Real Estate Web Links - 7 Steps to Link-Building Success
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by Brandon Cornett
When your real estate website becomes more visible to search engines, it also becomes more visible to your target audience. That's the whole idea behind real estate search engine optimization (SEO) - to help prospective clients find you online.
Link building is a major part of modern search engine visibility. By "link building," I mean increasing the number of websites that link to yours. Most search engines, and Google in particular, use link popularity to evaluate your website and rank it against similar sites. It happens mathematically without human intervention, but it happens nonetheless.
Okay, so now we understand the importance of links. But how do you go about finding them? How do you persuade other websites to link to yours? The following seven steps will put you on the path to link-building success.
1. Start on your own website.
Believe it or not, link building actually begins on your own website. Or at least it should. All too often, I see people throw together a new site and then rush off hunting for links, before they have a website worth linking to.
Let's think about this. Aside from online directories and other paid placements, who would be willing to link to a bare-bones website with nothing helpful or interesting to offer? I know I wouldn't. Here's the bottom line. If you begin a link-building campaign before your website has true value, you're going to have a long, hard time of it.
On the flip side, if you create the kind of real estate website that inspires others in your community or industry to say, "Wow, this is really great! I know some people who appreciate this," then your link-building efforts will be a lot easier. It all begins with what goes into your website.
2. Go after the right kinds of links.
Sure, you want a lot of links to your website. Don't we all? But you should strive for link quality before link quantity. Jim Boykin, search engine optimization expert from WeBuildPages.com, said it well: "It's not always 'He with the most links' who wins the game ... Really, very often, he with the right 10 links can beat the guy with 1,000 of the wrong links."
So what makes a quality link? In general, the most valuable links (for search engine purposes) come from older, established websites within your own niche. For example, a direct link from a website like Reals.com will likely offer more SEO benefit than 100 links from new, low-ranking websites ... or from sites outside your topic / niche.
3. Use your link-building imagination.
Linking is what makes the web, well ... a web. Links are everywhere, and so are link-building opportunities. You can generate inbound links to your website by publishing articles online, syndicating press releases, growing a real estate blog, adding your website to directories, participating in forums, plus a variety of other tactics. When you combine a unique website full of quality content with a strong imagination, your link opportunities become infinite.
4. Mix up your link text.
To earn visibility for more of your key phrases, you should alternate your link text. By "link text," I mean the words and phrases that make up the actual hyperlink.
For example, instead of having a thousand incoming links that use the phrase "Anytown real estate," you could rotate between "Anytown real estate" and "Anytown home buying" and "Real estate agents in Anytown" ... you get the idea. This will help your real estate website rank well for more phrases, thereby increasing the number of ways people can find you.
5. Track your link-building progress.
If you track your link-building progress, you'll be able to measure long-term success. It can be a real morale booster to see your efforts paying off. After all, you want to see some results to justify all your hard work, don't you? Sure you do. So keep track of your link-building progress the same way you keep track of other marketing metrics.
You'll find plenty of tools online to help you identify inbound links from other websites to yours. Just Google the phrase "backlink analyzer" and see what I mean. Yahoo Site Explorer is my personal favorite. You can use Site Explorer to quickly and easily find out which websites link to yours. Better still, you can even export this information into a spreadsheet for further use. Nice, huh?
I check my inbound links once per month. That way, I can see my link popularity growing right before my eyes. It's a nice way to validate all the hard work I put into it!
6. Keep the big picture in mind.
Sure, real estate web links will contribute a lot to your real estate website's visibility. But there's a lot more to search engine optimization than links. So if you're like me, and you tend to get carried away with individual tasks, you may want to create a schedule of SEO tasks. This will prevent you from spending too much time on any one task. Set aside some time for link building, article publishing, website improvement, etc.
My point is, don't adopt "SEO tunnel vision" to the point you neglect your website's primary offering (whether that be products, services, content, or a combination of the three).
7. Enjoy aging well.
One of the things I love about search engine optimization is that it gets easier as you go. Once you put some fundamentals in place up front, you can improve your website's visibility with less effort over time. That's because most search engines -- particularly Google -- put a lot of emphasis on the age of your web domain, your individual web pages, and the links coming into those web pages. Like a good wine, websites and links age well.
About the Author
Brandon Cornett is the author of The Agent's Guide to Search Engine Visibility, a 130-page SEO training kit designed specifically for real estate agents.
Related article (offsite): Linking Your Blog for SEO
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