Archive for Link Building
CrackerJackAgent Gets Cached
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Just a brief update on CrackerJackAgent.com. As of January 29, 2012, the home page and the post I published on January 18th are cached.
It looks like the search engines have noticed the site. The domain name was created on January 8, 2012. As of today’s stats, it has an Alexa rank of 647,823 globally and 45,750 in the US. These stats don’t come close to rivaling ActiveRain, of course. But, not bad for a site that has been online for such a short time.
I’m going to keep watching the site. It is a viable place to publish, in my opinion. Time will tell how the community comes together.
Five Ways to Track Incoming Links
· CommentsThis guest post was contributed by Alex Cortez.
Alex is a REALTOR® specializing in Maui’s Wailea Real Estate.
Yahoo Site Explorer is Gone – What Are the Alternatives?
For many tech-savvy agents, SEO plays a huge part of business/lead generation. And with search engines placing a large weight on incoming links, a large majority of agents used Yahoo Site Explorer (YSE) for competitor link analysis and assessment.
Its beauty was the simplicity of providing raw data, which could then be extrapolated as needed. Used in conjunction with toolbars from SeoQuake or SEOmoz to maximize relevant data, it made the analysis fast and easy, at least comparatively.
However, with YSE permanently shutting down in its transition to Bing Webmaster Tools (for the time being, only information on a verified webmaster’s site is available), it has left many SEO’s and internet marketers looking for alternatives to Yahoo Site Explorer – particularly any options that are free of charge. In the past month, I’ve spent time using a few services and these are my opinions regarding what worked best:
1. OpenSiteExplorer – Free Trial
Rand Fishkin et al at SEOMoz are some of the industry leaders, and OSE lives up to its mighty expectations.
Data is broken down summarily, such as Title and Url of linking page, Anchor Text, Page Authority (which some argue is a better metric than PageRank when gauging a page’s value/trust), Domain Authority, and nofollow attribute.
However, the free version is limited to only to the top five incoming links analyzed and unlimited data comes at a price: 30 day free trial and $99 monthly thereafter.
Is it worth it? Sure, but only to those who spend time/energy in linkbuilding and planning link strategies, not for the weekend link builder. As data can be seen on the SEOmoz toolbar, it makes quick analysis while perusing sites extremely easy and efficient.
2. LinkDiagnosis – Free
A well known figure in the SEO world suggested that I give this a try and it’s clear why. The sheer amount of information is staggering. From linking url, to landing page, to anchor text, to PR of linking url, to number of outbound links, to Page and Domain Authority, and other data, LinkDiagnosis it is comprehensive and thorough.
However, the amount of time necessary for reports to be completed puts it in a category of its own: Run only when a deep analysis of a competitor is needed, not for a quick look under the hood.
3. Backlink Watch – Free
Once upon a time, I used it often until I realized how useful and efficient Yahoo Site Explorer was. But with the demise of YSE, it was time to try Backlink Watch again.
Information provided includes the linking url, anchor text, number of outbound links from the linking page, Page Rank, and any flags (i.e. nofollow attribute).
However, there are two critical aspects that will keep me away from Backlink Watch in the foreseeable future: 1) from a quick perusal it seems that at least some of the data is inaccurate (i.e. anchor text) and 2) it takes a significant amount of time to run a report.
4. Blekko – Free
Blekko is a search engine, and signing up for a free account is required in order to access SEO information. Upon searching a url on Blekko, there is a ‘SEO’ link below each individual result, which provides a fair amount of information – including inbound links, crawl data, and duplicate content.
Link information is broken down by State and Country of origin, linking domain (not specific url though), number of links from the linking domain, and host rank. Upon clicking on the number of links from a specific linking domain, the results show the linking page, the anchor text, and the landing page.
Although not the most efficient of set ups, the sheer amount of information is worth the time and effort.
5. Majestic SEO (Limited Free Access)
Long known as one of the premier SEO tools for serious professionals, this massive database provides a mountain of information in a very user-friendly format.
Information can be from the Historic Index or the Fresh Index (from the past 30 days). It breaks down links by number of linking domains, referring IP addresses, total external backlinks (further broken down by images, nofollow, redirects), top backlinks with anchor text, and top pages.
Paid subscriptions start at £29.99 but with the amount of information provided, there are a number of ways in which to interpret and maximize data for individual link-building objectives.
Consequently, although Yahoo Site Explorer was a perennial favorite among the SEO community and without a clear-cut successor taking its place (at least thus far), it is just a matter of time before one of the many aspirants solidify their position as the next SEO linkbuilding tool of choice.
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.This guest post was written by Adam Vradenburg, an Internet marketing guru
who also promotes 1000 Islands Real Estate.
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A Little Link Power Goes a Long Way
While having a wide range of websites linking to yours increases your domain popularity and hopefully your ranking, it’s not all about quantity. You might look at the competition and notice they have a ton of links, and you don’t have the time, resources or patience to do the same. No problem. A few, well-placed links from strong domains will do more for your ranking than a whole bunch of irrelevant ones.
A lot of factors determine the value of a link: the trust associated with the domain, the location of the link on the site and position on the page, etc. Often you won’t have much influence on this; the important thing is to get what you pay for. Okay, so technically you’re not supposed to buy links, but directories, advertising, etc. costs money, and time. So how do you determine which sites are trustworthy and worthwhile? Ask Google.
Your Shopping List
This is going to sound very obvious but if you’re looking for good, relevant backlinks, look at the first 100 results for the phrase you want to rank for. You’re almost guaranteed topic relevance and they’re sites Google has already judged to be of some value.
