Getting high-quality backlinks is not easy, but with the right tools and knowledge, you can do it yourself. And if you're looking to get ahead in a niche as competitive as real estate, knowing how to secure powerful backlinks is an excellent tool to have in your SEO arsenal.
Today I'm going to share some of the best strategies to help you get niche-relevant backlinks for your real estate business. These are strategies that our team here at Invalley has been using for years to help real estate agencies, brokers, home-buying companies, property developers, and more secure backlinks and improve their SEO.
How to Secure Real Estate Backlinks
As you can imagine, we have a lot of different link building methods at our disposal here at Invalley. And while we've used all of them for different real estate clients before, the strategies listed below are particularly effective for clients in this particular niche.
1 - Guest Posts
Publishing guest posts on blogs and trade publications relevant to the real estate niche is a great way to boost your SEO. Think of sites like E-architect.com, ArchitectureArtDesigns.com, and ActiveRain.com.
If you're new to guest blogging, don't let the idea of doing your own outreach intimidate you. Reaching out to webmasters and editors is time-consuming, yes, but it is not difficult. All you need to start securing links from guest posts is a list of relevant sites, a good story pitch, and a good writer on your side.
Examples: Guest Post #1. Guest Post #2.
2 - Press Releases
Whether you're announcing the creation of your real estate business, talking about an award your team earned, or just promoting a particularly exciting property in your catalog, press releases can be a great way to get attention and backlinks.
We've written an in-depth guide on how you can get your brand featured on news websites for free.
Examples: Press Release #1. Press Release #2.
3 - Q&A Links
Platforms that allow user-generated content are a great place to build links. We're a big fan of using Q&A platforms like Quora.com here at Invalley, and Reddit is also a good place to get links from. Both sites allow user responses to be indexed, and they allow users to include links in their responses.
That doesn't mean you should create an account and start posting spam, of course. What you can do is find posts related to real estate, and leave in-depth and useful responses which include links to relevant blog posts on your website. That will get you SEO benefits, and get you the attention of regular users of those platforms.
Examples: Quora.com #1. Quora.com #2. Reddit #1. Reddit #2.
4 - Competitor Link Building
Building competitor links is a big part of our Fully Managed SEO strategy, and for good reason.
The logic behind this method is simple. If your competitor has a link from a website, and that competitor is ranking higher than you, then getting a link from the same site can only help close the gap between you two.
How exactly you can build competitor links varies. If your competitor has a link from a blog, you can reach out to the webmaster, maybe offer an interview or an expert quote. Meanwhile, if your competitors have links from business directories like Portfoliopen.com, AboutUs.com, or About.me, copying those links is often as simple as creating an account and making a listing for your business.
The best way to see where your competition is getting their links is by using a professional tool like SEMrush, but there are a few free tools available, like this one.
Warning: Remember to Check Backlink Quality
Not all backlinks are worth your time, and some can actively harm your SEO. Google is always on the lookout for people trying to cheat using spam and other Blackhat practices, so you need to be careful.
These days Google's standard policy is to ignore links that the algorithm considers toxic. You can see Step 0 of this guide for Google's official word on the subject. Thanks to that, getting links from websites with terrible SEO is a waste of time. And if you push your luck hard enough with sketchy SEO practices, you may even get your website penalized.
The best way to avoid any issues is to do a quality check before you get a link from a website using any of the methods listed above. I've already written a blog post going over Invalley's backlink quality checklist, you can see it here.
But just to give you an idea, here are some of the hallmarks of a GOOD website:
- Has a Domain Rating (DR) of 20 or more
- Gets at least 1,000 visitors per month
- Hasn't experienced any recent sudden spikes or dips in traffic
- Gets most of its traffic from the US (or whatever country your clients are in)
- Has a Spam Score (SS) below 10%
- Publishes new content at least once a month
- Doesn't stuff content full of useless links
- Is 100% relevant to your niche (in this case, real estate)
Properly vetting your backlinks is particularly important when working with link building agencies, or building competitor backlinks. A proper audit of a website's quality can save you a lot of time and money in the long run.
