Archive for Link Building
This guest post was written by Sam Chapman, a Lake Travis real estate agent,
who has lived in the Austin-Lake Travis area since 1987.
People talk all the time about the number of inbound links to a site being important to a website’s Search Engine ranking. And, I’ve found that the quality of the site pointing a link to you is huge. Here are two examples.
The Real Estate Center at Texas A&M is one of the most respected real estate information websites on the planet. They send out a weekly e-newsletter, and recently held a “a vote-for-your-favorite-real-estate-blog contest”. My blog made the top 10.
A link to my blog, using appropriate anchor text, was on a PR 4 page from this site that has tons of respect from Google. That one link had enough juice to get my blog on page 1 of Google for the term real estate blog. Not Austin real estate blog, but just real estate blog. It is difficult to get links from exceptionally well respected sites, but if you can, the result can be huge.
On another note, I am a writer for the Austin Post, a relatively new online newspaper. It is very local, has lots of posts, and a Page Rank of 4 after just 90 days. It has risen to be quite an authority site for Austin. I think the sandbox effect wore off after 90 days and link juice kicked in.
After writing for this online newspaper, my website went from ranking around 13-15 on Google, to number 6 on Google for the term Austin real estate. I have linked sparingly in writing for the Post, but I do include a link back to my home search page in the author bio.
This shows the power of links from a non-real estate, but city-specific, website.
Looks like finding opportunities for establishing powerful real estate or geographically-related links to your real estate website is worth the effort!
From the Web: When Google’s Done You Wrong
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I don’t usually get into the nitty-gritty of battling the search engines on this blog, but I came across an outstanding article that is, for the most part, written in English.
The post was written by Tom C over at SEOMozBlog.
A very interesting part of Tom’s post is that it includes a flowchart showing what you should do if your rankings on Google have dropped.
The author reasonably admits that he is extrapolating from his own experience. As has been said on this blog before, SEO is just as much an art as it is a science.
Also, keep in mind that when Tom talks about paid links, he’s not referring to links that you acquire from places like RealEstateABC or other real estate directories. The paid links he’s referring to are from sites that may not even be related to real estate, but where the site owner sells space on their website or blog.
Real Estate Websites: The Parable of SEO
· CommentsI am continually amazed by the fact that people who have real estate websites, those who help people build real estate websites, and 
people who do SEO for a living, all seem to have a limitless capacity for arguing over what should be done to get websites ranked well in search engine results.
I think it’s important to keep in mind that in the world of SEO (search engine optimization), there is no concensus. It reminds me of the parable about the blind men who wanted to “see” an elephant. Here’s the short version:
The Blind Men Describe an Elephant
- The first blind man felt the elephant’s broad side and said: “The elephant is very much like a wall”
- The Second felt the elephant’s trunk and said: “The elephant is very much like a spear”
- The Third touched the elephant’s trunk and said: “The elephant is very much like a snake”
- The Fourth reached out to the elephant’s knee and said: “The elephant is very much like a tree”
- The Fifth felt the elephant’s ear and said “The elephant is very much like a fan”
- The Sixth grasped the elephant’s tail and said: “The elephant is very much like a rope”
You’ll find a very similar situation in SEO discussions. There are some things that - I don’t think I even dare say everyone - almost everyone agrees on.
But, everyone involved also forms their opinions or theories based on their own experience. Some people say you must blog. In my experience, that’s not true, by the way. Other people say linking is key, and the list goes on.
I think that each person touches a different part of the SEO equation, just like the blind men with the elephant, and latches on to something that worked for them. Then, many of those people decide that the technique they latched on to is the final answer. The silver bullet that is going to shoot everyone who follows along to the #1 spot on Google for their keyword phrases.
Keep in mind that it just ain’t so.
This whole problem stems from the fact that the search engines themselves carefully guard their algorithms for ranking sites. In the absence of clear direction, we all run about trying to make sense of the SEO universe.
So, the next time you see SEO experts arguing, or you read someone’s rant about blogging being the only way to have a successful Internet presence, take ALL of it with a grain of salt.
As a whole, real estate websites are notoriously ill-prepared to be ranked on the search engines. There’s a lot of opportunity out there to drive traffic to your website by being found on the search engines.
Whether you’re doing your own SEO or hiring someone to do it for you, do your due diligence. Evaluate the advice you get and do what makes sense to you, or hire a company you trust.
Remember, once you’ve achieved ranking and have traffic to your site, the next thing you’ll need to concentrate on is turning traffic into leads.
So, don’t expend all your energy on the SEO wars!!!
Learn more about real estate website SEO and link building.
Using Images to Optimize Your Website
· CommentsThis guest post was written by Sam Chapman who markets Austin Real Estate
If you have a real estate website and want to attract buyers, you will probably have visitors from outside your area. I have attracted many buyers to my Austin Real Estate website and I have yet to sell a home to a local who found me on the internet. Most visitors are from outside of Austin and most of these are actually from outside Texas.
So one thing I have done in order for people understand Austin was to create several photo albums on my site. If you want to do this, take your own photos - respect intellectual property rights and never use anyone else’s photos without permission.
When you load photos, make sure to add appropriate alt image text. This is the text that shows up when you hover a mouse over a photo on a web page (if the alt text exists). Search engines can recognize that an image is on a web page, but can’t tell what it is. Alt text gives the search engines an idea of what the image is showing. The other important thing about alt image text is that it gets your keywords on the page.
Another thing you can do is upload photos to Flickr.com. When you upload a photo, create a good title using appropriate keywords. Write a good description using keywords and use appropriate tags. If you do this well, you can optimize the images to be found for your search terms. You can even point to a page on your website using html with the link embedded in appropriate anchor text.
The links from Flickr are nofollow now, but that’s not a problem. I doubt there would have been much link juice. However, if your images are good and get found, you may get clickthroughs to your site and that drives traffic. Click to see one of the Lake Travis photos I just posted. You will see the title, tag, description and embedded link back to my website. By the way, if you click on my Lake Travis Photos link, look around a while. The Lake Travis area doesn’t look anything like what people expect Texas to be like.
One thing I noticed is that if you use html to embed an address in anchor text, Flickr sometimes does something strange when you save the description. It replaces the http with a #. You need to go in and edit that and save again in order for the link to work. Otherwise, anyone clicking the link just stays on that photo on Flickr.
After your images have been on your website and Flickr for a while, some should be picked up by Google Images. The pages the images are on will show your web address, but it won’t be a live link. However, if someone clicks on an image, it sends the visitor to your website - more traffic.
So get out and take some photographs and get to work!
You may have noticed that there’s a new category showing on this blog - Link Building. That category has been updated to identify the posts that relate to building incoming links to your website. I didn’t go all the way back to the very beginning of this blog, but tagged the posts that talk most specifically about how to get incoming links. Older posts would be under the SEO category.
And, here’s another tip. RealEstateABC.com just updated their agent directory to provide more features for the $25/year “Official Member” listing. Here’s what you get for your money:
- A do-follow link under your name, linking to your home page
- No-follow links to your listings page and home search page
- Your address and phone will be displayed; adding a photo is optional at $50/year
- Up to 250 characters of “Area Text” - describing the area you work in.
Visit RealEstateABC.com to learn more about getting listed in the real estate Agent Directory. I was surprised to see that the chart on that page doesn’t list all the things that are now included in the “Official Member” listings. But, I contacted them and was assured that the features listed above are in effect.
The directory pages don’t have high PR, but they are cached by Google. And, the site gets a lot of traffic, so you may end up with people clicking through to your real estate website, too.
