanced traffic segments allow you to create a filter within Google Analytics to isolate one segment of traffic. For example, let's say you run a handyman company in Charlotte, NC. You get about 2,000 visits to your website per month, but only a handful of leads.

It could be that your website isn't very well-optimized to convert visitors into leads, but more likely, you're not really getting 2,000 visits per month. By creating an advanced traffic segment that shows only visitors from within your service area, you might find that you actually receive 300 visits per month.

An increase in visits to your website from organic search where the keyword used does NOT include your company name is a great measure of SEO success (far superior to tracking individual keyword rankings). I typically refer to visits from this traffic segment as Non-Branded Organic Traffic or Non-Branded Organic Search). The trouble is, Google Analytics doesn't show this by default.

By creating an advanced segment that shows only visitors from this segment you can quickly determine whether your SEO campaign is delivering qualified visitors to your website or not. If you're generating visitors, but no leads, maybe you're targeting the wrong keywords or your website isn?t holding up its end of the bargain. If you're a local contractor, maybe the visitors are coming in from outside your service area (suggesting that you need more work on your local SEO).

Better (more granular) data allows you to make better decisions.

2. Top Landing Pages

Login to your Google Analytics account. Look at the left-side navigation menu. Click Content > Site Content > Landing Pages. Now, use the secondary dimension option to select keywords. This report will show you which pages attracted visitors to your website and the keywords the visitors used to find the page.

Reviewing this report on a regular basis will provide you with a bunch of insights and valuable takeaways.

First, you get a sense that each page on your website--assuming it's well-targeted and optimized--acts like a funnel to bring more visitors to your website. By creating more pages, you'll see traffic, leads, and sales increase and you can use this report to quantify how well you're doing.

Second, seeing the keyword someone searched to find your pages allows you to consider the following:

• What did the visitor do after they came to my site?
• Is it what I wanted them to do?
• If not, why not?
• Is the page they found really the one I want them to find when they search that keyword?
• How does my page rank for that keyword? What can I do to re-optimize the page?

When business owners hire me to help them with SEO, one of the questions they ask, "How long is this going to take?" Most want to spend the least amount possible for the shortest amount of time.Understandable, but I hope that the example above illustrates that SEO and website optimization is an ongoing process (like managing your company's financial performance).

It never stops--unless you achieve your goal(s)--and even then you have to maintain what you have.

You Don't have to keep paying me, but someone has to do the work on a regular basis. SEO and website performance is ALWAYS going either up or down. Once you have 500 visits (or more per month), you need to start reviewing this stuff on a weekly/monthly basis. The output is a "to do" list of things to fix / TEST.

Again, there are more than a dozen different ways to use Google Analytics as an SEO tool. The two above are very helpful, but They are also easy to learn (unlike tracking your keyword rankings in Google Analytics ? something you can do, but setting it up is more complicated).

Now, let?s switch gears and look at Google Webmaster Tools from an SEO standpoint.

Getting Started with Google Webmaster Tools

Some of you may not be familiar with GWT, but you should be?it's an unbelievably awesome tool for SEO. Three of the best ways to improve your site?s rankings using Google Webmaster Tools are:

1. Crawl Errors Report

One of the key features of many different SEO software programs is a crawl error report, but GWT offers this too and it's FREE. In order for your website to rank well organically, search engines like Google must be able to crawl your website and your website?s pages.

Crawl errors can prevent Googlebot, the software Google uses to crawl and index your website, from finding and properly reading your website pages. You can have the world?s best website content, pictures, etc., but if Googlebot hits a road block and can?t find them, you're never going to leap-frog your competitors in the search results.

2. Search Queries Report

The search queries report helps you monitor two of the most important SEO metrics available--impressions and click-through rate. Using your rankings for a specific keyword is a sh*tty way to evaluate your SEO results. Most contractors doing this Don't realize that the rankings they are seeing are NOT what their prospects are seeing.

Wha wha what?!

That's right--a few years ago Google started personalizing the search results based on the location of the visitor, personal settings, previous searches, etc.

Impressions and click-through rate are far better metrics and they are easily found and/or calculated from data that comes from the search queries report in GWT. In the search queries report in GWT, first exclude any searches that include your company name (i.e. branded searches). You might also want to filter out visitors outside your service area.

What you have left is impressions from non-branded keywords. If impressions are trending up year-over-year, it generally means that you're doing a good job targeting the right keywords and that your organic rankings are on the rise. This said, high rankings for relevant keywords mean little if you're unable to entice searchers to click on your website (vs. a competitor?s site). If your search rankings are <10 and you're not getting many clicks, it might be time to re-optimize that page?s meta description tag.

Conclusion & Takeaways

While better tools can give you an edge over your competition, most contractors would achieve more by fully utilizing the tools they already have. Stop looking for a magic pill--it doesn't exist. Love him or hate him, Tiger Woods will kick your butt at golf with a set of spoons.

Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools are free and They are awesome. Once you're tracking custom variables in Google Analytics and using multiple XML sitemaps in GWT, call me and I'll show you something that will really blow your mind.

My business mentor shared a great story with me long ago?

?If you walk out of a house? and they say you did a great job, and gave a great presentation, and They areally like your company? you're in marketing.

If you walk out of that same house with a signed contract? you're in sales.?

it's a great story? and partially hits on the point I want to make.

The business we are really in.

There Are Three Core Parts To All Of Our Business?s In This Industry:

- Marketing
- Sales
- Production

They are monsters that will constantly fight with each other, but rely on each other in order for the business to work properly.

? and you need all three in your business working:

- If you have great marketing and great sales? but lack in production ? the business does not work.
- If you have great sales and great production? but lack in marketing ? the business does not work.
- If you have great marketing and great production? but lack in sales ? the business does not work.

In the end, however, it all starts with marketing. Without leadflow? it doesn?t matter how great of a closer you are, or how great the work is that you deliver.

This is a common reason that most service-based business?s fail. A great book to read on this topic is the eMyth. This book explains how most people fail in business, because they are a technician in their industry.

In other words? let?s say I?m a great carpenter. I know all there is to know about carpentry, and deliver fantastic end results. I love doing the work ? it's my passion. So? I start my own carpentry business.

Now, instead of doing carpentry work, I?m doing all of the business work. Marketing sales, payroll, taxes, billing, collections, etc. Ya know? all of the things EXCEPT what I?m good at.

Thus, failure is inevitable.

So a great tip to realize? as soon as you possibly can accept it? is what business you're truly in. Where your business truly starts with. That business? is marketing.

Focus your efforts there. Once your marketing kicks in, your focus will then shift to your sales process. Once sales kicks in, you'll shift your focus to production. Then, you'll start the process all over again.

Realize during each growth phase you will have waste, disorganization, stress, pain, etc.

But, you'll fight through that and get things back in order. Your business will grow, as will your profits, and you're fulfillment from your successful business.

But, it all starts with the marketing.