realweenie

In Honor of the Latest changes in Page Rank

Sad to say but the weenie has gone from a page rank 4 to a 3.  I hang my head in shame and worry that my peers on the re-net will think less of me than they already do.  I will understand if no one wants to read this blog any more.   St. Paul Real Estate is still a  PR5, no one really knows why. I see evidence that people read it.  One late night reader has been leaving cracker crumbs.

Have a great day, and remember if your PR dropped it is because you are a loser.

Inman Connect, San Francisco

It is great to be back on the hot dog stand.  I have just one take away from the blogger connect conference that I would life to share.  There is more than one way to have a successful real estate blog.  Of course I like my way the best, and the other bloggers like their way the best, which is why it seemed like we don't agree on anything, because we don't.  I learned the typo's and misspellings are a really bad thing on a blog and so is bad grammar but I am going to keep writing my blogs any way.

The people who attended the blogger connect sessions must have left feeling a bit confused.  There was a lot of good information in the sessions.  My advice would be to keep in mind that none of the "rules" are carved in stone.  be creative, use your imagination.  Take the ideas and improve upon them.

I got to take some pictures while I was in San Francisco, and here are some of them.

Breaking News

I was surprised to learn this morning that BoingBoing, currently number 5 on the list of the top 100 blogs, has decided that they want to be in the number one spot.  They have some choices on how to get there but it will take some work.  They are considering using an Active Rain outside blogs. They have been reading about the power of Active Rain and believe they can move up faster with an outside blog.

If you are reading this and have never heard of the blog, the blog has been in the number one spot as ranked by Techorati, has an authority of 17,280, which is about 16,700 more than than the highest ranking real estate blog.

"Boing Boing is a weblog of cultural curiosities and interesting technologies. It's the most popular blog in the world, as ranked by Technorati.com, and won the Lifetime Achievement and Best Group Blog awards at the 2006 Bloggies ceremony."

They know that there are millions of Realtors who have never heard of their blog even though they are one of the most popular blogs in the world.  An anonymous source said that Boing Boing knows that there are more than a million Realtors and that blogging and social networking are built around Realtors and real estate, and that Boing Boing should be participating in the conversation.   The same source said that he regrets that they did not start out on Active Rain to begin with, but had no idea that Real Estate is the center of the web 2.0 universe.

They are also interested in writing local content and look forward to having their content judged by Active Rain.  An anonymous source told me that he has no idea how they got as far as they did without active rain and that they look forward to the gold stars and networking with all of those Realtors.

I gave them some tips for how to have their content featured, by mentioning Active Rain in the post.  I was unable to tell them how to write outstanding local content because I really don't get localism or hyper local content. I recognize the need for another real estate portal with content donated by Realtors, but I am not sure what to write about.  I have read up on it on Active Rain but it doesn't make sense and I am still confused over the inside outside thing.  Is it like a belly button? 

Go Ahead Comment

Appropriate that I post on this blog of mass destruction cleverly disguised as a hot dog stand on the 4th of July weekend. Isn't the 4th all about noise and hot dogs?

I have been deleting comments left by Realtors on the St. Paul Real Estate Blog.  I never thought I would be doing that but I need to for a few reasons.

First of all it irritates me that the SEO gurus out there teach real estate bloggers how to keyword stuff comment sections and leave as many links as they can.  They leave an extra link in the body of the comment and make sure they mention that they sell real estate and where they work.  I strongly discourage that tactic and consider it spamming and don't care which expert is recommending it as an SEO strategy.  Get your back links somewhere else.

Secondly my blog is for consumers.  When they come to read and see a bunch of comments from Realtors it looks to them like it is a blog for Realtors, kind of like Active Rain, and they pretty much stay out of the conversation.  They still read the blog, they still hire me but no comments.  I need their comments.  They start conversations, they teach me and they inspire me to write blog posts.  I write at least 365 posts a year, trust me I can run out of ideas.  I still believe that it is content that makes blogs work so I plan to write every day for the next 365 days, just like I did for the last, only better and with fewer misspellings.

Thirdly the comments are inane.  Like nice post, great capture, good job etc.  I find them as irritating as I find the SEO gurus who teach blog spamming for back links. There are some agent bloggers out there who make comments that do add to the discussion  so I leave those comments there because they inspire me, they add to the conversation, or start a new conversation.

I knowfor many the blog thing is a game, and it has rules and there is the belief that the rules must be followed at all times.  I don't believe in those rules and I have never followed them, I find them too limiting.  I am just lucky that I started my blog before the experts came on the scene.

The best way to have a successful real estate blog is to write posts, and what the heck, would it kill you to throw in a photo once in awhile?  People like to see real estate, not just read about it.  Maybe the time spent in the never ending SEO conversations could be better spent learning a new skills that could be applied to blogs.  There is a great way to get back links that the coaches don't talk about and that is by creating posts that get attention and are linked to by other blogs.   Very powerful but it is a lot more work than leaving "great job" comments with links on other peoples blogs.

I will continue to publish comments from Realtors on the St. Paul real Estate blog, but I will also be deleting the comments that are left just so the blogger can get some back links.  You can listen to the SEO Nazis out there and have a melt down about back links if you want to but please leave me out of it.  I  have a blog to write and a business to run.