Mary Mc Knight at BloodhoundBlog UNCHAINED Social Media Markting Conference, brought to you by Zillow.com

Brian, this has certainly (but not surprisingly) sparked some controversy.  I enjoyed reading Jonathan Washburn's extensive comments above.  While I'm not an expert on these matters by any means, I typically follow this advice:

Do not worry about your SEO!!! Let the blog platform providers take care of that.  Just focus on creating great content; if you do, the incoming links and consumers will come.

It seems to be working well enough.

Another great reason for gatherings like this is to get everyone thinking. I love it.. :-)

Brian, I just took a look at your most recent "teaser" post: "Loan Officer Survival Guide"  and there was not a "nofollow" tag on your "Continued" link.  Here is the html for the last sentance or so of the post: 

I didn&rsquo;t learn one new idea from Chris&rsquo; book, just a <a href="http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/?p=2985" title="bhb" target="_blank"><strong>CONTINUED</strong></a><br />

Here is what a link with a nofollow tag looks ilke:

<li><a rel="tag" rel="nofollow" href="/blogs/azbrady/tags/arizona%20real%20estate">arizona real estate (2)</a></li>

If you send over the post in question I can take a look at it

P.S. If anyone ever wants to see for themselves whether a link has a no follow tag attributed to it, you can right click any web page
and select "view page source" from the dropdown window, then do a keyword find (CTRL + F) for the word "nofollow

(On all ActiveRain blog posts you will notice quite a few "nofollow" tags to internal pages on ActiveRain, we do this to show Google what the important pages are for them to index.)

This stuff is all so technical. You know I don't think I have EVER heard 2 SEO experts agree on anything! Why? That's simple.....they are trying to sell us something.

Here's what I do to achieve EXCELLENT Serps. I write about what I know...real estate in Poinciana and I do it 3 to 4 times a week. That's it. No keyword stuffing, no long/short tail chasing, no key word density thingies. Just plain old good content posted consistantly. It works and it's simple.

ActiveRain is NOT the almighty Purple Pill that can cure all the ills of the world, let alone a slower real estate market. There are any number of things that can distract us from focusing our energy on activities that lead to generating revenue. So the advice to apportion our time wisely is good advice.

However, I personally take offense to Mary's comment:

"You are helping someone who is not really helping you back"

Since its very inception, ActiveRain has been solely focused on providing a network of value and benefits to its members. As someone who has the unique perspective of being on both sides - as first a licensed RE agent and member, and now as a paid AR Staff - I can honestly say it's our genuine drive and desire to serve and help our members that motivates us and fuels our purpose.

Oh, and so I guess, the whole premise behind conversation blogging is off base? If i get any consumer-generated comments to my post, I should delete them immediately? Or better yet, I will just disable the ability to comment altogether. Let's forget engaging our readers. Let's forget about involving them in the dialog. YIKES!

hhhhmmmmm.....  interesting..... I am still learning so much of this... and even though I respect Mary, I am confused and baffled by some of her comments. And I think Jon brings up some good points. The biggest one....  more comments on your blog hurt you.  That just doesn't make sense... I thought google liked lots of comments, especially on outside blogs.

On another note... AR has certainly helped my business.

Overall..... yes, a good platform will help in searches....  such as RSS Pieces or AR.....  but not to worry about key words?  I try both keywords and quality content.  If keywords weren't important, then why use these keyword tools that tell you what keyowrds to use or how a consumer found you..... why confuse me even more now, when I thought I was getting the hang of this.....  ;o(

When I was getting my finance degree at UNLV, I enjoyed the subjectivity of some of the accounting exercises. Depending on how one applied GAAP, or which type of depreciation was chosen, the bottom-line results could be totally different. It was like one puzzle with many different solutions -- but there was always one 'most correct' solution.

SEO seems to be the same way. Mary and Jonathan both make compelling points, and I'm sure if we brought two more SEO people into the conversation we would have four viable strategies. So how do real estate agents and lenders know who's right? Which SEO strategy is the 'most correct?'

A few people asked me to chime in on this post. I started writing a comment and it just kept getting longer and longer. Instead of leaving a long comment on this post, I decided to address this issue on my ActiveRain blog. After all, I wouldn't want to leave a long comment and risk hurting the keyword density of this post (only kidding) ;-)

Brian, Here is a link to the post that i referenced above. I typically don't put links in other peoples blog so I am putting a link here in a seperate comment. Feel delete this comment if you would rather me not link. No hurt feelings here.

Hi Brian, Thanks. I am interested to hear other people's opinion on this as well. I am going to follow this post to hear other people's take on the issue.

"You are helping someone who is not really helping you back" Rich you take exception to her comment, but I think it is more a general statement than an indictment. Obviously you do get juice for commenting in AR because you get points, which somehow raise your stature within the system. But what she is true generally speaking when you give some leecher a link back -followed or not, that writes some retarded comment in your blog. I think she was speaking of especially non AR blogs.

Tim - I think I understand her comment exceptionally well. I totally agree, that as 'business' owners, we should all take a long, hard look at what we do on a regular basis, to ensure that our time investments are helping to accomplish our goals, particularly if our goals are to make money. I am completely in agreement with Mary there. However, to make the statement that AR is not really helping you back is extremely unfair, especially from someone who has benefited greatly from her involvement there. But for someone who is a vendor, and makes her living from developing blogsites, it is understandable why she would say such things....

Brian on Brian: I apologize. I shouldn't pass judgment without having been there, or without listening to the entire presentation. That's not fair to Mary. Mary, if you're lurking, please accept my apology. I tend to get rather protective about things I feel passionately about, and not just because I'm an employee.

The cheap shot was deserved, in my opinion. Our group moderators can be a little 'delete' trigger happy at times. You know how that drill goes. I plan to write something addressing it soon.