Earlier today I was browsing through some of the blogs on our BiggerPockets Blog Network and saw a post that caught my attention. It didn’t grab me as much for the content, but because the author shared with everyone the fact that the post had first page rankings on Google, soon after going live.

The post, titled I Buy Houses in Joplin Missouri, written two days ago, is now the top result for “buy houses Joplin” and the second result for “buy houses Joplin Missouri” out of 107,000 and 110,000 total results in Google’s index.

The SEO Benefits of BiggerPockets Blogs are Undeniable

This is just one of many case studies examining the search engine optimization power of posting on the BiggerPockets Blogs system.

If you haven’t set up your blog already, what are you waiting for?

Sign Up for BiggerPockets Today!

This Article is Copyright © 2004-2009 BiggerPockets, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Real Estate Blogging Case Study: SEO Benefits of BiggerPockets Blogs

Over the past 4+ years, BiggerPockets has steadily grown, forging its place as the leader for the real estate investing community. We’ve gone above and beyond in an effort to meet the needs of our users, and as a result, new members from every corner of real estate investing have flocked to our site.

As this has happened, we’ve also noticed that a new group of members have also begun to participate here on BiggerPockets — professionals who are looking to build their businesses, homeowners looking for advice in selling their home or in dealing with possible foreclosure, renters seeking help with their landlords, and many more.

As a result, we realized that we needed to adjust, make some changes, and start accommodating these new users. As such, you’ll note that we’ve added new forums, and have other plans to serve the new audience who are now calling BiggerPockets home.

The following information details many of the changes we’ve made, and we’ll continue to let you know as we strive to transform the way people interact online regarding real estate.

BiggerPockets will always focus on the investing community, but we realize that others involved in real estate are also seeking a place to call home — we are working hard to be sure that they too, feel comfortable here.

Forum Changes / Upgrades:

We just launched a drastic change to the look and feel of the BiggerPockets Forums. After years of having the same design, and a ton of feedback from our membership, we’ve reorganized how things are found on the forum.

Here’s a list of the changes:

1. We created new Sections called Categories that are color coded. Within each section are now sub-sections, and within those are individual forum categories.
2. For each Section, we’ve added a navigation area on the left sidebar called Jump to Category, which will quickly take you to the section you seek.
3. We’ve added a Popular Tags area in the left sidebar so members can quickly follow discussions under the tags they are interested in.
4. We moved our Stats section to the left sidebar from the bottom of the page.
5. We added a new search feature at the top of the forums.
6. We added RSS buttons for the feeds of each forum category, so members can subscribe to those that interest them.
7. On each individual forum category page, you can now see the description of that category so there is no confusion as to the purpose of that category.
8. We moved the Related Topics to the bottom of the forum topics as requested by our members. 

We’re working closely with the membership to make this change as easy to digest as possible, and are open to suggestions, as always.  Nothing is locked in stone, and we do have a few tweaks to make to the final layout of the new forum front page, but you have the general idea of where we’re headed now.

New Forum Topics

In addition to all of the structural changes to the forums, we’ve actually removed some forum topics that weren’t being utilized and have added some new ones.

The additions include:

- Buying Real Estate – Found in the new General Real Estate section of the forums, this forum was created so the non-investors could have a place to discuss any issues related to the purchase of a home.

- Selling Real Estate -  Also found in the new General Real Estate section of the forums, this forum was created so the non-investors could have a place to discuss any issues related to the selling of their homes.

- Political Talk – Found in the Off-Topic area, this forum was born out of a need to separate the heated political debate on the site from everything else.  Enter if you dare! 

We felt that BiggerPockets has become well known as the go to investing site, but realized that others might feel unwelcome.  We hope that the Buying & Selling forums, as well as our new real estate professionals area (for real estate agents, lenders, & contractors) might make those who may not have considered participating on BP, think twice.  I hope so!

BiggerPockets Site Awards

When we announced the new Awards system on the site, our awards page showed a tally of all who received any given award, but there was no way to tell who all the winners were.  We’ve since added a directory of all award winners for any given award.

Just go to the Awards page and click on any award, and you’ll see everyone who won that award.  You can sort the list by date the award was granted OR alphabetically.

Influence Fully Implemented

When we first announced our Influence system, we had only deployed it to include activities on the forum.  We’ve since added to the system to include activities on the blogs, bulletins, profile, etc. Members can now gain influence from Referring New Members  by invite, referral link, or by importing their colleagues through other mail systems.

The influence system has made it easy to quickly see who is on the site for themselves (those with negative influence), and who wants to participate, help others, and be a contributing member of the community.

Additions to Our Stats Page

Our Site Stats page now shows those members with the highest influence score (a great way to see who has contributed the most to the community), and you can see those site members who are currently online.

PRO Account Upgrades

Thanks to a great suggestion from Nick J. (motiv8td), we’ve added the ability for our PRO members to see any external links that are sending people to their profile, blog, and property listings.  Once a visitor goes to any of those places through an external link, it will show up on your dashboard stats tab.

We know that our PRO members will find this addition to be incredibly useful!

Not Enough to Digest?  More to come!

As our long-time members already know, we’re always working to improve the user experience on BiggerPockets! Be sure to let everyone know what we’re up to, and that BiggerPockets is the place to be for real estate investors, professionals, and anyone else with an interest in the world of real estate.

 . . . doing so gets you some great influence points!

