A little over a month ago the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M announced a Texas real estate blog competition.  They hand picked a number of blogs and sent then out in their weekly e-newsletter, which is called RECON.  Readers were asked to vote for their favorite real estate blog.  This went on for around a month.  The blog you are reading made the final list and was posted on a page rank 4 page on the Real Estate Center's website.  The result was amazing.

My blog suddenly ranked on page one of Google for the term real estate blog.   My Austin real estate website suddenly jumped to #6 on the first page of Google for the term Austin real estate.  But it wasn't to last.  What happened was the post about the blogs that made the top 10 was on the Real Estate Center's current RECON page, the content of which changes each week.  The top 10 list of Texas real estate blogs moved to an interior page on the Real Estate Center's website and didn't make it into Google's index.  The result was my blog dropping out of sight for the term real estate blog and my website dropped back to page two.

Anyone interested in search engine optimization (SEO) should see the lesson in this.  My blog and site were propelled to higher rankings as a result of being on a high page rank page from a very respected and trusted site about real estate.  The sudden jump in rankings followed by the sudden decline as a result of how the Real Estate Center's placement of my Austin Real Estate Guy blog confirms what any webmaster who practices good SEO techniques suspected about getting a link from a great page on a great site.

Of course it was also very flattering that my blog ma top 10 list as well.  Thanks to anyone who voted for it.