Archive for Link Building
How Long Since You Wrote a Press Release?
· CommentsWriting a press release is a great way to get incoming links to your website and exposure for your business.
If you haven’t written a press release lately, now would be a good time to get one put together. The biggest question when it comes to press releases centers around finding something that you think merits a press release.
What is Press Release Worthy?
An online press release can provide two benefits. One is to get one-way incoming links to your website – that’s good for SEO. Another benefit is that other websites will pick up on the press release, and your information will get published on several or many websites.
To get the second benefit, you need to write about something truly newsworthy. And, I don’t think something newsworthy comes along all that often. However, to get incoming links to your website all you really need to do is write a well-optimized press release that is about something that you are doing.
Press Release Topics Don’t Have to be Newsworthy
I have a Google Alert set for the term “real estate marketing”. So, new pages that Google thinks is important for that term are sent to me in an email every day. Last week Google included a press release in one of those emails that announced ”Real Estate Website Offers New Way to Search For Properties”.
And, what was the new way to search? Using a Google map to display where homes for sale are located. Hmm… sounds like a map search that is available on lots of real estate websites. But the point is, who cares? If a consumer comes across that press release, they will know that the agent is Internet-savvy and has an easy way to search for homes available.
I’m not sure that lots of other websites will pick up that press release. Maybe a small newspaper in the agent’s hometown? But, the search engines will notice the links going from the press release to the agent’s website.
So, don’t wait until you have something to write about that is earth-shattering news. Have you updated your website lately? added a new team member? published a new market report? started a blog? The possibilities are endless.
And, you just never know who might find your site from seeing the press release, or from seeing your site as it climbs higher on the search result pages.
Do-It-Yourself-SEO: Part 7
· CommentsUse this link to see all the posts in this series: Do-It-Yourself SEO.
Off Page Optimization
Anything that doesn’t have to do with how your website and your web pages are set up is off page optimization. Most often, the term refers to obtaining incoming links – also called backlinks or inbound links.
Incoming Links - And Why You Need Them
An incoming link is a link from another web page to one of your web pages. You need them because the search engines put a lot of emphasis on incoming links to determine the popularity of your web pages. Each incoming link is counted as a “vote” for your web page.
What’s The Best Way to Establish Incoming Links?
More Ways to Get Good Incoming Links
· CommentsYou Need Incoming Links
You really can’t have too many links pointing at your website, so I’m always on the lookout for new places to get good incoming links.
If you’ve been following SEO for a while, you’re probably aware that many search engines have downgraded the importance of reciprocal links (you link to my site and I link to yours). When that happened, some webmasters stopped doing reciprocal links altogether, and as usual with the lack of consistency in SEO, some webmasters still swear by them.
But, in any event, you still need good one-way incoming links to your website. The main reason you need those links is because search engines use them as a way to gauge the importance of your website for particular keyword phrases. One way to look at it is that the search engines see links coming to your website as a “vote” for your site.
Basic Linking Rules
Of course, there are some rules – some that are even pretty widely-accepted:
- Your incoming links should be from related websites – strong real estate websites are ideal, but at a minimum, make sure that you’re not depending on links from your cousin’s personal blog to increase your authority on the web.
- The words that are used to link to your site are important. Since the search engines use incoming links as a vote, make sure they know what people are voting for! If someone is going to link to your website, make sure they use one of your targeted keywords, not something like “Click Here”. Real keyword phrases help the search engines figure out that you are being referenced as an authority on “City Real Estate”, for example.
- Vary the keyword phrases that are used to link to your site. If every link coming to your site uses exactly the same words (called anchor text), the search engines will figure out that something nefarious is afoot. Try to obtain natural sounding links that use variations of your keyword phrases.
- Find ways to get links to all the key pages of your real estate website. Don’t always link to your home page. For example, make sure you have links to content pages that are optimized for specific city or neighborhood keyword phrases.
- If you have a blog or a second website, use the rules above when linking to your own site(s).
- Be careful about paying for links. I haven’t seen this as a problem with the major directories that charge a fee for displaying a link. But, there are a lot of websites out there who would be glad to take your money, and the odds are they aren’t very particular about the links they display.
- Don’t build links too quickly. Search engines are looking for a natural progression in the build up of incoming links to your site. So, even if you could take a week and concentrate on getting as many good incoming links as possible, don’t do it.
