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
-
Content optimisation or Link Building first? Small clients & small budgets
Hi there. Apologies in advance for this long message! I have come from a large client-side SEO position where I had a small team of online marketers to assist in our SEO efforts. The effect was that we were able to work on link building and onsite optimisation at the same time and obviously give it 100% of our attention (and the website had very high DA and Trust). I have recently moved to a small agency where I am the sole SEO-Guy and my clients are small. I typically have no more than 8 hours to spend per month on all aspects of SEO (analysis, reporting, link building and content optimisation) per client and I have to strictly adhere to this. To make matters more difficult, these clients typically have weak back-link profiles (low in number and quality and all pointing to the home page) and poorly optimised content (which contributes to low DA & PR). I went through my first 'monthly process' for a particular client in September and focused my 8 hours on optimising the site content for a particular section of the website. This involved optimising meta titles & descriptions, body content and images for our chosen keywords. I didn't focus on links at all. I published the changes to the site on 23rd September. When I look at my rankings as of 6th October, one keyword in particular has dropped by 28 places (from 11 to 39) which seems excessive to me. In my mind, the changes I made were small, so this drop concerns me. The particular URL was ranking in position 11 for a keyword that I subsequently targeted to another (more relevant) page in the site. Both pages have the same MR, PA and links etc. I think I may have effectively cannibalised the keyword and to make matters worse, the new page isn't even in the top 50! Both pages are in the Google Index. So, this is my longwinded way of asking for your opinion on whether other SEOs in my position would recommend spending time on building the back link profile to strengthen DA and PR of deeper pages before you start making content optimisations (given I am unable to do them at the same time). It's tricky with small clients as they don't necessarily understand how long these things can take. Cheers! Laurie
Link Building | | Laurie-Tomahawk0 -
Link building external trusted help out there?
Hi there guys and Girls, I am a newbie to the seo world but learning quickly. Unhappy with seo services offered for startups I have taken on the role myself for my website. I think so much of what can be learnt online here I can implement myself with a few hours of work each week. So my dilemma! I have lots of ideas of for content which i know will be valuable and I was considering outsourcing just for link building (the long haul work) The trouble is I am wary of who to use and if such service is out there? I have tried searching on o'desk and freelancer etc but I guess i am too frightened of spammy links or postings on irrelevant sites. I guess initially I am looking for someone who can help my link building campaign whilst I build up my own blogging contacts etc. Does anyone know if these types of services exist? and if any are recommended for small companies? Thanks Michelle
Link Building | | nutjobshell0 -
Is Back Link Building still Good Practice
Since all the updates from Google I'm unsure as to whether I should be pursuing good quality back links and how many per month?for my website www.polesandblinds.com . We don't have a very large back link profile and its at least half of some of our competitors, we are currently active on blogging and the 4 main social sites. Many Thanks I look forward to your suggestions/advice/criticism.
Link Building | | JonnytheB0 -
Press Relases as Link Building is valid?
Dear Mates, We are looking for increase our Domain Authority, so we was submitting our site to BOW, Yahoo Directory and we want to know if Press Releases sites (paid press) are too good to do the inversion. What sites are recommended, we think could be very usefull build a list of the real top PR sites (Paid and Free) Thank you for your time
Link Building | | SharewarePros0 -
Where do I find the best link building company?
Hi there, I'm trying to find an ethical, honest, link building company. We don't want links on shady forums, or comment spam, or any of that black hat nastyness!. I want links, on proper sites, and I'm prepared to pay for them accordingly. We're also more than happy to write/have written/ quality content that can be linked to. (We already pump out about 15 x 400+ word, optimised blogs weeks) We spend hours on the various social media sites also. So I think the only thing we're really missing now, is decent backlinks and possibly some more long tail keywords... Over to you guys. Paul.
Link Building | | warcom0 -
Link building by inviting bloggers
Hi everyone, I'm relatively new to SEO, and I have a question on a link building strategy for a holiday resort I am working on. The resort has a paintball arena and zorbing facilities at their premises. I want to use this in the link building strategy and the owners have agreed to have an open day for bloggers. Basically the resort will invite 20 local bloggers for a day to their resort. They get to play paintball, zorbing and get to see the resort in exchange for an honest write up about their day at the resort. I am looking at asking the bloggers to write about the event twice (Once before, and once after they visit the resort) with a minimum of 4 links to the website. I want to know how I can identify the top bloggers? What factors should I consider while making a list of 20 bloggers, and how do I measure these factors? Also, is this a good strategy for link building? And please feel free to add anything else you think I am missing out on, or will help in the link building. Cheers! Arjun
Link Building | | ArjunRajkumar0 -
Any Tips for Link Building for Boring Topics/Businesses?
I have a number of clients that own businesses in 'boring' sectors, such as: Toxic Waste Removal Steel Erecting Household Plumbing (Boilers, etc...) Link building for these sites is quite difficult. Creating compelling content and 'link bait' is particularly tricky. I found a good post from Michael Gray on the subject, but I don't think food (or McDonalds in this case)is a particularly difficult subject to write about. Any more tips on how to approach this would be appreciated. Thanks
Link Building | | cmaddison0 -
Link Building: Feel like ive hit a wall
Hi, I have been doing SEO on my business website for about 4 years now. And it ranks #1-3 for my desired keywords and i always try to add new backlinks and keep uploading new content to a blog on the site as this is where nearly 100% of our customers come from so its important to me to rank high for the keywords related to my industry. However the last few months a competitor has taken over me for a certain keyword, i have researched their backlinks and site and from what i can see they have less content, and less backlinks, onpage seo isnt that great, and alot of the backlinks arent even related where all mine are in the same industry and i always research my backlinks to make sure that site has good backlinks also (i currently have about 48 root domain and 12,000 page backlinks for various pages of my website). The only thing they have over me is domain age, their domain is about 10 years old. I am also trying to target another hard to get keyword that im currently on Page 3 for, im sure over time i will rise to the top and its something i have to keep working at however i feel i wont get to where i want to be because im running out of ideas on where to get backlinks. After 4 years of building backlinks i feel like i have hit a brick wall, i started out by directory submission, then just links from other related sites, then i did a few article submissions and then i started finding it hard to get links so i started buying related links, however i seem to just keep buying and buying because im running out of ideas and it feels easier just to buy them, the only problem is its getting expensive and im now probably spending $80/month on paid backlinks! Although considering im not paying an SEO company its still a lot cheaper! I have gotten to the point where im researching sites that arent even in my industry (however still automotive related) and getting links on sites their on which was going really well, but now even that feels like its coming to an end and im back to submitting to directories their on. So other then directories, paid links, articles etc. what else could i be doing to build quality backlinks? I stopped doing articles because they were so time consuming and i felt like i was only getting backlinks from them that were worthless and held no authority. I have about 4 blogs (all on different IPs) would it be worth blogging on them and building content and dropping links from those to mine or is it not worth the effort when i could just submit articles to article websites?
Link Building | | defyet0