I have had a Point2 Agent Professional site now for about 2 or 3 years. At the time, I was using a Craig Proctors Success Web Site at almost $200.00 a month. That in my eyes, was a complete waste of time and money. I was spending more time trying to optimize my site, though their Marketing Plan, which was very good, but it almost felt like I was part of an Affiliate program.
Their SEO, page optimization, was very slack. Basically, they told me, that to gain popularity in the search engines, I would have to do it on my own, and for someone who, at the time, knew nothing about SEO, it was a challenge. I was really starting to question my purchase, but I signed a contract, so I had to learn SEO, and fast, if I had any hope of ranking well. Now, I know that a Point2 site comes loaded with some page optimization already in place, but still requires a lot of work to rank well.
So over the last 14 months, I have been trying on my own, to learn SEO, so I could understand better, what I was doing and not doing right. I read some where about Goole alerts, and how powerful this is for any topic. So I set up a bunch of alerts, SEO TOOLS, ADD URL, SUBMIT SITE, REAL ESTATE DIRECTORIES, BACK LINKS, SEARCH ENGINE TOOLS, +FREE+ADD+URL+REAL+ESTATE, REAL ESTATE ADD URL etc.. These alerts basically showed me all the how's and what I should be doing to optimize my site. The only thing wrong with these alerts, is don't do too many at first, because you will be spending a big part of your day, reading emails. But, I put the time in, read almost every alert, and now I rank #1 In my Province for State Rank, #1 for Country Rank, #1 for World Rank. 
Now, I am by no means an expert at SEO, but from what I learned has helped me immensely in my plight to rank well, and it worked. The only problem is staying there, but that is for another post. So I have great ranking at Point2 Web Sites, all looks good, but I found out some real problems with my Point2 site. It is a page rank issue. Did you know that out of over 200,000 sites, there are only a few that have a higher page rank than #3. Now, before you all jump on the page rank issue, I know that it is becoming less and less important, content is the key of course, but with all my work, having almost 4000 inbound links, I cannot get passed page rank #3.
I have submitted articles, directories, search engines, you name it, my name is every where, but this is a point2 issue. Did you know that the average Point2 site has over 400 errors in the coding, mine has over 550 errors, and that's alright? I asked Point2 about this issue, and they basically told me it is not a problem, she told me that Google has 10 errors, that amazon has 24 errors, and they do fine...are you kidding me, I am no Google, a few errors will never affect their position, but for a small site like mine, it will, to some degree. There is a problem with header tags, images, HTML code, and obviously on page optimization.
Is Point2 going to do any thing about this..NO. I sometimes think Point2 is more concerned about thier own ranking than ours. Oh, and get this, I forgot to make a payment in December, totally my fault, but they downgraded me to a Standard site, if you look now at my site it is a mess, I have not had the time yet to fix it. They wouldn't even give me a break, though I have been a Customer for over 2 years, and never missed a payment..oh well. my problem. I will stay with the Standard site for now, since the professional, might have more features,but, it is not going to help me with popularity.
So, my point is, if you own a Point2 site, get your keywords exact, submit unique content, and always try to gain in bound links every day. But, you will never rank over a p3...no matter how popular you site is.
I have acieved my goals, by getting on the first page of Goole, Yahoo, and MSN. and you can too...it's just a lot of work. And I did this by not spending a dime. You can learn too, because don't rely on the size of Point2 to help you rank, it's all up to you.
PS..I am now searching for a new site, any ideas would help.
Thanks for taking the time to read...Joey Ross
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