The Official ActiveRain Guide

On July 3rd, my family and I were rescued by David Castilleja of Braswell A/C and Electric when our upstairs A/C unit stopped working.  I decided to blog about my great experience in an effort to get him more business.  He was quick, honest, inexpensive, and articulate. 

This morning, I received the following email:

Jason - Thanks to your recommendation, I called Dave at Braswell last night with my AC problem. He showed up first thing this morning (Saturday) and fixed the problem. I was amazed at his immediate attention and how inexpensive his service was.  Thanks for your Blog            --Mike

_________________________________________________________

After reading this message, I decided to take a quick look at the original post again:

Austin Texas A/C Repair - Braswell A/C & Electric - The ONLY company I will recommend from now on

I realized that I had forgotten to put David's phone number there!  So, I went to Google and searched for "braswell a/c and electric austin". 

What I found next may amaze you. 

That single post that I wrote on ActiveRain was dominating that particular search term, with SEVEN of the top 10 spots:

 

As you can see, I have the top FIVE results for this term, with ActiveRain, my outside blog, and my Localism page.  Localism was also in the #6 spot, and my outside team blog with four other Austin agents (www.austinhouseguide.com) was at #8.   I am also #5 for "austin texas a/c repair" with this post. 

I guess I just wanted to illustrate how easy it is to get good exposure on ActiveRain for long-tail keywords.  If you aren't familiar with the concept of the long-tail, these are more specialized SEO keywords that are easier to optimize for. 

Give some thought to fully using AR's tags, channels, Localism, and your AR outside blog to really leverage your efforts.  I have seen this happen a number of times in the past, although this one did surprise me.

Thanks for reading!

    

I noticed that the ActiveRain crew added a new feature this week that I really like.  It's a small addition.  In fact, it's almost not even noticeable, unless you spend a good deal of time on AR (who, me?).

I was looking for a previous post of mine yesterday and I noticed that my office address in the sidebar is now a link rather than just text!  I clicked on it (of course), and it opened a Google map with a pushpin showing exactly where my office is. 

Additionally, you can click again on the "street view" link to see an accurate picture of the front of our building.  Talk about making it easy to find!

This is one strong reason to have your physical address listed, assuming you actually use an office outside of your home.  I think I'll probably start referring people to my AR profile page if they are coming to my office. 

Of course, if you are intensely private, or don't want anyone to find you, that's a different story, I suppose.  Then again, this may not be the best career choice if that is the case.

I would love to see this added to the outside blog as well - perhaps that is in the works already, or it could be added easily enough?

Big thanks to the AR programmers for coming up with a new tool to help us all! 

UPDATE from Jonathan Washburn's comment below:

Don't forget the primary reason we added it: Local SEO results!

Adding your address is the first step in a multi-step process we are doing to help to make sure our members rank high on local searches.

We've actually made a TON of changes this week on the SEO front, optimistically hoping it will have positive results.

I have been out of town for several days, having attended the RE Barcamp in Houston.  Before I left, I wrote a post about leads that I have garnered from AR along with other social media sites:

How I Managed to Receive Leads from ActiveRain, Twitter and Facebook!

I told my wife jokingly that I need to travel more often, since that post gained me an additional 53 subscribers!  I might need to go to Houston every month.  :)

At any rate, I promised the comments to write a post about how to automatically feed your AR blog to Facebook.  I also later received several emails and phone calls about this. I will do my best to make this easy to follow:

First, log in to Facebook.

Then, go straight to this page: http://www.facebook.com/apps/

In the search box on the Application Directory page, type in "blogcast".  It should bring up this application:

Add the Simplaris Blogcast application and set it up to capture your ActiveRain RSS feed.  Your feed for ActiveRain is easy - mine is http://activerain.com/blogs/jasoncrouch/rss (all of them here follow the same format.

Your Blogcast will show up under your Profile page and each update appears on your Wall.

