Real Estate Link Building Techniques

Like all the other industries, even real estate websites require a good number of good quality back links for ranking well in the search engines. Link building for the real estate industry is equally time consuming and tedious. We have for you some of the most powerful tips that will help you with your link building process.

1. Information Collection

The nature and the extent of the information that you would need will depend on your over all link building goals. We consider here every possibility from directory submissions to email campaigns. You will be able to save a lot of time by making use of a single spreadsheet for collecting and organizing the information. This will also make sure you know where to look when you need the information. This will also help you set up a solid link management resource for your ongoing link building efforts.

2. List of Potential Link Offers

You must have a list of link offers readily available this will make you more efficient. This can include anything from links to “How to” type of questions and answers related to your niche, useful information on experts in your industry, etc. Your offers can also include simple and cost effective offers such as bumper stickers or T-shirts etc. These offers will boost the emails and threaded conversations.

3. Single-Touch Links

These are one of the most straightforward approaches such as directory submission, article submission, blog commenting, etc. Nonetheless, they are highly time consuming. One touch link building efforts are bit monotonous and it can be performed by anyone and with minimal information about your website and product. So you can conveniently outsource this to a company to submit your website to directories that are relevant to the real estate industry or to directories that have categories pertinent to real estate industry. The same applies to article submissions too. This will leave you with plenty of time to handle other important link building efforts that require your deliberation and discretion. However, it is important that you provide whoever is going to handle these tasks with all the necessary information and the relevant anchor text relevant to your real estate website.

4) Link Offers Through Discussion Threads

This has to be handled tactfully. Do not make your posts look obvious that they are made just to get a back link. This will ruin your reputation. Make positive contribution to the discussions. Do not make posts that are not relevant to the context. Your posts should sound knowledgeable and you can post a link, which users can click if they want to find more information.

5) Email Link Offers

Do not use automated systems to generate your emails. You must send your link offers mail individually though it will be time consuming. Such an approach seems to have proven track record of higher conversion rates. When you manually send your link offer mail, make sure to include the link to the page that you are targeting. Provide easy to use HTML tags they can copy and paste to increase your conversion rates. Do not make your emails too long. Draft short and concise mail including your contact numbers.

6) Link Offers Through Phone

Not many real estate websites engage in building their links through telephonic conversation. If the link you are going to get from a particular website is going to be of high value, then you must employ all possible strategies to acquire that link whether it means calling them or meeting them in person. This will show the other website owner how serious you are. While making calls to acquire links make it more of a friendly call that explains your services, offers, about the authority that you enjoy within your niche etc. It may take more than a single call to get to your link request. However, it has to be handled in a highly professional way.

7) Managing the Follow Ups

When employ several link building strategies, the volume of emails you get and the number of conversation threads that you have established will grow bigger and bigger each day. It is very important to stay highly organized so that you can benefit from all your efforts. If you do not, then you will lose track of your conversation threads and your efforts. This would simply mean that you have wasted all your efforts on nothing. Follow up is the basis of your success, only through careful follow up you will be able to complete each thread you have started with the link you wanted. Follow up also includes taking action on the responses you get. Some times, you may have to reciprocate their link, which needs to be implemented promptly.

Keeping Track Of Link Conversions

You will be able to assess the success or failure of your efforts only by keeping track of your conversions. This will also help you find which method works out the best for your niche. For the emails that you send out, if you make use of any email marketing software, it will take care of the tracking. All your efforts on link building will also send a considerable amount of traffic to your real estate website. This should also be considered part of your success. When you keep a tab on the entire process, you will be able to make the required modifications according to the industry response and behavior towards your efforts.

9) Making Use Of Past Leads

It is much easier to initiate the discussion with people that have already contacted you, used your services, already linked to your website in the past. Here you do not have to break the ice. You have great scope for conversions in this segment.

Real estate link builder’s checklist

Basic factors:

List of qualified link possibilities
List of link offers
Single email address for all your link-building efforts
URLs of your web pages for which you are building links
URL specific keywords list
URL specific anchor text
Effort tracking spreadsheet

Single-touch Links

List of relevant sites
Descriptions for directory submissions with variations
List of suitable categories
Company address
Billing information
Required articles and press releases
Spreadsheets with login information for all the sites used

Multi touch links

List of conversation threads
Spreadsheet on login details
List of community sites with specific URLs on “How to” pages
Link offers list
Responses to community spam watchdogs
Company profile

Email based links

List of resources including bloggers and journalists
Relationship management spreadsheet
Contact details of prospective link sources
List of link offers including information on white papers
Ability to identify needs not stated in current link offers
Contact info and credentials of internal experts
Company profile