Its a thing of beauty really, staring at that blank slate and just waiting for your very first backlink to show-up, almost as if its the first star in an evening sky. Once you see it there, glittering on your dimly lit screen, you know that you’re well on your way. Every web entrepreneur has experienced this at one point or another, and don’t you forget that every website was, at one point, new to the Internet. So forget about what all of those so called “seo gurus” are saying. Link building is an art form in which we can all create a masterpiece, not just the artists themselves.
Link building, as with any seo(search engine optimization) technique should be used in conjunction with other techniques to create a harmony between your website, your visitors and of course the search engines. If you can find a common middle or a balance between these three very different, yet very important parties, you will have mastered the art of seo.When Link Building and Real Estate Meet in the Middle
Simply uploading a website into cyberspace isn’t enough to be successful in any niche, but it especially won’t help us real estate webmasters. Real estate is one of the most competitive niches online and as if that were not enough, it is heavily abused by spammers as a means to make an easy buck. Due to the sheer number of spam websites that float to the top of many real estate search terms, web searchers, webmasters and even search engines have begun to grow weary of new real estate websites. This means that you will have to work diligently to create and possibly even more challenging, maintain a professional and credible profile for your business.
There are numerous factors that may effect the way your business projects itself across the Internet. The obvious factors are the professionalism of your website, the manner in which you present yourself to clients, fellow webmasters and so forth, but you may not realize that the links you build to your website also reflect on your business at a professional level. You must understand that everything we do online is traceable. If you use a regular username, people can search that username and find every website that you have publicly participated with, are you comfortable with that? Keep that in mind when you begin to build links aka promote your real estate site, your actions are a reflection of you.
Now lets get right down to the nitty gritty of building a successful real estate website. If you are one of the many misguided new real estate agents hoping to turn thousands of web visitors into home buying machines (that’s clients for you dull people) you may be in for a mental earthquake of sorts. In order to get your website seen by anyone, let alone thousands of people, you are going to have to start building some quality, authoritive links that will present your site to the search engines, think of it as a sacrificial offering to the Internet God’s.
Here are Your 10 Ideas for Building Great Backlinks - To Real Estate Websites of Course!
1. Go where the agents are - When it comes to link building, sometimes you just have to follow the crowd. Chances are that if any particular website or social gathering is already popular with real estate agents, there’s a good reason for it, find that reason! Popular sites like ActiveRain, RealTown, Zillow, Real Estate Voices, WannaNetwork, Zolve and even MySpace, Twitter and Facebook all offer excellent opportunities to get your links out there and visible to the search engines and the public.
2. Snatch up all of your keyword real estate - Alright so you might be wondering what keyword real estate is, so I am going to tell you. Lets say for instance that your primary search term is “Portland Real Estate” , simple enough, but we want to not only target that search term, we want to own it. Every time a person or a search engine finds a page about Portland Real Estate, they should also find a link to your site, so our goal is to gather up as much virtual real estate for that term as we can. Use these examples and then see how many more you can find:
- http://squidoo.com/portland-real-estate/
- http://hubpages.com/hubs/portland-real-estate
- http://portlandrealestate.blog.friendster.com
- http://geocities.com/portland-real-estate/
- http://myspace.com/portland-real-estate
- http://portland-real-estate.spaces.live.com
- http://digg.com/users/portlandrealestate
- http://portland-real-estate.wordpress.com
- http://portland-real-estate.blogspot.com
Are you starting to understand where I am going with the keyword real estate idea? There are literally hundreds, if not thousands of these keyword targeted pages that you could create for free and best of all each one would have quality links directed back to your website. Be sure that you fill these pages with quality, unique content that not only people will want to read, but also that search engines will index. The idea of these pages are to increase your backlinks and drive click through traffic to your site so use them wisely.
3. Make friends and links in the forums - One of the large bonuses we have as real estate webmasters is that there are plenty of real estate targeted forums that we can use to build links and network with other agents. Keep in mind that we are building a professional appearance so you really have to make a valuable contribution each and every time you post in a forum, let your signature line do the selling. There are a bunch of great forums, that offer quality backlinks in your forum signature along with excellent contacts, here are my favorites:
- Real Estate Webmasters
- Bigger Pockets
- Real Estate Forum
- Wanna Network
- Agents Online
- Commercial Real Estate Forum
- Real Estate Discuss
4. You might also try home repair and DIY forums - These can be a great place to meet homeowners and people potentially interested in purchasing a new home. A few of my favorites are:
- DIY Chatroom
- Do It Yourself Forum
- House Repair Talk
- Bob Vila Forum
5. Become part of the conversation - Some people call this blog commenting and various other names, but here is the secret, just think of it as being a part of something bigger. Blogs are designed to create a community, that is why they have options to comment and/or vote for your favorite posts and so on. By commenting on blog posts you are not only adding value to a blog, you are also building that community. One comment inspires others to comment, its a chain reaction and most bloggers appreciate you leaving a good comment now and then. Here is a great list of do-follow real estate blogs to get you started, but remember to contribute.
6. Join the free seo friendly directories - It amazes me that so many agents seem to have difficult time grasping the concept of directory submissions. They are really easy! These days, reciprocal linking is pretty much out the window, Google has caught on and people just aren’t doing it as much any more. So why sign-up for directories that require reciprocal links? You don’t have to sell your soul to get a good link, here is a list of 1600 directories that you can submit to for free.
Have You Tried Building Links Outside of the Box?
You know what I mean. The ideas above are great, they work great and they are an easy way to get quality backlinks to your real estate website, but they are also the same ideas that you have probably heard over and over. So try thinking outside of the box to come up with new links, here are some ideas to get you started:
7. Start a blog on eBay - We are looking for authority sites, right? Well then, one the of the most authoritive sites I can think of is eBay and they will allow their registered members to setup their very own blogs, that you can use to write articles and yes, even post links(wink….wink..). Get your own eBay Blog here.
8. Offer your expertise - You know it surprises me how guest writing is so often overlooked. I am constantly visiting new websites to generate ideas for building links and I rarely ever see this as an option. Guest writing is as easy as sending an email to express your interest and typing up an article. You get quality in-content backlinks for your work and probably make a new friend or contact along the way. I highly suggest this method as a primary link building tool in your arsenal.
Sometimes it can be difficult tracking down blogs or websites that might be interested in allowing you to write for them, but there are some searches that you can try. Run a Google search for some of the following queries, be sure to leave the quotes in place:
- “This guest post was written by”
- “guest writers” real estate
- inurl:real estate “our contributors”
- Looking for “guest bloggers” real estate
- “write for us” real estate
- inurl:real estate “write for us”
9. Post free advertisements for your website - You may not know this, but there are websites that allow you to announce your website to the public. Typically, they will ask you to write a minimum 400 word post with no more than two to three links to your site. There are a bunch of them out there but Free Ad Blog and Free Blog Post will get you started.
10. What about podcasting - If you run a blog, you may be able to jump on the ever popular podcasting bandwagon. How you ask? Simple, Odiogo will automatically convert your past and future posts into podcasts with a simple plugin. Once you have been converted you are ready to start submitting your blog to the thousands of podcasting directories out there.
Link building is much easier than the majority of people make it out to be. Sure it can be boring scouring the Internet for that next link, but its pretty fun when you find it, believe me. Take these ideas and expand on them, see what you can come up with for your next link building campaign.
