Hooray!  After last week’s Marketing Tip, you now can step up into the wonderful world of adding hyperlinks to your website.  Need a refresher course?  Just make sure to bookmark this Marketing Tip so you can go back and remember how to work with those challenging links.

Remember, that exchanging links has several benefits: your link exchange can help you achieve additional traffic to your website from fellow REALTOR® websites; you can begin relationships with other REALTORS® across the country for referrals; and you will make your website known to the search engines to boost your rankings.

In today’s search engines, we cannot downplay the importance of the SOURCE of the links pointing TO your website.  This concept is known as link analysis.  The search engines try to calculate the importance of each link that is being directed to you.  Their programs are constantly analyzing hundreds of factors about your website and one of the main ingredients is the quality of the links directed to your site. The most important links are those that belong to the “expert” websites.  Think of the expert sites such as RealEstateABC, IRED, RELibrary, Realtor.com, HomeGain, and Reals.com to name a few.  Those types of sites are known as authoritative websites within the real estate community, and are therefore given more importance. 

Linking does not only include achieving links TO your website, commonly called inbound links.  You should also be working on your outbound links as well.  Don’t link only with people who will reciprocate with you.  Link to websites because YOU think your visitors will benefit from their content.  Continue to keep in mind that your website should always be a reflection of who will be reading your content.  Receiving a link back will be a bonus and a benefit to you.  Think about your website first.

When considering reciprocal links, don’t base your willingness to reciprocate solely on the chance to rise higher in the search engines.  Make sure you understand the nature of the site to which you are linking.  Is the site a valuable resource?  Does the website contain beneficial content to your visitors, such as; MLS listings, community content, school info?  Take a moment to investigate the site thoroughly before you jump on exchanging a link “just to have a link.”

Another factor to consider about linking strategies is that this is NOT just linking….it’s marketing.  Buy your links if you must but don’t beg for them.  If you try to make your site as content rich as possible, the links will come to your website effortlessly.

Which Authoritative Sites Should Be Included?

Many expert sites, or authority websites, include some of the well known search directories.  It is important to make sure you are listed with these sites as they are a starting place for many consumers on the Internet.

Yahoo is one of the largest search engines on the web, but it was started as a directory.  Yahoo depends on real live humans to compile the listings within its Directory section.  The Open Directory is another well known directory that shares its data with Google and other engines.  Make sure you are located in these directories in the state/city in which you do business.  Other good directories to find are places such as professional directories of real estate agents.

Directory Guide

Yahoo – www.Yahoo.com

Dmoz – www.dmoz.com  

Business.com – www.Business.com

Real Estate ABC - www.RealEstateABC.com

IRED - www.IRED.com

Reals.com - www.Reals.com

The next step on your quest for quality links is to check out the expert and authoritative websites from around your city and community.  Buying or requesting links from these expert websites reinforces the overall theme of your website as far as the search engines are concerned.  Joining one or several highly recognized organizations such as your local chamber of commerce is a powerful way to lend credibility to your business and give potential clients the confidence to contact you.

The combination of links from expert real estate areas (working toward your primary keyword of ‘real estate’) and expert city and community websites (working toward your keywords of the business areas in which you work) is exactly the balance you want to achieve for the overall marketing success of your website.

Link & Content Proximity

The golden key in search engine marketing is still ‘Content is King’.  If your website does not contain anything important or relevant to your visitor, it doesn’t make sense to try to achieve high positioning on the search engines.  Your website visitors will not stay on your site if it does not contain valuable information.   

Think about what you do and what your market consists of, and begin the process of building relevant content.  After you have built some valuable and relevant content, you can begin asking for links.

When requesting a link, be sure to include your site title, description, URL, the page on which you would like to be listed, and the reason why it would benefit your prospective link partner to list your website.  Remember, your site has to be a quality and content-rich presentation.  Exchanging links is similar to exchanging business.  If you set up a page and refer to it as your ‘Partner Page,’ or ‘Referral Page,’ you are giving these sites your stamp of approval.  Therefore, it is important that your ‘partner’ meets your standards.

When you are providing information about your site as you are requesting your link, be sure the information contains keywords you would like to come up for in the search engines.  This is called anchor text.

Choosing your anchor text is a very important decision for you to make.  The search engines find the links and the text associated with them as they are analyzing your website.  As this particular text is linking to your Web site, the search engines conclude that these keywords are particularly important to your Web site and will start ranking your site accordingly.

As your anchor text is very important, we recommend that you use your keywords.  What are your keywords?  When your website is first built, you are usually asked for your main cities of business.  Your website is then populated with keywords using those cities.  It is important to be sure that your keywords, meta tags, homepage text, and anchor text now reflect the same keywords.  Be consistent!

We also recommend that you change your anchor text around every few months.  Why?  This will make your inbound links appear more natural.  If you start off with ‘Anaheim Hills Real Estate – Orange County Real Estate’ as your main anchor text… Change this slightly after three months to show ‘Real Estate and Homes in Anaheim Hills’.  Again, after another three months, change this to be ‘Real Estate in Anaheim Hills, Orange County’.  This is for your anchor text only.  Remember, the Anchor Text is the text that you give out to people linking to your website.  Again, this will make your inbound links appear more natural.