I can say from personal experience that a few links from aged domains already ranking for your search terms will do wonders. It makes sense too. Google is trying to get their users to the information they want as fast as possible.
If the site they judged to be most relevant for a certain search term links to you, then you’re the ultimate target, so to speak. This isn’t automatic, and there are exceptions, but I guarantee that if you can lock up a few links from the domains ranking ahead of you, you’re golden.
It might be difficult to get one from the actual page that’s ranking, but even from the same site is good too. The good news is, that for regional real estate search terms, the sites ranking are often older, community oriented, and happy to receive new content and advertising money (and usually not asking exorbitant sums). I almost forgot, the beauty of getting a link on a page ranking for your search terms is that it also drives the traffic you’re ultimately looking for!
Some Real Estate Freebies
To get you started, here is a list of sites offering free directory entries and links from profiles.
- RealTown.com
- Zillow.com
- WannaNetwork.com
- HomeSalez.com
Through participation on these sites, and interaction with other real estate webmasters, you can get a lot of backlinks as well. Being socially engaged online is a more time consuming way to gather links, but also serves to establish a good reputation online, which is just as important as good rankings.
Regardless, link building requires a time investment, and some professionals might be skeptical as to the benefit. But be patient, get links, and your position with Google will surely improve, increasing the traffic that you can turn into business, and taking your real estate marketing to the next level.
This guest post was written by Adam Vradenburg, an Internet marketing guru
who also promotes 1000 Islands Real Estate.
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It All Begins Online
In case you didn’t know, 90% of buyers in the real estate market use the internet. It’s where the journey to a new home or piece of property usually begins, which makes it an opportunity you should not pass up.
If you can establish a professional and visible web presence, your real estate marketing plan will be miles ahead of the competition. For real estate websites, search engines play a pivotal role in almost all online marketing strategies, and there are some simple but very effective methods to increase your visibility with search engines.
Strategies to Dominate Google
Backlinks, other websites linking to yours, are the key to good rankings with search engines like Google. Once you have a strong website and know what phrases you want to rank for, strong backlinks will be the driving force in ranking your site.
Before you go out and start to acquire links, make sure the links you have, and can easily influence, are optimized. The actual text linking to your site should contain the keywords you want to rank for, but don’t be overzealous, make sure to vary the text from time to time and a link, even if it’s just your domain name or something general, is often still worthwhile. Ultimately, you want as many links as you get, and then some.
Links, Links and More Links
Generally speaking, the more domains that link to yours, the better. This is obviously a generalization, but I don’t think anyone will dispute the fact that the number and variety of domains linking to yours, your domain popularity, plays a major role in determining the position of your site in the search engine results.
So links from a variety of websites are crucial to getting good rankings, but I’ve exhausted all my personal and business contacts, where am I going to get all these links? There are plenty of possibilities, but if you can reproduce the link profiles of your competitors and get even more relevant links above and beyond them, you should and likely will outrank them.
If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Join ‘Em
Well, sort of. You can find a lot of sources for links by scoping the competition. Using Yahoo! Site Explorer you can see (usually) the best links your competition has managed to acquire. Unless they have unlimited resources and connections, you should be able to reproduce their link profile to a certain extent.
Some will be unattainable – links can often come from personal contacts or other arrangements, but I guarantee there will be a few in there you can grab as well. It also serves for inspiration, while you may not be able to get the same link, you’ll have an idea of how to get a similar one. Some links won’t be worth the time or money, either. Not all links are worth having and some can do more harm than good.
………Don’t Miss Part II!……….
When I talk to prospective clients about establishing a real estate website, or improving the return on a site they already have, one of the most difficult things to explain is the difference between on-page and off-page SEO.
Establish a Strategy for Driving Traffic to Your Website
One of the most critical questions you need to answer about a real estate website is: how will you get people to visit your website? There are a number of things that need to come together to make a real estate website effective, so don’t assume I’m saying the only thing you need to so is drive traffic to your site!
But, if you have set up your site well, with good optimized information, good tools and effective calls to action, all that work will do you absolutely no good unless someone sees the site. Driving traffic to your website is a critical piece of the puzzle.
On-Page & Off-Page SEO – Get Found on the Search Engines
to Drive Traffic to Your Website
That’s what gets my conversations around to Search Engine Optimization and on-page and off-page SEO. As part of our services for creating or updating a real estate website, such as a Point2 Agent website, we assist clients by creating original content that is optimized for their keyword phrases.
Here’s an example of the kind of content we create. The links you see on the Charlottetown real estate website Community Guide page are pages we have written. The topics range from community pages to details of the legalities of buying property in the area, and everything in between!
But, adding original optimized content is only the on-page part of SEO. I would prefer to call it on-site because it makes more sense to me. But, of course no one asked me before they named the things.
The other thing that needs to be done is the off-page (or off-site) SEO. And, that focuses to a great extent on building incoming links to your website. The natural question I am asked next is: “How do you build links to your site?”
How Can You Build Incoming Links for Your Off-Page SEO?
There are lots of ways to do that. You can add links from your blog to your website. You can write articles and post them to article websites, and the list goes on. One of my favorite places to review ways to get incoming links s is on the SEOBook website, and that list includes 101 ways to get incoming links.
If you want assistance in getting found in the search engines, take advantage of our cost effective real estate SEO services. If not, don’t forget to work on the two parts of SEO!
