Yeah, yeah, yeah¦ backlinks are important- the more hgih quality backlinks you have- the more Google trusts you. So, here is a quick list of sites you can submit to, list yourself in or comment on that will help to boost your real estate blogs rankings in the SERPs and build trust with Google. Every month I will give you 30 more backlink ideas. All sites I will provide will be free and non reciprocal backlinks unless otherwise noted.  Why didnt I include any blogs?  Simple, it is looking more and more like Google is discounting blog with an unnatural amount of incoming links form other blogs, so were going to stay away from that unless they have a huge PR and they dont have the no-follow tag turned on.

Read also: Ultimate guide to building backlinks

Resource: List of Do Follow Blogs to Comment on

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Its a sensational title, isnt it? It is also now a fact, one Realtor, Cyndee Haydon of Clearwater Beach Real Estate, armed with only rudimentary white hat SEO information and an unparalleled dedication to success, took a brand new blog to the top of Google and a PageRank 5 in less than 3 months. The good news is, her success can be replicated. In February, Cyndee moved a version of her WordPress blog to the RSS Pieces Real Estate Blog platform after the WordPress version fell out of the search engines for many prime terms due to some structual faults and an ill configured plugin.

Clearwater Beach Real Estate Blog Statistics

• First Page Placement:Clearwater Real Estate
• Indexed Pages: 219
• Google Links: 58
• Yahoo Links: 1,600
• .EDU Links: 79
• .GOV Links: 1

The Timeline

• Feb 11, 2008 Purchases a keyword rich domain
• Feb 12, 2008 www.clearwaterrealestatetampahomes.com goes live
• February 13, 2008 Import content from WordPress Blog (Cyndee had almost 200 keyword rich real estate focused posts)
• February 14+ Keyword rich content is added, high quality backlinks are built

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Sometime around 1AM, Louis Cammarosano of HomeGain emailed me about his website going to a PageRank7.  Shortly after that, my email box flooded with Google Alerts for a PR Update.  Then, the official call¦

How can you tell when Google updates the PageRank toolbar?  Typically, right before a PR update you will notice that Pr at various datacenters fluctuates wildly.  Meaning, some center might report a 0, while others show a much higher PR.

Resource:  Check your PageRank at 72 Datacenters

Read also: Search Engine Watch Threads Confirming PageRank Update and vbSEO Forum

The Winner of Our PageRank Prediction is¦.

The nearly dead on, crystal ball wielding loan officer from Dallas, TX, Tom Burris!  Tom has won a 1 month long backlink building campaign beginning May 1, 2008.   Congrats Tom!

Read also: Read also: What is PageRank and when does Google update it?

Read also: Guess when the next Google PageRank update will be and win big bad backlinks

I cant see the full updates as they havent reached our datacenter here yet, but reports are that:

Laurie Manny and Brian Brady from our PageRank5 Club hit their mark!  Lenore Wilkas took 2 sites to a PR4, Cyndee ‘SEO’ Haydon took her brand new site to a PR5.

Let us know if your PR went up in the comments of this post.  Congrats to all the winners!!!

So, I sat on a panel at RETech where we were asked, “How do you build traffic to your real estate website or blog?”  Great question, right?  As I strategically sat in the last seat on the panel, I got to listen as 4 of my peers told an audience of tech savvy Realtors that you build traffic by commenting on other blogs, putting blogrolls on your site and joining social networks. Hmmm… call me crazy, but doesn’t that just garner you a whole lot of other Realtors coming to your site?  Is that really all that useful to you?  Does most of your business come from other Realtor referrals?  Do you relish splitting a commission with another Realtor for a referral fee when you do most of the work?  I know the Realtors we work with very rarely take in referrals so that kind of traffic would be totally useless to them.  Needless to say, my answer to the panel question, as usual, bucked the system:   ”I must be simple, but I don’t much care if your real estate sites gets 500 visitors that are other Realtors, I care that you get 500 consumer visitors.  So, here’s my suggestion, build high quality backlinks from directories, RSS feed submissions and linkbait.  Write high quality real estate focused, hyper-local, keyword rich content. Don’t waste your valuable time commenting on blogs that likely have the no-follow tag turned on, don’t join every social network under the sun (be strategic in your choices).  Be smart- get indexed by Google for short tail keywords and watch the consumer traffic flow in.”  Commenting simply isn’t going to build you business, it may garner you some Realtor traffic, but that isn’t the transactional traffic you are after! Does that make sense to you?

Why is commenting for backlinks or traffic a waste of time?

• You generally get bad anchor text if you are not mindful of putting in your keywords instead of your name
• Most comments are no-follow so you don’t get the backlink
• Most sites you comment on have low PRs so even if you do get a backlink, it is worthless
• At the end of the day, it is still just a blog to blog link which doesn’t carry as much weight as a site, directory or RSS site.

Read also: Ultimate guide to building backlinks

What is the no-follow tag?

Applying the no-follow tag to links tells Google not to follow the link which means a link from a blog with the no-follow tag turned on will not be counted as a backlink to your site.   6% of all URLs across the web contain the rel=nofollow attribute.  Nofollow attributes are used on a significant percentage of the web’s most trusted and authoritative domains. (*source: SEOmoz) 

How can you tell if the no-follow tag is turned on in a blog?

Use SEO for Firefox.  When you visit a site with the no-follow tags turned on you will see links highlighted in red.

Is all commenting a waste of time?

No, I often comment on other blogs to build relationships with the blog owner.  For example, when I first entered the real estate world, I commented on a lot of real estate technology and marketing blogs.  Why?  Because it made a lot of sense for me, as a vendor, to develop relationships with those people.  Now, that I am predominately in the entertainment and business blogging sphere, I comment on more music executive, Fortune 500 business, general blogging, copywriting and SEO blogs.  Do I comment for backlinks?  No.  Did I ever?  No.  Do I get some from time to time.  Yes.  Do the people I connect with out there mean business to me?  Yes.  See, it makes sense.

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Do you have an inside track at Google?  Think you know when they will update PageRank?  Then, use your crystal ball and give us a hard date you think Google will next export PageRank to the toolbar and win a 1 month long professional backlink building campaign from our professional SEO staff. 

What is PageRank

PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual pages value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves ˜important weigh more heavily and help to make other pages ˜important.

Read also: Read also: What is PageRank and when does Google update it?

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