SEO, Real Estate Link Building, and Google’s Evolution

Hiring a link-building company is arguably one of the worst things you can do for your real estate SEO program. In this blog post, I’ll explain what a link-building company does, and how it might affect your search engine rankings — for better or worse.

More importantly, I’ll show you how to create the kind of real estate website that naturally attracts links from other sites. This is truly the brass ring of SEO. And you’ll learn all about it in today’s lesson!

First, some definitions are in order:

• SEO = search engine optimization techniques applied to a website. The long-term goal of a real estate SEO campaign is to improve the website’s ranking in the major search engines. These ranking improvements lead to higher traffic levels and exposure for the website’s owner.
• Link Building = one aspect of an SEO campaign. The goal here is to slowly but steadily acquire links from other reputable websites, thereby improving the “link popularity” of the target site. In theory, this will lead to higher rankings in the major search engines, since all of them use link popularity as part of their overall ranking algorithms.

The problem is, there’s a lot of room for error when running a link-building campaign. If you do it right, you’ll enjoy unlimited success with your SEO campaign. But if you go about it the wrong way, you could actually see your real estate website demoted in the search engine results.

The Evolution of Link Building

Ever since the dawn of search engines, SEO companies have been trying to manipulate their algorithms in the pursuit for top rankings. It used to be easy. All you had to do was “stuff” your web pages full of certain keywords and phrases, and you would end up ranking well for them. This practice was aptly referred to as keyword stuffing.

But those were the days when the Internet was still new. Today, there are more than 1,000 times the number of websites online. Practice keyword stuffing today, and it will likely get your real estate website banned from the search engines. It’s not only ineffective — it’s downright foolish.

The next “era” of search engine manipulation came in the form of link-building companies. We are still in this era by the way, though it is slowly but surely becoming obsolete. SEO link-building services sprang up in the early 2000s. By 2005, it had become big business. These companies charge website owners a fee (sometimes a big fee) to increase their link popularity. In other words, they get paid to increase the number of inbound links pointing to the customer’s website.

This is another aspect of real estate SEO that has gotten much harder over the years. In the “early” days, the link-building company could just submit the client’s site to a bunch of web directories (think of an online directory of websites, grouped by category and sub-category). And then presto … the client’s search engine rankings would shoot up. All of those directory links would tell the search engines that this was a popular site, and was therefore deserving of higher rankings. So we saw the rise of another cottage industry — the web directories.

In the beginning, there were only a few of these directories. And they were actually quite useful. The Open Directory Project (DMOZ) and the Yahoo directory come to mind. But when people realized you could make a ton of money by charging webmasters for inclusion in your directory, it created a directory explosion. You could call it a “bubble,” in real estate terms.

But Google quickly caught on to this strategy. And they did something about it. You see, Google’s business model revolves around its user base. It has the largest user base because it strives to be the best at delivering quality, relevant results for every search you perform. But it can’t do that if websites are paying for link popularity.

Here’s why…

Let’s say you have a quality real estate website with lots of useful information. Let’s further assume that I have a crappy website with a few pages of “fluff” content. But I’ve spent several thousand dollars submitting my site to a boatload of web directories. So now I have more links than you. Should I outrank you? Would you be pleased with a search engine if they sent you to my crappy website? You can see the problem with this strategy. It’s artificial link popularity. It’s a way to game the system. It’s a false measure of website quality.

So what do you think the search engines did next? They started to discredit and devalue websites that got most of their inbound links from web directories and other forms of paid placement. This was known as the web directory crackdown. It first happened in 2004, and then again (big time) in 2007. Today, web directories are no longer a viable strategy for SEO. They are a waste of money.

You’ll notice a pattern here. It’s sort of like a game of cat and mouse. SEO people find a way to manipulate the ranking algorithms of search engines. And then the search engines find a way to spot and penalize the manipulation. For the webmasters who engage in this practice, it’s often a cycle of boom to bust. They manipulate their way up the rankings, and then they get slammed by some new filter that devalues their website.

Sometimes, they get de-indexed entirely (which means they no longer show up in the search engines at all). It’s a short-sighted and senseless approach to real estate SEO, if you ask me. Not to mention a big waste of time, energy and money.

