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!
