With inventories shrinking by about 27% and homes selling about 11 days earlier than before, it’s clear that the current housing market is highly competitive.
Smart real estate agents should do everything they can to stand out from the crowd when it comes to finding new clients and properties. But today, everything is done online.
In fact, 97% of people looking for a home start their search online. So how do you find them online?
The answer is real estate backlinks. This will help you get found on search engines and grow your business fast. Let’s take a closer look at how SEO backlinks work in your real estate business.
For more information, read on.
What is a backlink?
Backlinks, also known as inbound links or one-way links, are simple “blue text” links that lead from one website to another. Major search engines such as Google consider these backlinks to be “votes” for a particular page’s authority.
So, if your website has a lot of backlinks, search engines will find your website useful, valuable, authoritative and trustworthy.
Of course, it’s important to remember that there are several other factors that determine your SEO (search engine optimization) score. All these factors ultimately help determine how well a website performs in his SERPs (search engine results pages).
The higher your website is in the SERPs. More potential customers will see your website. This means more business, clients, leads, and ultimately revenue.
Is real estate link building important?
absolutely. Backlinks are very important to all industries, but their impact varies greatly.
In an industry like real estate where almost all home searches start online, it becomes imperative to make sure your website has good SEO so that it appears in the SERPs as often as possible.
Are all backlinks good?
The answer is no. Not all backlinks are created equal. In fact, having spammy, low-quality backlinks directing them to your website can even be penalized.
Simply put, one high quality backlink is worth much more than 100 low quality backlinks.
Low quality links have the following characteristics:
- Comments on forums or blog posts
- Poor quality directory links
- Content with links that are clearly paid listings
- Keyword-rich, hidden, or low-quality websites.
What about quality links? They are typically sent from websites such as:
- High domain reputation/domain authority
- heavy site traffic
- high quality content
- Related information
With these in mind, let’s take a look at real estate link building.
Backlink Challenges for Realtors
Before getting started with helpful strategies, it’s important to keep a few things in mind. There are certain challenges associated with realtor backlinks. Let’s look at some of them.
Market is saturated and overcrowded
If you’re in the real estate industry, you already know how competitive it is. The same is true when it comes to finding quality backlinks.
You could be competing with some of the biggest companies in the game like Berkshire Hathaway, RE/MAX and Keller Williams. Finding quality backlinks can be time consuming and difficult, especially in the crowded real estate industry.
Some metrics can be misleading
If you’re a realtor, you may not be an SEO expert. It can be difficult to distinguish between good links and backlinks.
In fact, even links from high-traffic, great-looking sites can be harmful links. It takes time to understand them.
Local search is very important for realtors
While general SEO always helps extend a business’ reach, the most valuable leads for realtors come from local search terms. This could be something like a ‘nearby home’.
Your strategy for getting backlinks should address this.
Strategies for Building Real Estate Backlinks
Now that we’ve covered the basics and challenges of getting backlinks in the real estate industry, it’s time to dig into the good stuff. Here are some strategies and tips for getting quality backlinks for your website.
Network first and foremost
How important relationships are is not news when it comes to the real estate industry. Who you know is as important as what you know. This is the same as building links.
The goal here is to leverage the local network for as many high quality links as possible. If you’re an active realtor, chances are you already have a sizable network, so use it for your backlinks too!
Reach out to your local network and start building relationships with other websites and blogs in your industry and region. Getting backlinks from other realtors is great, but you can also mine other local organizations, such as business or social groups.
A simple, polite email can get you high-quality backlinks.
Links don’t just get authoritative votes from search engines. It’s also a great way to build strong relationships with local businesses, resulting in increased brand awareness and visibility.
It all leads to more clients.
Create geo-targeted content
As mentioned earlier, geographic location-based targeting is absolutely essential for realtors. It’s important to create the kind of content that drives the kind of traffic you want.
Geo-targeted content includes many things such as:
- new trends in real estate
- Social life in a specific area
- new list
- Great restaurant in the area
‘Top 6 Burgers [Place]’, you’ll start getting more traffic and valuable attention — even from people who may not be looking for a home.
The more valuable your content is, the more likely you are to get links back from other websites and social media accounts.
Create as much valuable, high-quality, and geo-targeted content as possible.
Leverage customer testimonials and reviews
One of the most powerful tools available to you, no matter what industry you’re in, is social proof. Having positive reviews and testimonials can blow your business legitimacy through the roof.
I’m not talking about getting testimonials or reviews for your own business, though. With this strategy, you will be offering to other businesses.
A great way to build links to your website is to provide testimonials to other businesses. Find your favorite products and services and post a positive review. Includes:
- your appraiser
- favorite dry cleaning
- your online marketing partner
Provide a good testimony and they may post your review (with a nice link to yours) on their website. can do.
Not only can you build your authority and get useful backlinks, but you can also strengthen your relationships with local businesses. If you do this, they will be happy to provide you with backlinks in the future.
donate to a local charity
Another unique strategy for building backlinks and local goodwill is finding local charities that link to other websites.
You can offer to sponsor their website. For example, you can create a list of the top charities in your area and reach out to them by phone. You can offer to sponsor their expenses, such as website expenses. This is typically around $20/year for hosting and domain costs.
Most of the charities you give this to have never received such an offer and may be happy to oblige. You can ask them to add “X Agent”.
Note that Google gives more weight to links that are in the same region as you. Also, charities are usually highly linked, which gives them a great backlink profile for the “juice” to carry over to your business.
Not only does this look great for you and your business, but it also provides strong backlinks.
Halo
Another popular strategy for link building (not specific to the real estate industry) is to use HARO. HARO stands for Help A Reporter Out.
When you sign up for their service, you will receive emails from HARO containing various requests for expert opinions on various topics. Reporters looking for professional realtors are very common.
If your experience fits the mold of the request, you can email back professional advice tailored to their needs.That way, journalist organizations will have excellent backlinks to your website. can be obtained.
get sponsorship from school
Another very popular type of website backlink is the EDU link. These types of links are highly trusted by Google because they represent professional educational institutions. This means they are also difficult to obtain.
However, as with any charity strategy, you can try the sponsorship route.
- sports team
- music ensemble
- clubs needing sponsorship
Many schools have a blog-like section on their website that they update regularly. Even his $50 donation to a local club can make a big difference. In many cases, even a $25 donation is enough to get a link from a school.
To do this, send an email to the club’s direct contact. You can ask about sponsorship opportunities there. In most cases there is no formal process. So you can ask or suggest an amount and request a backlink in the process.
external link building
This particular strategy is a common backlink building strategy in other industries as well. To do this, you need a solid knowledge of the business around you. Track businesses that have recently gone bankrupt.
These websites likely had several other websites that linked to them. Use your best web crawling skills to find these websites. If you find a website that links to a broken website, you can write a crafted email offering to update the information with your own website link.
To find these websites that linked to companies that have gone out of business, search for “link” + “company URL”.
This will give you a complete list of websites that link to the discontinued website.
You are actually helping those webmasters with their website while earning your own links. To do this, however, you need to put relevant, high-quality content on your website to replace outdated links.
You can also consider recreating a better version of the content that was on the defunct website. Webmasters will struggle to choose higher quality, more up-to-date content.
Get the latest in the real estate industry
That’s all you need to know about real estate backlinks. These are not only an important part of building his SEO for a website, but they are especially important in the real estate industry.
The next step is to start networking to build your company’s SEO. It may take time and effort, but getting to the first page of the SERPs can do wonders for your business.
Check out our other articles for the latest in real estate marketing.
