Some benchmarks

[jonathanmartin]

So this blog has been up for a month and here is where I am at:
I am in many directories, I have 4-5 syndication blogs that point to me, on a few other blogrolls, links from forums. What next?

I am working on connecting with other local blogs to acquire more links, I currently have 331 external links to my site, many are duplicates.

But when I use the Link:http//guidetoseattlerealestate.com function on google I get no results, what is that about?

What benchmark should I be looking for? Where are some of you guys at? I am curious, it would be nice to know some pagrank/link/backlink averages. I know that there are many other variables that factor in but hey some kind of benchmark would be nice. Even a loose one.

[Malok]

The biggest piece of advice I can give regarding a benchmark is don't use one.

Keep on working, write useful & unique content for the customers/target audience and don't spend time dwelling on the SEO side of things specifically.



Regarding the rest of your multitude of questions:
Your command has a type-o in it (its missing a colon after the http).

Google doesn't tell you the whole truth using boolean logic. Go to yahoo to get a more accurate picture of what pages/links have been indexed.
If you want a truly accurate picture of where you stand with google - use google webmaster tools.


Unless you are in a totally non-competitive search query, your site only being a month old is going to likely be sandboxed/penalized temporarily for being a new site. I would think that google would consider Seattle real estate, etc a competitive search term. How long it will take you to get out will vary - anywhere from a few months to 13 months seems to be fairly typical.




And I say again: just keep working, and don't spend too much time dwelling on the numbers.