Link building options...slim
-
I am in a smaller town and sell real estate. I have seen a lot of the competitors links and some of them are just blog commenting spam and things like that (although they are ranking well for certain terms and their links are coming from sites that have nothing to do with real estate.)
I guess what I am trying to say is should I start going after links from other towns/cities in my state or should I go outside of my state and start looking for other links in other cities and states?
I have bought my townstate.com from someone recently and it ranks highly for town,state. I am trying to find different ways to get to number one for my "town, state real estate".
What would you do? Would you continue to add content once a week or so as well as build links?
Thanks!
-
Another idea I had for a useful piece of content depends on how small your town is. If it's 800 people like my dad's hometown is, it's not going to work. But if it's 20,00+ people, try writing a guide to the neighborhoods the way the locals talk about them.
I lived in the Orcutt area of Santa Maria, CA for over 20 years in the "old oak knolls" area. Everyone local knows what it means, but you won't find that area on any map. There's only two Google results for that phrase, one of them being a real estate agent who lists a lot of her properties by the development name that's now 20-40 years old and has no sign marker anywhere. When I had a friend who had moved there from Oklahoma and was looking to buy a house, I sat down with her and gave her a list of division names that were in the area that she was looking for, and divisions to avoid. There was no map or resource to go to for that. Think of how many searches you could come up for if you went through and collected some of that type of information.
Another thing to do in larger cities would be to give a translation guide to the traffic reports for that area. I have lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for over ten years, but have never been able to find anything that tells me where "the foot of the maze" vs "the parking lot" "top of the incline" etc. when it comes to backups on the bay bridge, but that's what the traffic stations call things, how stuff gets tweeted, etc. If there were someone that mapped out all of this stuff, imagine the links they could get.
-
I know exactly what you mean since I am currently writing for a small town real estate site.
You can look to see if there are any good links to the competitive sites to get some ideas but I think the suggestions to focus on quality links is important but that is only part of the strategy.
Make sure you also take advantage of links from the main directories such as DMOZ and Yahoo.
Plus, don't forget to link in from your social media accounts such as Facebook, LinkedIn, G+, Twitter, and any other active accounts you might have.
What I have noticed is that a lot of the crappy sites are bringing in feeds from syndicated sources. They are all the same content and over time I don't believe that is a sustainable model.
Concentrate on sharing good, usable information with your potential buyers and sellers first. That is likely to attract solid traffic and over time, good search engine love.
-
Great suggestions from Keri and Holly. I would like to add: On the townstate.com, try to do an Infographic about something. Maybe an interesting chart about the Real Estate Market Trends in the last 1-3 years within your city/state. Some top 10 lists like: Top 10 Reasons Why TownName is a Great City to Live In. Top 10 Jobs in TownName Area Top 10 Cities Where People Move from... You get the idea. I hope that helps.
-
In the end I don't think the physical location that your links come from matter as much as the website and its quality. Keri's response has some good suggestions. I would add in, are you a member of the Better Business Bureau? They will link to you and it's a high quality one. Also, when it comes to link buiding, do what makes sense. If there's a good reason that someone from another town or state should link to you, then that's great. You just want links that are high quality and not just a bunch of spammy links or links that have no reason to link to you. I also strongly recommend adding content whenever you can. Make sure it's good quality content that people care about. Perhaps give a deeper look into the properties you sell or talk about the town, etc. Great images or videos of the town would draw in people as well.
Best of luck.
Holly
-
Have you exhausted the links from your own town first? Do you sponsor a little league team? Do you volunteer for anything? Are you a member of the chamber of commerce? Of your local real estate group? How about creating the best piece of content you can about relocating to your particular town so that it naturally grows links?
All of those seem a much better ideas than going to another state and looking for links.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
On-Page / Site Optimization+Link Building -check help!
HI all, have also Question One, i don't understand how is this website : competitor website http://hack-clash-royale. com/ beter them my website i analze i have more more backlink and my website is strong have good seo but not on first position, you can tell me what is problem, my website is 4-5# and competitor 1-2# .. thanks
Link Building | | Fahad5Saleem0 -
Link building for a new site... where do I start?
