As of January 2024, the total number of Realtors in the United States is 1,548,058. Safe to say that realtors and real estate agencies face an uphill battle, even before meeting with a potential client.
With over 1,5 million competitors, each one trying to get the attention of potential home buyers, you need to stand out. Flyers and word of mouth will only get a person so far.
A recent study found that 97% of all homebuyers used the Internet in their home search. (2)
Did they click on your website when searching for a 2-bedroom home in San Antonio? Did they see your listing on Comaro Street when they searched for a family home in Las Vegas?
A well-executed and successful SEO strategy would help your website to the top of Google Search rankings.
How link building helps in the real estate industry
Link building is just a small part of a good overall SEO strategy. Small but integral.
It basically involves building a hyperlink or backlink from one website to another. This is very helpful to both websites, but more so to the recipient website.
Here are two main benefits of link building for realtors:
1. Backlinks drive referral traffic
Referral traffic is when someone visits your website by following a hyperlink on a different website. This can be extremely valuable for your real estate business.
For example, if an article has an average of 1000 readers per month, it could send those 1000 new readers/clients to your site if they click your link. This referral traffic opens up the possibilities of sales, business partnerships, and earning a passive income.
2. Backlinks help you become more visible
As you’ve just seen, one major benefit of real estate link building is that it gives you referral traffic. But you don’t want to rely solely on other sites directing visitors to you.
You want organic traffic to come to your website. This happens when people search for a phrase in a search engine and choose which site to visit from the list provided by the search engine results.
Search Engines like Google use crawling software to identify pages likely to satisfy the search intent of internet users and rank them according. One way that these search engines crawl and index pages are by moving from one site to another through backlinks.
Once they have a list of sites, they rank them from one to potentially hundreds of thousands.
The closer to that number one spot your page falls, the better for your visibility. It goes without saying, then, that real estate websites need quality backlinks if they want to flourish.
Five proven link-building strategies for realtors
Here are five link-building strategies that any real estate agency could employ to gain that much-needed exposure:
Guest blogging is an excellent approach to earning real estate backlinks. As an expert in your field, you could write an article on a website about home improvement, DIY, or even investment niches.
1. Guest blogging
You would then embed a link to your own site within these articles. What’s great about this approach is that you’re appealing to an audience that’s already interested in real estate.
With a few well-chosen words, you could plant a seed of interest in a potential investor or home buyer.
Also, if you’re a real estate agent focusing on industrial real estate, holiday homes, or investment properties, guest blogging on sites that focus solely on those areas could be one of the most important steps for you to be seen as an expert in your field.
Reach out to other real estate websites that aren’t in direct opposition to you or contact other real estate agents, asking them if you could write an article for them and offer a collab.
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2. Broken Link building
There are millions upon millions of websites live on the interweb today. And unfortunately, without regular maintenance, the links that connect sites and pages together are often lost.
Perhaps the page that provided a fact or a statistic is under construction or even worse, has been taken down. Why not ask the webmaster to replace the broken link with a working one to an article on your site?
But finding these broken links could be a bit of a challenge. Here’s a full explanation of how to go about it if you’re interested in going at it yourself.
3. Resource page link building
In this link-building strategy, you, as the website owner, identify resource pages on other websites containing helpful or relevant links related to your niche or industry. The goal is to obtain a link from these pages to your own website.
Here’s an example of a resource page link-building strategy for a realtor:
– Identify relevant pages
Research and identify resource pages on websites related to the real estate industry, such as websites of local chambers of commerce, real estate associations, or community directories.
Look for pages containing lists of helpful links related to real estate, such as “Local Resources for Homebuyers” or “Useful Links for Selling Your Home.”
– Evaluate link prospects
Evaluate the quality of the identified resource pages based on their domain authority, traffic, and relevance to your real estate market. For this, you could use a Search Engine Optimization tool like Ahrefs.
Choose pages likely to provide value to your target audience and have a good reputation.
– Outreach and link acquisition
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Reach out to the website owners of the identified resource pages and request a link to your website.
Personalize your outreach message, highlighting the value of your content or resources to their audience and how it can benefit their visitors. Personalization is essential to avoid your message looking spammy and being ignored.
You could also offer to reciprocate by providing a valuable resource or link in return.
– Create valuable content
Ensure that your real estate website has high-quality and relevant content that can provide value to the visitors of the resource pages.
This can include articles, blog posts, guides, or tools for buying, selling, or renting properties in your target market.
4. Be social media wise
Realtors should leverage the power of social media platforms to generate buzz and attract backlinks or shares to their websites.
