Link building options...slim

[blake-76624]

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!

[KeriMorgret]

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.

[TheARKlady]

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.

[NakulGoyal]

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.

[hwade]

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

[KeriMorgret]

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.