Hi all, I'm new and have just launched my website. I need to start building my backlinks and I need to know how I can go about getting started? I read the beginners guide but still stuck on where to start? Any advice Thanks
Link Building | | edward-may0 -
Link Building On a Budget
Hello! We are a small online business with a tight budget. Most of the content, social, ppc is done in-house to keep things under control & cost down. Can anyone suggest a local or offshore link building agency that we can trust or that someone else has used with good success? Some of the local agencies we've contacted quoted us 150-200/mth per keyword, is that typical? Has anyone been successful with agencies overseas? Thank You!!
Link Building | | TP_Marketing0 -
Link building too quickly
Hi all, I have recently started trialing to outsource some SEO to a 3rd party, who obviously promissed white hat techniques and manual links etc.. All has gone well for the first month. But on speeking to another expert they point out that the search engines will spot inconcistencies in link building and penalise me. I know there will not be a know ammount but as we stand at the moment, what is the current feeling of too fast. Links built for me in one month were 100 directory submissions 80 bookmarks 16 search engine submissions 15 Article submissions 46 forum links 10 local classified searches Is this too fast? , If to do I stop and create more inconsistency or continue at a similar rate. Of course quality of link will be an issue, but how much. Many thanks from SEO jnr
Link Building | | smartcow0 -
Building links to reviews: Movies, Restaurants, etc
My site has lots of reviews: Movies, TV, Music, Restaurants, etc. I'm looking for sites that take critic reviews and link back to the critic's site. We're already on Metacritic.com and Rottentomatoes.com, which seems to be the two biggies for movies & tv. But I'm sure there are more out there. Also, I'd love to find sites for restaurant reviews (specifically in the Boston area). Are there any lists out there of sites like these? I'm NOT looking for UGC sites that allow user reviews. I'm looking for sites that accept professional critic reviews, preferably via some sort of automated feed. Thanks Mozzers!
Link Building | | BostonWright0 -
Link Building - Post Penguin
Hi, We have an eCommerce site that has recently been hit for some unnatural linking, resulting in a warning in our Google Webmaster Tools account. We weren't doing anything particularly underhand (and indeed before Penguin there wasn't a cause for concern) but nevertheless Google has picked up and penalised us. We've instantly removed the worst offending links and requested a resubmission. If this doesn't result in positive action from Google we're planning on employing the services of an Oracle member on SEOmoz who was kind enough to give us some fantastic free advice in order to go through and remove any further links that may be seen as questionable. Moving forward however I'm a little bit overwhelmed as to exactly what we should be doing in order to create a positive, natural link portfolio. I understand the emphasis is on ‘natural’ linking but we’ve been online for 8 years and I think it’s fairly safe to say that the number of links we have now is probably representative of about our ‘lot’ when it comes to 100% natural links. It would be nice to give our portfolio a nice gentle push in the right direction. I’ve checked through SEOmoz and the most up to date link building article they have appears to be http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo/growing-popularity-and-links - This guide however does seem to suggest some things that are potentially frowned upon now (for example, highly optimised anchor text I understand is now a no-no). Obviously, in days gone by I could look at Open Site Explorer to try to emulate my competitors but, to be honest, most of them have what I would describe as a fairly poor link profile and if I'm going to invest real time in to this I want to make sure I'm heading off in the right direction. Does anybody on here know of a really high quality post penguin link building guide, either on SEOmoz or elsewhere that I can use as some bedtime reading? Our website is eCommerce in nature so an article tailored towards online selling would be ideal. Thanks for reading! Chris
Link Building | | ChrisHolgate0 -
How Long Does It Take For opensiteexplorer.org To Find Links Ive Been Building?
Hello, The past 1-2 months I managed to get a website on some high authority news sources. For some reason I still cannot see them with opensiteexplorer, but they are showing up in the Webmaster account? Is there typically a big delay? Thanks1
Link Building | | TP_Marketing0 -
Are you using ArticleBase.com for link building?
I'm digging my way through my competitors' link profiles on OSE and came across one that had been using a site called ArticleBase.com Apparently you can publish articles for free and browse other published articles for usage on your own site (provided you follow their TOS). It actually seems like a nifty idea. I'm wondering if anyone has utilized this site for re-publishing content and building external links. Worth the effort? Thanks!
Link Building | | TBiz0