Fred,

We have all our site architecture for our clients done by one the country's foremost SEO experts in order to have all search engines find our clients.  He developed over 40 websites for an NYSE company specializing in real estate advertising and publishing.  He has also done SEM for our clients.  The SEM yielded hits for the listings, but no $$$.  Competition is fierce from all three aggregators as well as the large box company spending on ad words and SEO.  I have real dozens of articles stating SEO is dead, and with google changing their algorithms every time they want to...

What they are not doing is long tail ad words.  That has yielded results for some and not for others.  We have developed different strategies for our clients and their websites to become top of mind in their marketplace.  In the long run, it has paid off for our clients.  A

Bing who?

Yes, it seems a little better recently. But I have been trying an entirely new way to go about 'pushing' the posts out & I guess it's working. 

You can push your listing right smack in the middle of Z & T if you use G+ which I have been doing over a year. Throw in a YouTube video & you're right up there with the big boys.

I'm getting great results from ActiveRain and getting phone calls, emails and office drop ins as a result of my "Virginia Mortgage Blog" !

The key to getting results is consistency and being persistent.   If you don't work at it and constantly load new and pertinent information, it will drop in relevance.   So work hard and you WILL see success !

There are way too many agents competing for the WWW.  Adword is now on top and bottom by the click.

If you have 100 reviews on Yelp, Bing will think higher than if you have none.  

The trouble is you are not realtor.com, you are not craigslist.com, You are not Zillow....

Someone called me saying he found me on Google maps. I can not find mine but I will take the call.

Fred Griffin AR is really good for SEO, I have seen a big jump in my website AllAtlantaCondos.Com from when I started posting in AR.

I'm not seasoned yet, just lightly spiced.    So far, I'm waiting to see the primary results I'm looking for (phone or email ringing from the blogs).  Secondary results of high quality links are there though!

Hard to say...I focus on getting my own site to rank.  And, it continues to grow - over 67,000 unique visitors/month now.

BTW, if things aren't ranking so well on AR, it's more likely driven by increased competition on the web now, more than anything else.

I still have many potential clients hit my web site, and my analytics tell me they are coming from my blogs.

Started in 2007 and in the last few years it is less and less. Hopefully with new ownership they can work this out for the better.

No; we have never seen any real benefit, but have a ball here.

I think it's better now than before....

Had a call yesterday from a blog on the rain.

The phone is ringing.

Not as good. I use to be first page

I will have to defer to the experts for this answer.

parked and reading

It is about the same I think

Thanks for posting this question, Fred. I'm learning from some of the masters here!

Seems pretty good, the phone has been ringing, and they mention my AR site.

 It has been a long time since I have googled myself. I am not sure where I stand.

Good morning Fred. I don't focus on SEO when I blog, but fortunately I get a steady supply of leads that come to my website.

Fred Griffin done right, ActiveRain has lots of Google Juice for many! (I keep on seeing great posts from the members who are #1 on Google - thanks to what they learned here as well as what they blog here...)

I'm pretty much new in this site. I'm working on my blogs, hope to see great results soon.

I'm getting calls from buyers. I like that. So it must be working. 

Yes Fred but I work at it every day. I also get results from other sites and blogs I have too.

I am getting first page top no problem. As to the phone ringing? Please do

not as good as before.

I am getting lots of people clicking over to my website and signing up so that is my goal.