In general, the more backlinks you have to any/all pages on your website, the better your content will rank for various search terms. However, the backlinking game is a little different for real estate professionals.
Normally, if you’re starting a new blog, you would take these actions to boost your search engine ranking:
- Post links of your blog post on your social media
- Generate more backlinks to your new blog
- Keep a consistent pace of posting new content on your blog
And this approach WILL work for you if you do it over and over and over again. However, if you want FASTER results, you need to get more creative and deploy some SEO tricks 🙂
Bottom Line: you will have lots of competition no matter what market you’re in so you need to get ready for a fight.
SEO insight: Legal, Finance, Insurance, Telecommunications, and Real Estate/Mortgage are the most competitive industries on Google.
Now, in order to outrank all of the local real estate agents and brokers in your area, you need to think smart and create backlinks in creative ways that still look natural. Furthermore, you should also be able to have a positive branding effect in your backlinking strategy.
Ranking On 1st Page of Google – It’s a General Term
When a real estate agent says that they want to rank on the first page of Google it’s a very general statement. Sure, you can create a bunch of backlinks and rank for an easy keyword, but what’s the point?
Whenever you are trying to get a backlink you need to ask the following four questions:
- How will this link or mention impact my overall real estate brand?
- Is the backlink natural? Does it look like I am asking for a backlink from someone else?
- Which exact keyword I am trying to get the first position ranking for?
- Where on my website is the backlink sending traffic?
Depending on the answers, you can go ahead and choose a particular strategy to generate high-quality backlinks back to your real estate website.
Let’s explore some of the ways you can generate high-quality backlinks to your website.
#1 Write Guest Posts On Local Blogs
The most reliable and trusted way of building backlinks is to write guest articles on different blogs.
The guest posts should not necessarily have to be related to real estate. You can write about your local community, things to do in your neighborhood, or review your favorite restaurant.
When you start generating organic links back from other authoritative websites, your own site gets better rankings for multiple keywords.
We are not going to dive into too much technical SEO. The main thing that you should understand is that the time and effort you put into your guest blogging will eventually yield results in the long run.
Sample Email For Guest Post Opportunity
Hi,
I was going through your website [website name] and I think you have some amazing content. I love writing reviews and articles about (community name) and if you want unique content on your site, I’m happy to contribute!
Starting to wonder why this stranger is willing to write for free? Let me tell you!
I’m a real estate professional and I’m constantly trying to find new ways in which I can provide value to my local community. Writing blogs about the area on other websites is one!
Please let me know your requirements and I’ll get started!
Yours in success,
Your Name
(then after they reply, and you submit the post, ask them how long before it goes up)
Goals For Your First Guest Post Email
- Try to establish a connection with the website owner
- Make sure they understand that you genuinely want to contribute on their website.
- Ask them more about guidelines and details in case they do not have it mentioned clearly on their website.
Best Practices To Follow When You Are Guest Posting
- Try to write the article as a ghost author. This means that your first preference should be to ask the website owner if you can submit the article under their generic name.
- If the website owner agrees to publish your content without mentioning yourself, go ahead and add a link back to your website from the main body of the article. This will make the link look more natural and reliable.
- Any natural link embedded within the article body will likely have a higher value compared to a link from the author bio at the end of your article.
- The keywords that you are linking to should relate somewhat to the original content on your website. Otherwise, the backlink does not make any logical sense.
How To Find The Right Websites To Submit Your Guest Posts
When guest posting, one fundamental thing that many people forget is the type of websites to do guest posts on.
Now, as a real estate professional, you are already busy with prospecting and serving clients, therefore, realistically, the target is to do one guest post a week.
In order to make sure you are not wasting time writing for the wrong websites, here is a quick method of finding the right websites using Google Search.
Go to Google and search for a list of websites that accept guest posts. The easiest way to do it is to search for the query: “real estate” + guest post.
Other similar terms:
- “real estate” + write for us
- “your area name” + guest article
- “your area name” + guest post
- “real estate” + submit article
When you search for all these queries, create a spreadsheet of the websites that you discover and keep track of your emails with each website owner.
One way of finding out if guest posting on a website is worth your time, see how responsive or eager the website owner is. If you do not get any reply within 2 weeks of your first contact then it’s likely that either the webmaster is not interested in your article or they are too busy. Move on to the next website.
Another way is to check the domain authority for the website that you are thinking about guest blogging on. Now here is the target: guest blog on sites with a higher domain authority than you. Over time, yours will rise, and then you can earn the rights to guest blog on higher authority websites like Huffington Post, Yahoo, Inman, and more.
Here’s a link to measure your domain authority as well as others.
#2 Repurpose Your Current Blog Content On Other Websites
An easy way to create a lot of high-quality backlinks is to repurpose your own content on different content posting websites. A quick way to repurpose content is to change the format.
This means that for every blog post that you wrote on your website, create a PowerPoint slide deck for it…and a youtube video…and a Facebook live session…the options are endless.
For every video on YouTube you make, create slideshows make a longer one, make a shorter one, then make a long and short blog about it…and post all these different pieces of content on all your social media channels in as many ways as possible!
Once you have these variations ready for re-use you need to find the right type of content syndication platform in order to post them.
Here is a giant list of all websites where you can repurpose content.
Slideshows
Create slideshows from your old blog posts and content and upload them to the following sites:
Infographics
Convert your blog posts and content into multiple infographics. Hire designers from Fiverr and Upwork (better quality) to repurpose all content into infographics.
List of Places Where You Can Submit Infographics
Repost Blog Content On The Following Sites
You can recreate a piece of content with a “read more” button or simply post your articles on these content syndication sites:
Convert Articles Into Videos
Convert articles to videos that you can easily repurpose. Link back to the original article from the video description section. Share your videos on:
- YouTube
- Vimeo
#3 Find Broken Links On Other Sites & Claim Them
This method is vintage but still works effortlessly in order to build quality backlinks with little effort from your end.
Follow these steps:
- Find a list of websites that you want to get backlinks from
- Download the broken link checker tool for Google Chrome and find all broken links for your target website.
- Make a list of all broken links and find appropriate content on your website that can be replaced for those links.
- Write an email to the owner informing them about the broken links and asking whether they want it to replace back with your content.
- If they say yes, email them a list of articles or links from your website that are relevant. Ask them to replace the broken link with your website’s URL.
- Repeat the steps for all the websites in your target list
#4 Review Local Businesses In Your Area To Get Backlinks To Your Site
The majority of (influential) businesses have a website these days, so once your review is up, ask the business owner to link back to the review.
9 out of 10 business owners will gladly link back to your website. With this strategy, you’re not only getting a backlink to your website but you are also building a solid relationship with the local business owner who might send referrals to you in the future.
When approaching any business owner in your area make sure that you tell them clearly about your real estate business in the area.
#5 Get Links Using HARO
HARO stands for Help A Reporter Out (HARO). It can be a great resource for building backlinks.
Once you sign up with HARO, it connects you with reports looking to do a story in your area. If you help the reporter out they will send you a backlink from the publication. Usually, reporters working for HARO post on a lot of high-quality websites.
You should focus on stories related to your local community, local real estate, and local events. These types of articles with a backlink to your website will generate the most traction.
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