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Kathleen over at the “Build Real Estate Results” blog has a post today about some great things to think about when getting  incoming links to your real estate blog or website

More Ways to Get Good Incoming Links

One of the real overlooked keys that she mentions in this article is to get links to many pages on your site. One of the things that we need to be aware of is that Google and other search engines rank pages and not sites. Your home page may be very powerful and rank well but those inner pages of your site contain most if not all of the content that is going to help people make the decision to work with you. Make sure that other sites have a reason to link to your content on your inner pages.

One of the common ways that Realtors will get links on the internet is by reciprocal linking. This means that you see another site and you both decide to add a link to each other, this is a little like blogrolls on some blogs that you see today. The idea behind reciprocal linking is that when you add a link to your site and another site links back to you that google will like you both better as you have another link pointing to your own site.

That is not quite right though.

The reason that Google likes incoming links to your site is that gives your site authority status, people should trust your site because others trust you enough to add a link to your page. If you give a link to another site Google looks at this as you giving authority to another site so they would cancel out. But this is still not quite right because if this was the case then you should never link to another site and then everyone linking back to you will give you a number one ranking in Google but this is not actually the case because Google does still like links, if you give out none then Google will not really trust you.

So now this idea of linking to and from other sites comes down to trust. There are very complex algorithyms at the Googleplex where the Googlers try to make sure the results at the top of the search engine are the best results. To do this there are a lot of factors that Google looks at. The best thing for you to do though is to not try to trick the system with reciprocal or other links but instead to look at the content that your readers would be most interested in and giving that to them. At the same time make sure that you are using the social networking sites like Digg, Reddit, stumbleupon, Activerain and others to make sure that your site is at least getting noticed and if your content is good enough then you deserve anyway to be an authority, which is what you were trying to be in the first place.

There is a great new site out that will allow you to add another great backlink to your real estate arsenal and that site is www.hubpages.com.

Hubpages is one of the new breed of social networking sites that allows you to add an article and with that article you will be reated by all of the other people that have pages on the site as well. I have an idea, as usual, of a strategy that you can use to add help to your site by ranking well with Hubpages.

First of all create your real estate specific page and make sure that on that page you mention your city and real estate. Make sure there are six of so of this phrase and that the content that you have on the page is very good content for a home buyer or seller without the hint of salesmanship but at the end of that article refer back to your website with a link. You can, if you like create the text in Microsoft Word and then copy and paste it into your hub. Try to make the article around 600-700 words.

After you have created your hub and have a page name for it then go to your stumbleupon account (you have one I am guessing, right?) and add your page to stumbleupon. After you have done this add it to delicious and go to pingoat and ping with your page name and the address, skip the xml page as you do not have that with a hubpage.

Hubpages are good in that they give you stats that you can see how many visitors that you have and where they have come from so once you start getting Google traffic to your hubpage you know that you are getting another link to your website from hubpages which is of course what we are all striving for to raise the Google ranking for your home page as well as to get traffic to our site from a page that will rank high in Google and therefore get more traffic directly to your site.

RisMedia has an interesting article today written by a Real Estate investor and writer about the importance of marketing your services in the social Networking scene

Relationship Marketing on MySpace : RISMedia

Whether you have been paying attention or not there is a whole subculture of the internet that is people talking and associating with other people on the likes of MySpace, Facebook and even LinkedIn.

If you have not searched to see what there is then just go to each of those sites and start to look around. See who is there from the industry, see who is there that you know or can relate too and go from there picking up names and starting to be social with all of the people that you can.

I was reading a Copyblogger article about linking which brings up some very interesting ideas about links and how they can be gotten.

First of all it seem like Realtor Websites may have a tough time getting links. Sure there are other industries that are much easier such as the guys selling no money down courses or the home renovation sites that offer tutorials for the guy fixing his own plumbing but Real Estate sales is different isn’t it?

You mat find that adding articles that will shock and awe people may work but realistically to have long term articles that people will want to link to your content you have to think of three things.

1. Why would the linker possibly link to this page? Is it interesting to his readers? Will it make her look good to the public?

2. How good do you look as a source? Is this info well written does it have facts that are hard to find otherwise?

3. Is this interesting to the world as a whole? Is the info timely as a news story? Is there some slant and editorial content that expands on a story that you are giving to others compared to the rehashing of the same real estate stats that others quote without content?

I have found a great list of 101 Ways to Build Link Popularity in 2006 by Aaron Wall. As you of course know there are a couple of good reasons to follow these rules and advice for linking and that is traffic, and search engine rankings that lead to traffic. There is more to it than just getting links as you probably know and I have found that Aarons Book is a great resource to get you a great ranking in the search engines.

In case you missed it I did review SEO Book by Aaron Wall a little while ago and I still think that this is a great book

Writing Articles as an Affordable Internet Marketing Method

From Overture, a keyword suggestion tool, you will see the millions of searches done to a certain keyword. When these keywords are typed on search boxes of search engines, indexed websites containing articles with those keywords will be displayed. And this is what leads traffic to websites with keyword-rich articles. Yes, the magic word is articles.

Content is king. You can say that again. That is why writing articles is one of the most utilized Internet marketing media today. Internet surfers just can’t get enough of information on various fields. Providing information through these articles is a surefire way to drive hot traffic to your web site.

