If you are not found on the first page of Google.com you do not exist!  Link building is the art of getting other websites to link to yours and is a major real estate search engine optimization strategy that many investors and real estate professionals find extremely hard to do correctly.  The goal is to get as many high quality, relevant websites to link back to yours.  It is a powerful marketing tool that can improve your search engine rankings and bring you high qualified traffic from both the search engines as well as the websites that link directly to you.

Link building and online marketing are almost synonymous.  Your link building strategy should consider the relevancy and popularity of the website(s) where the inbound links are coming from and should try and stay within the real estate industry.  The exception to this rule is if a website or directory has a lot of authority, extremely high pagerank, or is a .edu or .gov.

How To Get Started Building Quality Links

Building quality inbound links begins with creating good content.  I posted a blog about creating a good linkbaiting strategy, which should help you begin thinking about how to create good content.  As a real estate professional or investor creating good content is not that hard.  Our industry is full of niches and news giving you plenty of topics to springboard from.  Create a list of targeted websites that have good pagerank and authority and begin requesting a link exchange with their web masters.  Show them that your site is constantly producing high quality, fresh content and will link back to them if they link to you!

Here are a couple of ideas to help you design a good linking strategy for your online real estate business.  I have used all of these over time and have many number one ranked websites because of the links I have created off of these sites:

• Create Top 10 Lists ( Top 10 Ways To Sell A House Fast) or Lists Of Gurus (Top 50  Real Estate People To Follow On Twitter).
• Create And Distribute Press Releases (FreePressRelease.com, PRLog.com, and PR.com are some example sites).
• Create And Distribute Articles (EzineArticles.com and GoArticles.com are some example sites).
• Create A MerchantCircle.com, Squidoo.com, AboutUs.org, Yelp.com, and Tulia.com profile / page / blog.
• Create profiles and blogs on social networking websites ActiveRain.com, BiggerPockets.com, KleverInvestor.com, Realtown.com, Facebook.com, and LinkedIn.com. Get involved in groups and answer / ask questions in the forum sections.
• Offer to trade articles with other web masters of real estate related websites.
• Hold A Contest (See my How To Build The Ultimate Buyers List for an example).
• Create profiles and begin bookmarking on social bookmarking websites (Spicypage.com, Digg.com, Delicious.com, Jumptags.com, Mixx.com, Reddit.com, Propeller.com, Misterwong.com, Blinklist.com, Diigo.com, and Newsvine.com.
• Submit your website to DMOZ.org and pay for Yahoo Real Estate Business Directory.
• Try and get a link from the local Chamber of Commerce or your local libraries website.
• Post your listings /  available properties on classified websites (Check out www.SellPoint.com for a good property syndication tool)
• Add your blog to Technorati.com.
• Video Syndication (TubeMogul.com) – Create quick videos and distribute them to all the video sites like Youtube.com and Viddler.com quickly with a good video syndication tool like TubeMogul.com.  Make sure you property Title and Tag your videos for optimal SEO juice.
• Create a Google Profile
• Create a business profile on Hotfrog.com
• Become a member of The Better Business Bureau.

URL Or Short Tail Link Phrases

When linking to another site, instead of using their URL (web address), try using a relevant search phrase.  For example instead of linking to www.KleverInvestor.com, use Real Estate Investing Social Network.  This link gives more SEO juice than just using the URL and has a higher convertibility rate because more readers will click on it if they know exactly what the link links them to!

Stay Away From Link Farms Or Purchasing Links

A Link Farm is a network of unrelated websites that link to each other with the sole purpose of building inbound links.  Many of us have received an email from someone saying “We have just reviewed your website and have added a link to it from us.  Please link back to ours in return”.  These spammy links are not good quality links and many search engines penalize or ban link farms once they are found.  Be careful when approached to reciprocate links with websites that have too many outbound links already.

As far as purchasing links this can go either way so always do your research.  In some cases you can find a good high-ranking blog and contact the blogger to work out a purchased link.  Broker this behind the scenes and always make sure to do this within the same industry (stay away from gambling websites at all cost).  I have used sites like SponsoredReviews.com in the past to get some blog reviews done and it has worked out ok…but I would do this with extreme caution.  Too many paid links can get you in trouble with the Search Engines!

At the end of the day the more content you create for your real estate website or blog will dictate how easy it will be for you to convince other websites to link to you.  Stay persistent when requesting links from others and be careful when it comes to buying links.  I hope this little tidbit of information helps and you can always contact me if you want to reciprocate links…I will check you out and if we are a good match I would be happy to share a little link loving with you!

Cody Sperber

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