The Future of Real Estate SEO

So what is the future of real estate SEO? Where should you, as a webmaster, focus your time and energy? I’ve been watching the evolution of search engine optimization for a long time. I’ve worked in the industry for years (though I now function as a consultant, for the most part). So I feel that I’m well qualified to answer this question for you. Here’s my advice.

If you want to ensure your long-term success in the search engines, you should build the kind of real estate website or blog that engages people with useful and interesting content. It’s not rocket science. I know. But you’d be surprised how often people lose sight of this simple concept.

You see, search engines are slowly but surely moving toward a ranking model that relies more heavily on user behavior and usage patterns. How do people behave once they find your website through a search engine? Do they hit the back button and bail out? Or do they spend some time on the site and read several pages of content? This is referred to as usage data in SEO circles. And it’s nearly impossible to manipulate. After all, you can’t force people to like your real estate website and spend time on it. The content of your site will either engage people or repel them. And if those visitors have clicked through a search engine to find your site, they can be tracked by way of browser cookies.

So the goal of any SEO program should be to create a link-worthy website. This is the kind of site that naturally acquires links from other sites, on the merits of its content. If you can accomplish this, you will enjoy endless success in the search engine optimization department.

How to Create a Link-Worthy Website

If you build a real estate website that’s chock full of useful and original content, you will engage your readers. And if you engage your readers, you will eventually perform better in the search engines. Additionally, other bloggers and webmasters will be more inclined to link to your site. And you won’t have to ask for, or pay for, those links. It will just happen organically.

This is the brass ring of real estate SEO. This is the kind of strategy that search engine providers have recommended from day one. It’s the kind of strategy they reward with better rankings. Nothing else matters if you get this wrong.

Forget about gaming the system. Forget about link-building companies, web directories, and reciprocal-linking schemes. Focus your time and effort on building a resourceful website (see tips below). Create the kind of site that others will link to, as a resource for their own readers.

It’s a long-term strategy, no doubt. But it will bring unlimited SEO success in the end. Best of all, you’ll be able to sail through future search-engine algorithm adjustments unscathed. You won’t be a victim of the boom-and-bust cycle that has always plagued the search engine manipulators.

“But I only have a basic real estate website,” you might say. “How can I make it link-worthy? How do I set it apart from all the other sites in my industry?”

To accomplish this kind of SEO success, you need to go beyond the basic “agent website.” You need to create something unique and useful. Here’s an example of how to create such a resource:

Thinking Beyond the Typical “Agent Website”

Let’s say you have a basic real estate website with information about your company’s history and services. The problem is that every other agent in your market has the same kind of site, at a minimum. It makes the reader say “who cares?”

Let’s think outside the box for a moment. Let’s put on our SEO thinking caps, and see if we can come up with an idea for a unique and resourceful website. How about creating a news site? Is there a website that offers real estate news for your housing market exclusively? If not, you could easily fill this void.

Creating a real estate news website is not as hard as you might think, from a technical angle at least. Set up a web-hosting account, purchase a WordPress blog theme that’s designed specifically for news sites, and you’re ready to go. Next, you could set up a Google Alert for topics relating to your housing market. The news comes to your email inbox automatically. All you have to do is expand on it with your own personal commentary and insight.

Now you have something more valuable than the typical real estate agent website. You have an industry news service that caters to homeowners and home buyers in your area. It will keep people on the site longer. And it will help you attract links from other websites (if you do a good job reporting the news). Add in some basic lead-generation techniques, and you will soon have an effective business-building tool at your disposal.

This is the natural approach to real estate SEO and link building. This is the kind of publishing model the search engines reward with better rankings. It avoids manipulation and focuses instead on reader engagement. It will create a more favorable pattern of usage behavior, through reader engagement. It is viable over the long term.

How We Can Help

If you’re ready to take your SEO program to the next level, we can help. We offer a variety of services that can help you achieve some of the things discussed in this article. For example…

1. We can help you customize a WordPress blog to transform it into a news website (as mentioned in this article).
2. We can help you create high-quality content to make your website more engaging to readers (also mentioned in this article). Learn more about our writing services.
3. We offer real estate SEO consulting services, to help you understand the concepts covered in this article.

If you need help with any of these things, please let us know.