At least you are not going for page 1. In real estate page 1 is dominated by the big boys so it is very difficult for us small guys to get in to page 1.
1. You are promoting a real estate course so you may not want to compete with the big real estate agencies for position. You may want to use different keywords for each post and try to use keywords that don’t compete directly with sellers of properties – the big boys. If you see my baking blog you will notice I have a variety of topics / posts with each one having their own keyword, see http://bachutha.com so that I get visitors for various reasons. Some pages appear on page one and others on other pages of a Google search but that does not matter. What matters is that I am getting visitors (about 400 per day) and building reputation and trust with my readers. Eventually, that pays off. Took about a year to get to 400 visitors per day. Also you may want to get a professional SEO package to analyse each page and rank it.
You could write articles on job opportunities in real estate, or how to go about valuing properties which may create interest in your courses, from buyers and job seekers. Explain about investment opportunities and how to project ROI which may attract the interest of bankers, asset managers and accountants, can job seekers get a grant to attend your courses? … I too have a “real estate” site (see http://www.drpetersnews.com) so I know how difficult it can be but don’t get discouraged as the experienced gained will help you with other blogs or websites in the future.
2. Back links are very important but as you will notice from my blog I hardly go out to build back links myself. So I was not affected by the April Goolge back link massacre, in fact my positioned improved. Remember Google takes notice of your blog if people take notice of your blog.
3. When I first started blogging I was writing in Google English but now I have dropped it for a more sane writing style. People return to your site if they find it interesting. Having a boring blog at number one position in search engine results will let everyone know, very quickly, that your blog is the one to avoid. So top ranking may be a double edged sword.
4. The thing I did notice with both my sites was that when I was writing two quality articles a week for about two to three months my Google page rank moved from 0 to 2. That was a short very intensive few months. I don’t write at that pace any more as it can be quite exhausting.
5. Make your site memorable if you want return visitors. I’m using Atahualpa theme.
6. Use http://www.google.com/insights/search/ to checkout your keywords. Some times using a popular keyword will guarantee you the last position in Google search as everyone else is using it too. Sometimes using a keyword that is not popular guarantees that you will never be found. Also, keywords go through fashionable phases. Some months or years they are very popular and at other times no one searches for them.
7. Once you have published an article on your blog don’t keep editing it and changing it frequently. If you do that you will find it listed on page 1000 of Google search engine results. It happened to me a few times in the early days of blogging so now I don’t change an article once published.
I do hope this helps.