Here’s how social media could help you get some of those important real estate links:
– Content Sharing
Share high-quality, engaging social media content that links to your website. This can include blog posts, articles, infographics, and videos. You could even share pictures or videos of listings in your portfolio.
Then encourage followers to share the content, which can generate backlinks when others link to it from their websites.
– Influencer Partnerships
Collaborate with influential social media users, such as bloggers or local influencers, who are relevant to the real estate industry. They can create content that includes backlinks to your website, reaching their audience and generating backlinks from their websites.
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– Community Engagement
Participate in relevant discussions and communities on social media platforms, such as local groups or forums related to real estate.
Provide valuable insights and share your content when relevant, which can lead to backlinks from other community members.
5. Use your existing network
Don’t take your existing contact list for granted. Link-building can be as easy as simply contacting businesses you already have contact with.
Dig deep into your email list, your social media subscribers (and likes), and your contact cards saved on your phone or iPad. You’ll find people and real businesses within your niche that would gladly link to your website. All they need is a bit of encouragement and a sincere conversation.
By offering them something of value, like your expertise in the form of a guest blog article or acting as a source for a statement, you’ll be giving them something in return for that all-important backlink.
Building backlinks from other sites only works if you have a website worthy of linking to. Google promotes websites that follow and adhere closely to their guidelines and best practices. Let’s take a closer look –
Boost your real estate website
This is often referred to as on-page SEO. And here’s a closer look at three aspects of this strategy that you need to utilize:
– Content is king
High-quality content is crucial for realtors as it adds value to website visitors, enhances user experience, optimizes relevant keywords, supports link-building efforts, and indicates freshness to search engines.
A real estate blog that offers valuable information to home buyers will naturally attract customers and links.
– Internal linking
Internal links are a low-hanging fruit that few utilize. So look for opportunities to create internal links from blog pages to service pages and from one blog to another.
This allows Google to crawl your pages quicker and get a better understanding of what your website is about. The faster they crawl it, the quicker they can index your site, and the more likely you are to rank higher.
Internal links on a real estate website can also act as a “map” to guide visitors to relevant content or pages within the website.
Just like a map helps people navigate through a physical location, internal links help visitors navigate through a website’s different sections and pages.
For example, let’s say a visitor lands on an article about “Top 10 Tips for First-Time Homebuyers” on a real estate website. Within that blog post, there could be internal links strategically placed to relevant pages or resources on the same website, such as:
- “Check out our listings of affordable homes for sale in [location]” – linking to a page that displays available properties for sale in a specific location mentioned in the blog post.
- “Learn more about our team of experienced real estate agents” – linking to a page that introduces the real estate agency’s team members, their expertise, and contact information.
By strategically incorporating internal links throughout a real estate website, it acts as a “map” that guides visitors to explore different sections or pages, find relevant information, and engage with the content.
This ultimately enhances user experience and improves the chances of converting visitors into leads or clients.
– Optimize for mobile
Optimizing real estate agency websites for mobile searches is crucial due to the increasing use of mobile devices. Here are a few statistics to prove this point (3)
- 58.43% of website traffic comes from mobile devices.
- 92.3% of internet users access the internet using a mobile phone.
- There are approximately 4.32 billion active mobile internet users.
So real estate agencies need to ensure their websites are mobile-friendly to effectively engage with potential clients and stay competitive in the digital landscape.
Look out for these points when optimizing your website for mobile devices:
1. Responsive Design
Ensure the website layout adapts to different screen sizes, with easy-to-tap buttons and legible fonts on mobile devices.
2. Mobile-First Approach
Prioritize mobile user experience by designing for mobile devices first and then scaling up for desktop users. It also helps with search engine optimization (SEO) as Google and other search engines prioritize mobile-friendly websites in their search rankings.
3. Fast Load Times
Optimize website speed for mobile by minimizing large images/videos, leveraging caching and compression techniques, and reducing redirects.
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In conclusion
If you’re a real estate professional looking to boost your website’s online visibility, link building is a crucial strategy to consider.
In 2024, the link-building landscape is constantly evolving, and keeping up with the latest best practices can be challenging. However, if you find link building too complex or time-consuming, don’t worry!
Consider enlisting the help of a link-building professional who can implement effective strategies tailored to the real estate industry.
With their expertise, you can focus on what you do best – serving your clients – while leaving the intricacies of link building to the pros.
Article sources:
1 – indeed.com
2 – Real estate In A Digital Age
3 – Explodingtopics