Finally, check out this article by Michael Russer – he lists a number of opportunities for obtaining incoming links from some unique sources.
Happy campaigning!
See How Easily You Can Get Incoming Links
· CommentsCreative Link Building
There are lots of ways to get good incoming links, and many people on the Internet have created lists of them. One of my favorites is on the SEOBook website, and that lists includes 101 ways to get incoming links.
If you look at that list, you’ll notice that #1 under the heading Love for Lists is to write a list of 101 things about a topic of interest. And, you can see it worked for the SEOBook folks, because I and a lot of other people have linked to that list.
You’ll also notice that #5 on the list suggests creating a list of gurus or experts because it will be useful for your Internet audience, and because the people on the list may well link back to the list. If that idea sounds a little over the top, you might want to reconsider.
Creative Link Building Works!
Brian Thibault at International Listings took that idea and ran with it. Brian created a list of Top 100 Real Estate Blogs – and he included the BRER Real Estate Marketing Blog on the list. Then, he contacted me (via a contact form on the main website) to let me know that this blog was on the list. And, now he has one more link to his website!
I wanted to use this as an example of someone being very proactive to obtain incoming links. But, I’d also recommend that you take a look at the list because it does have some interesting blogs on it.
For example, it never occurred to me that Appraisers had blogs. I don’t know why, just didn’t consider that. Brian found blogs by Appraisers, Mortgage Brokers, professionals in the Title business, among a host of others. He even has a category that is just fun stuff related to real estate.
So, the moral of the story is: study those lists of ways to get incoming links. You might be more successful with some of the truly creative approaches than you think!
I spoke to an associate, Sam Chapman, who markets Austin real estate using a Point2 Agent website. Sam called after reading the January Build Real Estate Results newsletter to give me some feedback about his experiences in improving his search engine rankings.
Here’s a success story worth sharing. Sam’s site is now #5 on Google for the search term Austin Real Estate, and he’s a very happy camper.
From my perspective, I can see that Sam laid the groundwork for being noticed by the search engines and relating to his site visitors. He replaced the content that comes with the Point2 Agent website with his own original content, and he wrote the content in first person, as if he is just talking to each visitor. He added some pages on specific locations in his market area, and he also updated each page’s title and meta tags to correspond to the content of the page.
Right now, Sam’s site has about 1500 incoming links recognized by the search engines, so he’s been busy following an SEO strategy that won him a variety of incoming links. And, these efforts got him solidly onto the second page of the Google search results.
Here’s what he’s done lately that put him over the top – onto the top of the rankings on the first page of the search results:
1. He cleaned up the code on his Point2 site. It’s true that the coding for template sites like Point2 is more complex than a hand-coded site. However, the search engines do a pretty good job of dealing with Point2′s standard code.
Sam’s problem was that he, like many new webmasters, had copied some content from Word documents straight into his website. The content looks fine when you do that, but a large amount of extraneous code comes with the content from a Word document. So, cleaning up the code can make the search engine’s job a lot easier. And, in fact, Point2 even provides an icon on the editing toolbar that will help you streamline the code on your site. (Learn the right way to add content to your website)
2. He started a Point2 Blog. Last November, Sam took advantage of the new integrated blog Point2 introduced. He started publishing a blog post every 1-3 days. Right now, his blog is a PR3 page. And, he uses a long-tail SEO strategy in choosing the topics for his blog posts. That means, he determines what seemingly obscure search terms his site is found for, and writes blog entries optimized for those terms.
3. He maintains an ActiveRain blog. Sam also has an active blog going on the ActiveRain site. This has provided him with lots of good opportunities for cross-linking to his real estate website using targeted keywords in context.
Actually, I think everyone in real estate should participate on the ActiveRain site. The search engines love the site, and the cross-linking opportunities are outstanding. Not to mention the enjoyment of participating in a vibrant community of real estate professionals.
While cleaning up the code on his site probably had a positive impact on the search engine’s ability to crawl his website, the only other things he’s done differently lately relate to his use of blogs. So, for those of you real estate professionals who are wondering whether you should dive into the blog craze, maybe this success story will give you an additional push.
More details about blogging and long-tail SEO are to come. Stay tuned.