There is another application there called "My Blogs" that you could use if you prefer.  Both Simplaris Blogcast and My Blogs serve pretty much the same function, the best that I can tell.

 

TWITTER

I also had some folks ask me how to get your posts to show up on your Twitter stream.  This is very easy to set up now, since the AR staff was kind enough to add this feature awhile back. 

 

 

 

Simply go to your "My Home" page on AR (this is found at the top right of every page):

Then, click on "My Settings":

You will then see this box:

 

Just fill in your Twitter Username and Password and make sure you click on the Update button to save your settings.  I wouldn't recommend tweeting your "members only" posts, but that's just me.

Please let me know if you have any questions.  I am happy to help!

You can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/jasoncrouch

      

This may not be new ground for most veteran members, but if you are new to the site, you will probably find this information very helpful. 

I first started blogging back in 2004 on another website, although it was not for business at all.  Rather, it was just an assortment of personal stories and opinions.  I guess not all that much has changed since then - I still write plenty of personal posts here on ActiveRain.  I rarely wrote anything over there, but I have made a habit/hobby out of writing since joining AR.

 

JUST TO CLARIFY...

BLOG vs. POST - The term "blog" is actually short for "web log", since blogs were originally intended to serve as a type of online diary.  I have seen a lot of new AR members mentioning that they read my "blogs" when they really mean that they read the posts on my blog.  I have almost 600 posts on this blog.  I only maintain two blogs.  See how that works?

 

POST vs. COMMENT - So, a "post" is an article of sorts; it's an entry appearing on my blog.  A post and a comment are different.  Almost daily, I see someone say, "You have a lot of posts on this blog."  Well, yes, but what they mean to say is, "You have a lot of comments on this post." 

 

 

"HOW DO I GET POINTS?" 

You get 200 points per post, with a limit of 10 getting the automatic points each week (25 extra points per post if you select an "ActiveRain Channel").  The week ends at 11:59pm Central time Saturday night, and a new week begins at midnight.  Extra points come with getting featured on the main dashboard, and/or getting comments on your post.  There is no hard and fast rule for the maximum number of points per post, but I think it caps at around 750-800 or so.  I have one that exceeded this, but perhaps it was an anomaly.

If you write more than 10 posts during the ActiveRain-defined week, you will not get the base points, but you will still get points for comments or getting featured.  No extra points are issued for getting featured in the network groups - those simply give your post more exposure.

You receive points for comments of at least 10 words (or thereabouts) that you leave on someone else's post(s).  Comments receive 25 points each, and you are limited to 10 comments each day that will receive points.  After the first 10, you can still leave an unlimited number of comments daily, but not for points.

 

"HOW DO I GET FEATURED?" 

Usually, the featured posts are those that are well-written, and those that stimulate discussion, provide valuable real estate tips, interesting real estate experiences, AR tips and tricks, SEO information, etc.  If you want to learn how to gain a big following, I would encourage you to spend time perusing the featured posts each day (there are currently 13 at a time that are displayed on the main ActiveRain.com page, and you can see the older ones by clicking the "More Featured Posts" link at the bottom of that page).

Often, the featured dashboard will include information on changes taking place around here, or new features that are being launched, such as the recent re-design of Localism, which is ActiveRain's sister site for consumer-related content.

If you see a post that you think should be featured, you can click the red flag icon at the bottom of the post and check the "Featured" box.  This will alert the AR staff, and they can consider it for inclusion on the main dashboard.

 

"WHERE DO I FIND MORE HELP?"

At the bottom of EVERY AR page, there is a link that says "HELP/FAQ", which will take you to a bunch of helpful tutorial posts (currently just over 100) written by ActiveRain staff and veteran members including me, Brad Andersohn, Jeff Turner, Rich Jacobson, Bob Stewart, Brad Carroll, and more.  It is a wealth of information, believe me.  Most of the more frequently asked questions have answers within this group.

