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Social Bookmarking is like getting a vote of confidence by individuals. Search engines are in the business of providing relevant and popular results to their users. Hence if you receive a lot of likes on Facebook, twitter mentions, interest pins, Digg posts, Stumple Upon posts, delicious, of course Google + shares and likes and the other million other options out there, the search engines will recognize this and rank you higher. The world of SEO now includes Social Media as part of the overall formula. Especially Google+

I am in the real estate business, and I am trying to get three key phrases to rank well for azbestlistings.com homes for sale in casa grande az, homes for sale in mesa az, and homes for sale in yuma az. These three key phrases are cities that I and two other realtors work separately. We all have our own city on the team. Hence, I want to get myself into the first 5. However, I am coming nowhere near page 1 for these key phrases, so I figured from what everybody tells me I need back links. I work all day long as a realtor, so my brain is not super focused by the time I sit down to do my seo work. Basically working two long jobs, so if somebody says go back linking I say ok, but just where do I do it in the quickest and smartest way since I do not have a ton of time to do it. Each agent is responsible for working their city or city pages.

Don't feel dumb - link building is one of the hardest things in our industry. Here is a good start: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-noob-guide-to-link-building

Thank you. I made that change. I have been wanting to do it for awhile now. Just scared, but thinking of the long term health of the site why be scared. I think I fixed the title too.  Any other thoughts?

You can have A+ on all of your pages, and still rank low. On-site optimization is just a small percentage of your SEO work. Begin to build backlinks to your site in order to improve your rankings. Check out the SEOmoz Beginner's Guide for more information - http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo

First understand how link juice flows. Decide what pages you want to rank for what keywords, so you can use your link text wisely. Here is a simple explaination of page rank http://thatsit.com.au/seo/tutorials/a-simple-explanation-of-pagerank

Yes, they have back links.

Hi Sansonj - there is no set optimum for word count when it comes to SEO - the most important thing to remember is that you should write you content for the user's experience and not just for search engines. Yes include your keywords, but make sure it sounds natural. Obviously you should judge your word count in terms of quality if you just have a sentence or two that is rammed with your keywords then this is not good, especially with the over optimization penalty looming from Google. Try to create pages that are information rich and will serve a purpose for the user - something that will actually benefit them from reading. Also try to think-  have I just created this page to rank well and it doesn't really fulfill any other purpose in relation to visitors of the website - if this is the case look how you can improve your page and actually make it beneficial for visitors.

I am looking at both.

That is good to hear

So, I should blog to drive targeted audience to my site(s) via blogging.  Then point most of the links back to the index. Once in awhile mix it up and sprinkle a few on my important pages. I am a realtor, so I have subjects like cities, subdivisions, foreclosures, listings, regular sellers, etc, etc, so it is fine to talk about all of these unique topics and point them to the for example www.azbestlistings.com and google will do what google does to get my other pages to the top? Excuse the site, as I have it being complete redone to look more user friendly to the eyes.

No, thats not what i am saying, just be mindfull how you link. see http://thatsit.com.au/seo/tutorials/a-simple-explanation-of-pagerank

They 'Google' have patents for rank modifying using seo techniques. It means they can identify what you are doing is aimed at modifying your rank. You need to wait and wait then test again. As it has a time delay.

Thank you for the private message. I know see the reply button.

How have you been trying to get it to rank? With link building? Maybe spend some more time on the page itself. SEOmoz just came out with a blog post today about this. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whats-better-on-page-seo-or-link-building I used a plugin that shows what the spiders see and it appears that a script you are using is being detected as text, which could be a real problem. You have thousands of lines of jibberish, like this: Comercial IncomeCommercial LeaseLandMulti FamilyRentals / AllRentals / DetachedRentals / SeasonalRentals / TownhouseResidential / AllResidential / CityBouseBowieBrendaBuckeyeBullhead CityCamp VerdeCane BedsCarefreeCasa GrandeCave CreekChandlerCherryChino ValleyChristopher CreekCircle CityClarkdaleConchoCongressCoolidgeCordes LakesCornvilleCottonwoodCrown KingDatelandDesert HillsDewey GrViVistaCuernavacaCuernavaca SegundoCul-De-Sac LotCustomCustom CommunityCustom HomeCustom HomesCustom HorseCustom Santa Fe