Why is this so? Here are the benefits that writing articles can give your Internet business.

1. It’s absolutely free.

Too good to be true? Not. Okay, you have to pay for your Internet Service Provider. That’s it. All you need is your thoughts, your computer, and your hands. If you have those, nothing will stop you from typing words that will make you complete that article for your website. On which aspect of that process did you really shell out any cent? Maybe later when your electric bills come.

2. Your website will be noticed in a short period of time.

Submit that article of yours to article directories that get the most web traffic and in no time your web site will be crawled. That is if you don’t forget including your resource box or byline.

3. Obtain back links automatically.

When you submit your articles to directories, surely, other websites will make use of your article too. With the copyright terms of your articles, the URL of your website will still be in tact and will subsequently direct more traffic to your website.

4. Improve your reputation.

As an Internet marketer, if you plainly display your products on your website, you will not gain much conversion rate. Conversion is when your traffic converts to sales. You have to show that you are knowledgeable on your field. And what better way to show that than by writing articles that will allow you some bragging rights, right?

Just make your creative juices flow and jot down or key in those ideas quickly to jumpstart your article writing momentum. With those benefits listed above, a writer’s block is the last problem you will ever be able to surmount.

Link building is not about search engine optimisation, it’s not about boosting your Google PageRank, it’s not about publishing a link directory and it’s not about swapping links with as many other websites as possible.

If you’ve gone through all the hard work of a link building campaign, you expect to be rewarded with some impressive links. The reality is that many people are disappointed with the trickle of links and the trickle of traffic that their efforts produce. If that sounds familiar to you, then you need to step back a bit and re-access your linking strategy. Are you really giving enough thought to your strategy?

How do you define the online marketplace?
When potential customers look for an answer to their problem, they’ll do a search on Google, they’ll scan directories, read articles and product reviews, lurk on discussion groups and evaluate competitors.

The sites that your potential customers use to do this make up the online marketplace around your industry. These are the sites you need to be on and your linking strategy must get you there.

An effective link building strategy is not, “I’m looking for 50 links from websites with a minimum Page Rank of 5” but rather, “I want 50 links from the most important information websites that my customers and potential customers regularly use.”

Read the rest of this entry »

I ran across this press release while looking through some news sites. The information is great and this is an example as well of a form of publicity by doing press releases.

Long-time Prescott realtor Kathleen Yamauchi has a new article on her web site, www.kathleeny.com, about successfully staging the outside of your home before you sell.

“3 Tips to Staging the Outside of Your Home Like a Pro” has tips on ways to prepare a house before listing in order to minimize selling time and maximize profits. Here are 3 tips to get you started with the outside of your home:

1. Go stand on the street to see what clients see when driving up to the house. Be aware that any negative impressions they get outside the house (landscaping not maintained or non-existent, peeling paint, etc.) is just going to make them think that the house itself has not been well taken care of. So even if you have spent the time and money to fix up the interior, it would all be wasted if the clients get a bad first impression as they drive up to the house.

2. Next, step outside your front door and close the door; then stand on the stoop and look around for 5 minutes. While the realtor fumbles for keys and tries to figure out how to open the door, the clients are standing behind and looking around. So what are they seeing? Dead plants, old Halloween decorations in the middle of January, cobwebs? Again, not a good first impression!

It’s definitely worth it to take some time and clean it up. Want to go a step further? Try a new coat of paint or some new furniture or accessories.

3. Don’t forget the backyard. While that might not be part of the potential buyers’ first impression experience, you still should make sure it’s in the best condition possible. Pull up weeds, water plants, do some sweeping (if that’s applicable in your case) and maybe even purchase new furniture or accessories (plant pots, bird houses, etc.)

“First impressions are very important, so taking the time to see what potential buyers are seeing when they first visit your home is extremely important,” said Yamauchi. “In fact, it’s so important it can actually negate what you’ve done to the inside of the house.”

Along with the article, the web site contains other resources to help people looking to buy or sell their properties.

For more information, contact Kathleen Yamauchi at www.kathleeny.com

Realtor marketing has always been a competitive business. One of the problems that ha happened over the last few years is that people have tried linking their websites to anyone that would like to trade links. There is no problem with that as long as you know what you are getting into. Often you will go to a site and is looks like a buffet of links all asking you to go to another site instead of the site focusing on keeping customers and focusing instead on the great content that the site MUST offer.

Matt Cutts who is one of the search engine experts at Google stated earlier this week that Google is cracking down on links to unrelated sites. Examples he showed was real estate sites that had links to online pharmacies and other things that had nothing to do with what the site was about. Remember that if someone finds your content great when they will ink to you and no matter who links to you it is a good link. Other times you are trading links with other sites and in this case a link that appears on your site should be a link to something related. You can trade links with the following and have a good reason to have those links on your pages:

Mortgage companies
Home renovators
Mortgage brokers
Banks
home inspection
Realtors from out of town

In closing I must say that your Realtor Marketing must have a focus of getting links to your site and the trade off is that links sometimes have to be added to your site to do this. If you have more incoming links to your site then any of the other Realtors in your market AND your content is fully real estate related you will rank higher than anyone else in the search engines. Now go out and get those links.