Thank you, 

Joshua Dorkin, Founder/CEO

Coming up next: More tweaks to get the forums perfect, adjustments to the member dashboard allowing them to choose which forums to subscribe to, other site improvements, and much more.

This Article is Copyright © 2004-2009 BiggerPockets, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

BiggerPockets Solidifies its Position as the Go To Real Estate Social Network

This has been a week of milestones here at BiggerPockets.com! In the last few days, we crossed the 150,000 forum post and 34,000 member milestones.

I just wanted to thank everyone who has been a part of our success!

In addition to the tens of thousands of members, millions of visitors have come to BiggerPockets to find the real estate information they seek.

We owe everything to you all.

Thank you, and please continue to support BiggerPockets.com!

This Article is Copyright © 2004-2009 BiggerPockets, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

New BiggerPockets Milestones: 150,000 Forum Posts, 34,000 Members

BiggerPockets.com launched two great new features to the site today: Events & BiggerPockets Pro

Real Estate Events

The events system is an events calendar application, where members can find out about and choose to attend real estate auctions, classes, seminars, conferences, open houses, real estate club meetings, social events, webinars, etc.

When a member chooses to attend an event, that event will show up in their Dashboard, and they will be sent a reminder of the pending event the day before.

BiggerPockets Pro Accounts

Our BiggerPockets PRO Accounts gives members the ability to upgrade their account to get many value added features including:

• See who is visiting your profile, blog, and property listings
• Join as many groups as you’d like
• Send Private Messages to any member
• Increase your colleague requests from 10 to 25 at a time
• 1 Free press release per month
• Enhanced forum signature
• Ability to show your profile contact info to ALL VISITORS
• Show your property listings on your company’s profile
• Post events on the events calendar
• Get extra exposure for your profile on the Networking page

Here’s the chart to compare our new upgrades:

This Article is Copyright © 2004-2009 BiggerPockets, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

BiggerPockets Events and BiggerPockets Pro are now Live

Today has been another exciting day for BiggerPockets.com. Earlier today, I sat down with Andrea Lopez from CBS News (4) in Denver to talk about BiggerPockets. The interview was aired earlier tonight and I wanted to share it with all of our readers:

CBS FEATURES BiggerPockets.com

Special thanks to Andrea and CBS!

I hope you all enjoyed the piece. Please share it with everyone you know!

Best,
Joshua Dorkin

This Article is Copyright © 2004-2009 BiggerPockets, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

BiggerPockets is Featured by CBS 4 Evening News in Denver!

BiggerPockets has reached yet another exciting milestone in its continued development as the nation’s premier real estate social networking website, 30,000 Members!

With a limited amount of time in the day and attention spans shrinking, it is becoming harder and harder to join every social network out there. As such, only the best thrive! We’ve seen MySpace eclipsed by Facebook, LinkedIn taking over business networking, Twitter ruling micro-blogging, and now, BiggerPockets is proving that it is the site of choice for real estate professionals, investors, and other aficionados of real estate.

We want to thank all of our members for signing up and all those people who have contributed to our success!

If you’re not a member already, Sign Up Today!

There’s much more to come at BiggerPockets – We’ll see You at 50,000 Members Soon . . .

This Article is Copyright © 2004-2009 BiggerPockets, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

30 Thousand Members and Counting! BiggerPockets.com Reaches Social Networking Milestone.

On Monday, January 12, 2009, BiggerPockets.com’s own Richard Warren wrote a compelling piece here on the Real Estate Dispatch called A National GO Zone?, proposing a solution to the nations housing crisis.

At a time when housing is one of the most critical issues in the national debate, I’m excited to let our readers know that the top politicians are also keeping their fingers on the pulse of what is going on in real estate by reading BiggerPockets.com.

As proof of this, we wanted to share with you a letter from the Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, in response to the article above.

February 12, 2009

Dear Mr. Warren:

Thank you for contacting me regarding our nation’s current housing crisis. I appreciate you bringing your article The Real Estate Dispatch to my attention.

In my view, the housing market plays a vital role in the financial sector and stabilizing this industry is a key component of our economic recovery. That is why I worked hard to keep this problem from growing as it has. Recognizing that mortgage defaults and declining home values were the root cause of the current crisis, and that Nevada was ground zero for this phenomenon, I worked hard to pass the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 (P.L. 110-289) that President Bush signed into law on July 31, 2008. Additionally, while Congress worked with the Administration to pass the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (P.L. 110-343) that provided broad flexibility to the Treasury Department to respond to the deteriorating financial system, I pushed for language that requires the Treasury Secretary to ease the number of foreclosures.

As my colleagues and I seek ways to address the economic downturn and the housing crisis, I greatly appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts and ideas on how best to confront these challenges. I took note of your suggestion to provide tax incentive to stimulate the housing market similar to those imposed in the Gulf Coast following Hurricane Katrina. As Nevada’s senior senator and the Senate Majority Leader, I am committed to doing all I can to strengthen our nation’s economy and provide millions of hardworking Americans with the relief they deserve.

Again, thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts with me. For more information about my work for Nevada, my role in the United States Senate Leadership, or to subscribe to regular e-mail updates on the issues that interest you, please visit my Web site at http://reid.senate.gov. I look forward to hearing from you in the near future.

My best wishes to you.

Sincerely,

HARRY REID

United States Senator
Nevada

HR:cs

This Article is Copyright © 2004-2009 BiggerPockets, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid Responds to BiggerPockets Article About National GO Zone