This definitely includes spreading content among a wider variety of sites for more diverse back links, and using a variety of different back link text.

Besides BP, Houzz, Angies List, what are some other good "Profile" sites to start building some backlinks, leads, to your real estate lead gen. website?

This post isn't about them though, but what I want to know is why I look at my site at ahrefs.com and compare my stats vs my competitors why the heck are they ranking better than me when I have about triple to quadruple the backlinks, more of a social media presence, and just overall better content.

Google's pigeon algorithm looks for more quality content and is more focused on local so building out a site is more now than just giving it a massive number of backlinks.4.  

I didn't understand HTML, wordpress, widgets, plugins, SEO, Backlinking etc...As time went on I got better and better.  

If you don't know how to clean it up then you'll have to pay someone to do it and it doesn't come cheap.After you've cleaned up the back links you're then left with a website that no longer ranks.  

A good way to increase your SEO without a professional or a service providing you backlinks and authority to your site is to contact another website owner in the same niche that is trying to increase their rankings, and agree to write blog posts and articles for either other, linking to your respective main pages.

I do google ads, social media, bring out travel influencers and have a ton of backlinks that are starting to form. 

Again let me repeat,  Google algorithms ONLY affects you if you try to manipulate the rankings through backlinks, blogging, citations keyword manipulation.

All, i have read so many conflicting things about press releases.1), Not because your release is syndicated to 1000 sites, will you get 1000 unique backlinks.2) what about duplicate content?