Additionally, you will see a link at the bottom right of every page that says "CONTACT ACTIVERAIN".  This will enable you to create a ticket for an AR staff member to assist you if you have questions or technical issues.

Lastly, you will find that most members who have been around here for any length of time don't mind helping to answer your questions.  This is a kind and caring community for the most part.  All of us were new here at some point, and the functions and features of the site are numerous and a bit overwhelming at first.

 

MY OWN PREVIOUS TUTORIALS

These are the previous tutorial posts that I have written for ActiveRain members:

A couple of Active Rain tips for newbies (and perhaps some veterans, too)

Are you a Google Juicer? ActiveRain Offers You Some Incredible SEO Power 

How to generate and track backlinks for your Active Rain profile - A few basic SEO tips 

How to Insert and Align Photos in Your ActiveRain Posts - Not Just for Newbies! 

How to Insert YouTube Videos into your ActiveRain Posts - Attention Newbies! 

How can you determine who runs an ActiveRain group? A brief lesson 

How to Navigate the "Blogs" Page 

What's all that stuff at the bottom of the post? - An Active Rain Tutorial 

How to Use Your ActiveRain "Statistics" Page - Viewing Your Subscriber List and Blog Entry Stats

If you have any questions, please feel free to call or email me anytime.  My cell phone number is 512-796-7653 and my email address is jason@austintexashomes.com.  Also, you will find that Bob, Rich, and Brad (all mentioned above) are easy to reach if you have an issue or question about the network.  I hope you enjoy your time here as much as I have!  

 

 

The first comment I made on Active Rain was August 5th, 2007.  Since then, I have amassed 7404 comments made over the past 182 days.  That means that I am averaging 40.68 comments daily here.

I could write (and have written) posts about the friendships that began as stray comments on AR, or the referrals that I have received (also covered that a few times in posts).  However, I wanted to point out that the "Google juice" is a phenomenal side benefit of commenting that you may not have realized. 

What am I talking about?

Well, it's really quite simple: The more you comment on posts, the more links you will have pointing to your Active Rain profile. 

As you know, when you submit a comment, it automatically includes your signature line, which links back to your profile page.  For example, my personal automated signature line says:

Jason Crouch, Broker - Austin Texas Real Estate

So, EVERY TIME I write a comment (if the post is public and not "members only"), this link has the potential to be seen as a backlink for my profile page, which links to my primary website, so it actually benefits both of them.  My link "anchor text" (actual title of the link) includes both my name and my primary keyword.  To change your signature, you must edit the first and last name fields in your profile.  (EDITED: Tom Lyons produced a companion piece to this post in the form of a video tutorial about how to change your signature: Changing your Signature File in Active a Video Tutorial)

HOPEFULLY UNNECESSARY NOTE: Please do not take this as a license to write 50 inane comments on random posts each day.  Try to add something of value.  If you do cut-and-paste comments, you will not only make yourself look ridiculous, you might just get banned from the site altogether.

If you are only using your name and no keywords in your signature, I would urge you to consider editing this to include something that a consumer might actually type into a search engine.  Currently, my AR blog is on the third page of Google and slowly moving up for the term "Austin texas real estate", which is our most important keyword.  My primary website is #5 for this term on Google.  On Yahoo, we are at #2 presently.

 

The reason that "Members Only" posts do not produce backlinks is that the entire post is automatically tagged in HTML with "noindex", meaning that these pages will not be included in the search engine results.  That is one reason that I try to limit my "Members Only" posts to those items that will not have interest beyond this network, such as contest announcements, or specific features of Active Rain.  Everything else just gives me an extra chance to be found by the consumer. 

 

Currently, my AR profile is showing 239 backlinks on Google, and 1,780 backlinks on Yahoo.  That is more than a respectable number considering that almost all of those are comment links from my signature.  It certainly makes you think about what your signature says, right?

I have been learning and practicing SEO for our site since 1998, and the algorithms are always changing.  In fact, when I started, there was no Google at all.  It is important to stay on top of the trends as much as possible.  Content development and blogging seem to be the new frontier for SEO these days.

