Are you a Google Juicer? ActiveRain Offers You Some Incredible SEO Power

I read Jeff Belonger's post from earlier today (Bah Humbug, just SHOW ME the MONEY, not the points...... ), and while I was commenting, it inspired me to write this one.  I wanted to take a minute to explain how powerful the ActiveRain "Google juice" really is, and how you can harness the power of this network to your advantage. 

Why does Google (or Yahoo, or any other search engine) like ActiveRain posts so much?

Well, the key is fresh content, and AR is a site producing thousands of pages of content everyday.  When a site is able to generate this much original content, the search engine spiders use algorithms that index these new pages VERY quickly. 

I have some anecdotal evidence that may help to illustrate how important it is to write "Public" posts whenever possible.  The reason I say this about Public posts is that the Members Only posts are automatically tagged not to be indexed in the search engines, for obvious reasons. 

When I first invited my friend Alan Kirkpatrick to join ActiveRain, we met at our office so that I could show him how to use the site.  I also wanted to demonstrate how easy it really is to get a brand-new post to show up on the first page of Google.  In fact, I told him that I thought we could get a page about his neighborhood, to index before he even left the office.  Well, the mission was accomplished, and our page showed up on the first page within about 40 minutes!

Currently, I have been creating market reports for my neighborhood, and for the subdivisions in the immediate area.  I have heard this referred to as "hyperlocal" writing, as it focuses on a very narrow area, rather than a large market, such as Austin. 

Right now, one of my market reports is #3 on Google for the term "Fairways of Blackhawk Pflugerville" (see below):

As you can see, the TITLE of the post uses these words.  Another tip when creating posts for public consumption is to utilize the image title and description fields.  These are found within the window when you are inserting an image into the post:

I try to use keywords in these fields whenever I am writing a real estate-related post.

I write posts about real estate, about my family, funny stories, and basically whatever I feel like talking about.  I have been found by consumers many times on the search engine results for my "non real estate" posts. 

When I started here, I think I made the mistake of making too many of my posts Members Only, until my friend Katerina Gasset made a point to tell me that she had clients finding her posts who liked her style and decided to work with her based on what they had read.  These days, I rarely use the Members Only designation for my posts anymore.

Please feel free to call or email me anytime with questions, or you can ask in the comments section if you prefer.  As always, I thank you for taking time to read my post!  Happy blogging!

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