I thought it might be interesting to provide an update on one of our link building clients.  If you’ve ever wondered how important link building is, you’ll see the impact of it in a real-life situation.

Background

This website was completed in mid-December, 2006, and the key pages were optimized for the important keywords.  We started a link building program in February of 2007.  We’re tracking results for the major search engines:  Google, Yahoo, and MSN.

The first baseline report for the site showed very few indexed pages – most were from the website where the domain name had been pointed before the upgrade in December.

MSN and Yahoo had some incoming links recognized, but nothing from Google.  None of the three major search engines had ranked the site in the first 10 search engine result pages for either of the site’s main keywords.

In the first part of February, we did the first round of link building.  It wasn’t a very aggressive plan in terms of the level of effort each month, but the service level fit right into our client’s budget.

First Month Link Building Results

We recently ran updated reports at the end of February, and here’s what happened:

• The number of pages indexed in the three search engines rose by 238 pages
• 63 new links were being recognized by the search engines
• The site is now ranked on page 7 for two keywords and page 10 for one keyword

At this point, the site isn’t ranked high enough for anyone to find it, of course.  But, going from nowhere in the first 100 results to pages 7 and 10 isn’t bad for one month on a relatively low-intensity link building program.

The Real Estate Marketing Website Fantasy  

Our project descriptions describe the fact that we will do on-page SEO on the home page, for example, to set the page up to be found on the search engines.  People often ask me about the line at the end of that descriptions that says: “Please note: The SEO on the home page will set it up to be found by the search engines.  There are other SEO tasks that must be undertaken before the site will rank well.”

It seems that there is a kind of “Build it and they will come” line of thinking in the real estate community.  Agents set up a great-looking website, and eagerly await their first leads.  If you are one of the agents who is in that situation, you’re probably painfully aware that it doesn’t work that way.

First, you have to drive traffic to the site.  Then, you have to have enough interesting information and tools to keep visitors on the site and coming back.  THEN, you will start getting leads as your loyal visitors reach the point where they’re ready to talk to a professional — and they decide to choose you!