 

You may be wondering how I even checked my backlinks on Google in the first place.  That is also very easy to do.  Just go to Google, Yahoo, or whatever search engine you are curious about and type the following as if you were going to run a search:

link:http://activerain.com/your profile name goes here

So my specific command looks like this:  link:http://activerain.com/jasoncrouch

This command will cause the engine to display the number of backlinks, along with the sources.  Please note your profile name may not be the same as your real name, so yours may look different.  Also, Google takes a LOT longer to update their backlinks than Yahoo, and it always shows less links than Yahoo.

 

As a side note, if you are attempting to develop inbound links on other sites or forums, you will want to make sure that they are not tagged with "nofollow", as these are utterly useless to your cause.  "No follow" means that the search engine spiders will not even follow that link.  Since you clearly want the spiders to find your page, for SEO purposes you don't want to bother placing links that will not be followed.  Clearly, there may be other reasons to comment besides SEO (see second paragraph of this post).

Here is a normal link within the source HTML from one of my AR comments (you can click View--->Source while on a webpage to see this yourself):

<a href="http://activerain.com/jasoncrouch">Jason Crouch, Broker -  Austin Texas Real Estate</a>

If Active Rain used "nofollow" tags for the signatures, which they DO NOT USE (thank God!), the link would begin like this instead:

<a rel="nofollow"

Active Rain does use the "nofollow" tags for the actual body of the comments, in order to prevent rampant comment spamming.  So, placing a link within your remarks will not help you here.

I believe in giving credit where credit is due, and this post was inspired by something I read earlier by Kay Frenzer.  I used her premise and expanded on my own experiences, as I thought this might be helpful for my friends here to know. 

Thanks for taking a few minutes to read this one.  If you have any questions, please feel free to call or email me anytime.  I am always happy to help when I can. 

Copyright 2008  Jason Crouch

I have discovered a couple of items here at Active Rain during my time here, and I thought it might be valuable to share this information with my friends. 

I am probably not the first to write about this, but I only recently figured out that it is possible to invite others to any group in which you are a member.  I guess I have spent a lot of my time in the groups where I am a founder and/or moderator (Family Ties, Active Rain Addicts, and Inspired by Song!).  I have invited countless people to my own groups over the past few months, and I thought that this ability was limited to the groups that you help to run, but this is not the case. 

If you are a member of any group that you think would be of interest to one of your AR friends, simply click on the "Invite a Member" link to tell others about it and to invite them to join as well.  The only thing that you have to know is your friend's profile name (e.g. "jasoncrouch", or "rayandpaul", or "coolestdangagentinthevalley").  In any group that you belong to, you should see this on the left ("Invite Member" is highlighted here):

One other Active Rain feature that I find myself using more and more often is the "Search" link at the top of the page:

 

 

After clicking on this, you can search by Profiles, Blogs, Blog Comments, or Groups. 

There are many uses for this terrific feature:

• Have you ever wanted to go back and find a comment that you thought was interesting?  You can use a keyword and the name of the commenter to search the Blog Comments. 
• If you are looking for a specific type of group, this is a great place to begin.
• As a prolific blogger, I have had posts of mine mentioned on occasion in posts by other bloggers.  An easy way to find these posts (and perhaps make a new friend in the process) is to search for my own name under the "Blogs" section.  I was surprised not too long ago to find about 20 articles that mentioned my name for one reason or another.  The more you write, the more likely it is that this will happen to you as well. 

EDITED: This comment from Brad Andersohn was compelling enough that I felt I should include it here:

BTW - another great search tool is the tag word search.  Just type in http://activerain.com/blogs/tags/  (then anything you want to search)  this will only pull up specific posts where those keywords were used.  It's a more refined search, but saves you the time weeding through many blogs to find what you want or need. 

Thanks so much for reading this one!  Let me know if you have any questions.