I did a google link check on my website - it shows about 138 links to my site, and almost all of them come from ActiveRain.

NONE, and I mean NONE, come from this site, where I've had my site linked in my signature for months and months....and as you can see by my post count, I have a lot of posts.

So why isn't this site showing up in my backward links?

Neither are any of my posts from another forum (not real estate).

Does google not count forums anymore?

using link: just shows a sampling of links to your site that Google chooses to show - not all of the ones Google is aware of. If you check your links in your Google Webmaster Tools account you will see all of your links - and you should see links from this site.

Thanks Doug...now I found it....over 2000 links. yikes!! That's a lot....and my PR is only 2.

I have to beef up my content more, I know. It's a very slim site right now.

Your PR problems may have more to do with the fact that you have duplicate title tags and meta tags on many of your pages - which then makes the pages duplicate content in Google's eyes. I would change that before worrying about adding more content. Content does not create higher PR but duplicate content can create lower PR

Thanks for that heads up - I had meant to go back and customize the header info for each page and I forgot - so now it's fixed.

wonder how long it will take to adjust if Google is going to grant me more PR? that would be nice...lol

Google will quickly show the changes in its cached copies of the pages and in the titles and snippets that it shows in the serps - but it seems to take many months before those changes are actually factored into the ranking.

This can be seen regularly when Realtors leave the business and their website changes to a parked page or a "no website found" page. It can often take many months before that changed site loses its former positions.

So, patience is required.

yeah, that's what I figured...it may take a year. LOL

Oh well, a PR of 2 for a not so perfect website that's less than a year old isn't half bad. when I get more content up I should do better with hit.s it's done reasonably well for me so far, gotten more than a few customers, between that and my blog.

Content can help you gain PR indirectly, though it can't be compared to the result of pure link building still it can help. If people see your site has a good content they may link back to you as the original source for such particular content.

I use http://www.backlinkwatch.com/ to check my backlinks and I've noticed something from the backlinks coming from agentsonline forum only the last keyword in my signature appeared, anyone know why?

I would rather have a small amount of quality backlinks than a thousand of less quality backlinks

The page rank that displays on the toolbar (also known as the foolbar) is only updated a few times a year, but the changes you do today will start affecting your position in the SERPs once your pages are indexed and cached with the change, the PR is there but it doesn't show on the foolbar.

Good point deepsea a lot of people don't realize that it is consistently being updated but everyone pays attention to the foolbar.

Which one does Google use in calculating link juice the one on the toolbar or the internal PR?

They use the internal PR. Ranking changes due to PR changes are noticed long before the Toolbar PR changes. When the PR changes on the Toolbar there is no immediate ranking change because that has already happened (sometimes a month or two before) when the internal PR changed.

I liked that "foolbar", you can copyright this term ;-)

In order to increase your toolbar PR you have get quality backlinks. Quality backlinks are from relevant websites and if possible an authority website.

article marketing will actually help establish both your site as an authority and give your site quality back links. just something to think about.

Most links listed by google are links associated with contents... though signatures may help but they are for real traffic and not for building PR... but still, signatures are one of the most powerful way of advertising..

admin, that makes alot of sense. i have a website in the box and i had to change a lot of the tags and webpage content. although i didn't have everything changed before the update in may so i will have to wait to see if everything i changed will matter. i also thought to have a better page rank, you have to add hundreds of pages. most sites i noticed that have page rank 4+ have plenty of pages.

I have heard that PR isn't all that important. I noticed a big improvement in SERP when I started backlinking and posting on local forums that are very active (TONS of bears who like to be punished in flame wars).

I put the street addresses (not the suite addresses) of my listings in Google and the listings on my site come up #1 (I'm a condo realtor) all for pretty much every one. This is a recent phenomenon.

That said my PR has not improved...

Thoughts anyone?

I have been working on many of the methods mentioned here but it seems that I can't get any higher SERP. I even lost some Pagerank in recent months.

If you lost page rank you need to go back and look through your old links and make sure you are still being linked to. Also your page rank will increase if you have quality backlinks going to your webpage. You cant expect a PR 4 page by having 2000 pro 0 backlinks. You can essentially think of it in this metric, if you have one quality PR 1 backlink, it will take 1000 pr 0 backlinks to cover this backlink.

