Build Up Backlinks to Build Your Real Estate Business

To succeed in real estate, it takes more than a firm handshake and a winning smile. Agencies need to build a strong brand and have a big reputation to keep the deals coming and the team growing.

A key part to that reputation comes from name recognition, which develops from tons of signs in yards and a highly visible web presence. You can put the signs out in a few days, but the web presence will take more time to build.

To make sure your website is visible to everyone in your community, you need to have a strong domain authority and land on the first page of Google’s search rankings. The best path toward amplifying your search presence and growing that domain authority is assembling a robust corps of backlinks.

Assess Your Current Value

There are probably a dozen or so web pages that have a link to your real estate site. This is what’s known as a backlink, and it’s a big part of how Google determines how to rank your site.

Your first step to improving your web presence is running a backlink audit to identify which sites are linking back to you and how strong their domain authority is. This process can be done manually or you can use tools like Google Analytics, SEMrush or Ahrefs.

Backlinks from websites with high domain authority will help you raise your site’s authority, while websites with low domain authority will drag yours down if you get too many backlinks from them. One or two would be harmless, but a handful or more will start getting problematic for you.

Once you’ve identified the bad actors, you (or a duly appointed intern) should politely ask these harmful sites to remove the links to your site. If they don’t cooperate, you should then send a disavow report to Google, so it can adjust its search algorithms and stop punishing you for the links in the report.

Make some improvements

Now that you’ve taken stock of your situation, let’s get collecting backlinks.

Google’s search algorithms will reward you for having backlinks from sites with high domain authority and on pages that are related to your website’s subject matter.

First, do some research and make a list of sites you think could offer you helpful backlinks, ideally focusing on professional and general directories, news and industry media, and trade associations. You can use tools like Moz’s Link Explorer, SEMrush or Ahrefs to measure the domain health of the sites on your list and rank them appropriately.

The best sites to start with are Trulia, the Chamber of Commerce, Homefinder and the Yellow Pages. These sites should be easy wins, and they have extremely high domain authority and traffic levels, which means very good things for your site’s search rankings if you get backlinks from them.

Another avenue is to share news related to your business, like when you list the hottest properties in your area or do good work in your community.

If you take this approach, you’ll need to pitch the media and issue press releases to spread the word on your news, which isn’t always reliable. They are really helpful, though: news sites regularly have a lot of traffic, which gives them strong domain authority, and online press releases serve as microsites that host any links you include.

Make them come to you

The last other step you can take to build a strong backlink profile is to produce powerful content that wins hearts and minds. You can design it to be evergreen in its utility or try to make something viral.

Real estate companies have a ton of opportunities for producing content, such as a beginner’s guide to selling a home. If you can afford the effort, try to build your website into a destination for your community, which will greatly help your domain authority and get you backlinks and deals.

Additionally, check out your competitors’ websites to learn their tactics and see how they perform by tracking their domain authority. Don’t be afraid to copy what works; a little creativity can help you beat the competition.

Building a strong backlink profile isn’t the end of the process – you need to maintain it by getting new backlinks from strong sites and keeping a weather eye out for toxic backlinks from spam sites. The more you improve your domain authority, the more you’ll get new customers organically, lowering your acquisition costs greatly.

There are some great resources that offer more tips and deeper insights on how to build a backlink profile, like this one from SEMrush. For more real estate news you can use, check out more of our real estate agent content at RealEstate.QuickenLoans.com.

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