Las Vegas Real Estate Blog

Today it seems is the day to post about search engines, page rank and backlinks.  Matt put up a post about the Google page rank update and I had put up some posts about MSN Live and Google Backlinks as well. For those of you wondering what the big deal is about a page rank update, here is the reason why. Page rank is google's way of rating a page on its importance regarding the topic its about. PR is still updating, so you may get several different values, depending on which data center you hit. Good page rank doesn't necessarily equal high ranking on google or other search engines, but it does make a difference in some things. Matt Cutts in his blog talked about page rank and its trust factor, regarding link exchanges. He said that the trust factor from a site does impact on the strength of that link, i.e. its worth or lack therein.  So a link from a page rank 0 page has very little to no value compared to a link from a page with a rank of 3, like this Nevada page on Ken's website http://www.suburbanhousehunters.com/ or my Canada page. Ah, but what about new sites you ask?  Well, that's where its going to be a judgement call.  If a site has good internal links to the page, decent content, etc then you may want to go ahead.  After all, the pr pages of 0 yesterday are the pr 3's of tomorrow. Here is another post you may want to read about link exchanges and link exchange basics.

If you have a large site like we do, checking the page rank of each page can take a while. Luckily, there is a search engine site that will display the page rank for each page for you.  http://www.prsearch.biz/ will enable you to see the pr of your pages.  Simply type site:www.yoururl.whatever in the search bar and it will do a site search, showing your pages and the pr for each.  If you aren't sure about a true page rank reading, or are having a hard time getting to view the true url (like with an AA site for example) you can go to seo chat.com and use the page rank checker. Its a great free tool, especially if like me, you have an AA site and your link partners are getting the nav bar pop that changes the actual url in IE. There are also plenty of other great tools on the site as well. Have a great weekend everyone. -Charles

I was reading through Matt's post about the Google Page Rank Update.  Woo Hoo!  I was wondering what page rank member profiles went up to.  Ours went to a 3 for the http://activerain.com/lasvegasrealestate profile and 2 for the http://activerain.com/blogs/lasvegasrealestate section.  Google also updated the back links for AR as well. Our site stayed at 5 but most of the community pages went to 4 and the state link pages to 3.

The profile is showing 89 backlinks and the blog is showing 55.  Not bad considering how new the site is. You can check them using the google toolbar by pressing the page rank buttion and then selecting backlinks. To manually check your backlinks, simply type link:your url dot whatever in the search bar.  As most  you know, google only shows you a fraction of your backlinks, so you may want to check them on yahoo and msn as well to get a complete picture of your incoming links.  If your site has dropped in position on a search engine, you may want to check your backlinks as well.  Losing a lot of incoming links could explain why your site no longer ranks where it did (among many, many other factors) -Charles

When was the last time you spent time with your loved one(s) doing something fun (watching Grey's Anatomy together doesn't count)?  Taking time off is just as important as working hard. After all, isn't that the reason we are working for in the first place?  Being able to spend time with family and friends? -Charles

Normally I'm wading through email solicitations, SPAM, link exchange requests, etc but today was different. Today when I was reading my email, I received a pleasant surprise.  Someone took the time to send a short note, thanking Jacqui and I for our contributions via blogging and complimented me for updating her profile.  I had a message from Active Rain's Toby Barnett. You made my day. Which ties in nicely with my post about criteria for adding an associate. (Toby is now on her associate list.) 

It’s exactly the kind of thing my wife would do. Case in point, Jacqui always makes it a point to speak to the receptionists at her office. She knows each one individually and will bring them in coffee or candy occasionally.  One of them adopted two dogs from us as well.  To date she has never had a problem getting her messages or having clients get a hold of her through the office. 

Lately I've noticed that not all members are tagging their posts like they should.  Some seem to overtag, others leave out important tags.  Tags are a great tool to help a user find the information they are looking for. Another benefit to tagging your posts correctly is search engine rankings.  Tags help a search engine determine when and where it should rank that post.  The better and more accurate the tags, the easier time a SE will have determining what to do with your post.

Recently I went back through all of our posts and updated the tags.  All of the posts that have been marked "Featured" by Matt & Caleb, are now also tagged that way. So now if you want to see our most "important" posts according to the network, you can simply click the featured posts tag. Who knows, perhaps this one will become a featured post? -Charles

Jacqui and I are huge fans of Halloween.  Every year we have a party at our house, which is decorated to the max.  This year it took me 3 trips in our van to the storage unit to haul all the decorations home. It usually takes a few days to get everything setup and at least that long to get it all packed up and back in storage. The garage is holding just a small sample of our decorations:

Our game room has the rest of it.  Its pretty funny when Jacqui goes to the Halloween experience.  Its like Norm walking into Cheers. A few times they'll hold stuff for her to look at if they only have a few in.

Usually we have a few people over to help, but its been suspiciously quiet this year. I haven't decided 100% on a costume this year, but I think I'm going to go as Captain Jack.  The neighborhood kids love our house.  Word has spread over several blocks, so we get kids from all over that come to our neighborhood specifically to see our house. This year we're putting a cemetary in the backyard for the kids to walk through. Are there any other Halloween fans out there?-Charles 

I finally broke down and bought a new digital camera. I ended up buying an 8 megapixel Olympus model SP-350.  I LOVE it. It has 30 different picture modes and can take QUICK TIME movies with sound, which makes putting up a video podcast a breeze. The camera can take pictures up to 3264 by 2448 resolution.  It also comes with an auto flash, internal 25mb memory, 2.5 inch LCD screen, plus a slot for an additional flash memory card and a hot shoe.  You can even get a cover for it so you can take underwater pictures! Can you tell I love my tech? The lens is threaded you can put other lenses on it as well. 

I took this picture in the late afternoon without any additional light, except the auto flash: '

The one thing I will get is a wide angle lense and a power charger!  That's the only complaint I have, is that the camera didn't come with a ac adapter to charge it. But if you are looking to upgrade your camera, the Olympus is a good buy for the money. I got mine at Costco, so if it goes south on me, I can just return it for a replacement. -Charles

There have been a few contests so far, both of which are coming to an end fairly soon.  If you haven't submitted your entry(s) for the logo design contest, the deadline is this Wednesday, September 27th.  I'm sending in my tribute to tagging on the right there as well as a few others.  To submit your entry, email it to support@activerain.com I'm interested to see what everyone came up with.

The other contest regarding membership will end at the end of the month. Looking through the entries, some people were really close.  Unless of course, a ton of new members sign up the rest of the week! - Charles

Digg it

There have been quite a few posts about the impact this site is having and the amount of traffic is has been drawing. I still don't think most members have a good grasp on just how huge this site is becoming is such a short time. I checked it on Alexa, which is not the most accurate meter in the world as we all know, since the traffic data is only calculated through users that have installed the Alexa toolbar, but it will give you a general idea.  The graph below is a measure of just a 6 month window of traffic reported to Alexa through its toolbar users.

As you can see, in the last 3 months traffic has kept doubling. The reach per million users for the last 3 month period is up 1,900% 

The average page view per user is up 124% As you can see, traffic dipped briefly in August, then came back with a vengance. 

You can also post this data on your own site, using Alexa's free tools. Go to http://www.alexa.com/site/site_stats/signup?mode=graph to sign up.

There are a couple of different options:

Has anyone had any experience (good or bad) with using online classifieds websites to promote their listings/services?  There are tons of free and paid online classifieds. I know quite a few members use Craigslist and have had varying degrees of success. Does anyone recommend any particular sites or using say the local area newspaper and putting a live link in the ad? -Charles