So when you want to increase your page rank you will need multiple PR 4 backlinks if you want a PR 3-4 site.

Rule 1: 18 PRx links to get PRx (i.e. 18 PR5 links to get a PR5).
Rule 2: 3.339 PRx links to get PR(x-1) (i.e. 3.339 PR6 links to get a PR5).
Rule 3: 101 PRx links to get PR(x+1) (i.e. 101 PR5 links to get a PR6)

The back link watch site works well. One of my competitors has me on his web site as a new agent. Maybe they know something I don't know but on the bright side I'm getting a link off them.

While we all want PR5 backlinks, we are starting also with a PR 0

The PR 0 of today may be the PR 4 or 5 where you could have been prominantly displayed.

My favorite one is http://www.analyzebacklinks.com/

Conrad, good find. I particularly like how you have the option not to repeat links from the same domain.

To reply to the original poster. I would not rely to heavily on signature links for SEO purposes, for general internet marketing, yes!
If you are looking to boost your rankings, I would do some recip. links with sites that offer great value, and do SEO themselves.

A good test, is to plug in the first 4 words of their <title> tag, and see where it ranks at on Google. If it is not on the first 3 pages or so, if probably is not a great link. Good trick, and it works!

Good luck in your SEO efforts, it is a long haul... but can pay off for you immensely.
Take care!

Duplicate meta tags are seen as duplicate content? Surely there must be a lot of sites out there that have the same text in their title and description?

None of the tools for viewing backlinks are 100% accurate, in my experience.

[quote=LVVR]Duplicate meta tags are seen as duplicate content? Surely there must be a lot of sites out there that have the same text in their title and description?[/quote]

There are, but it is not highly recommended. It may not be considered dup content, but you have to remember what those lines represent in the search engine. The title tag is going to be the first thing that they see, and the description should be your spot to give the searcher a little more incentive to click your link. Keeping them the same when all of the others on the same page as you have different information will hurt you in the long run. It only takes a minute to change, and can increase your click through rate just by having different information.

Also, important to remember that lot's of links are good for ranking but the PR of the link is relevant to your PR. There may be different opinions on this issue.

For instance:

10 inbound links from 0 pr sites are less helpful to your site
in terms of gaining pr than 5 high pr sites. Maybe someone can show that 10 0 pr sites can give your site pr (I am not sure) but what is important to think about is if you are seeking one way links would you rather go after 5 high pr sites for a one way link than the time it takes to go after 10 sites? Or how about 100 one way pr 0 links vs. 25 pr 4 links?

As your site becomes an authority site you will find webmasters interested in trading articles between each others website as well blogroll link exchanges. Now, this is not the same as one way links but you will find higher pr sites willing to trade with you for good content alone.

Here is an example. Maybe you wrote an excellent 500+ word article about the foreclosure process and you put a link with anchor text to a post or page on someone's site that is about foreclosures. Maybe a foreclosure expert. Your site is PR1 theirs is PR3. You and the other sites webmaster may become friends. He writes a nice article on short sales which you specialize in and he decides to link his short sale article to a very nicely written 500+ word article about short sales that you wrote and have on your site. What has happened? You gave him a deep link to his site on a particular topic and he exchanged a deep link to your site. No tricks involved. Just good simple link exchanges between two authority sites.

This topic can be expanded upon and tremendous depth.

I think you will find that the other webmaster will realize that the search engine is more interested in the exchange and interlinking of real strong content between authority websites than the fact that one site is PR4 and the other PR1. Thus, you have gained a link from a PR4 site very naturally and maybe from a PR0 page. But, that's okay.

What are some other good real estate blogs or forums to work in?

Yes, Google do count from forums.
Google also check for relevant backlinks , i mean if you have real estate website and have back links from real estate website will have more quality than from other websites.

The Yahoo Site Explorer was the best way to check your backlinks up until now, but it has been shut down about 2 months ago. The best options now are the SEOMoz open site explorer and Majestic SEO.

Here are a few choices for looking up backlinks:

http://www.geekestateblog.com/yahoo-site-explorer-is-gone-now-what/

Google does not show all links. They only show a sample.
You can get links from:
Press relases
Articles
Blog posts
Other websites
Forums

Also, don't worry about PR. It is not as meaningful as many think. You could have a PR3 website that outperforms a PR4 website. PR isn't everything.