Chapter 3: Be sure to link properly…

Sunday, July 26th, 2009 Blog, Real Estate, SEO by admin

Chapter 3: Be sure to link properly to increase your site’s rank. 

Proper internal linking is a crucial part of a successful website. Although you already have basic navigation, you should also link internally, referencing your own pages so that visitors can instantly return to any page. 

For an example, I’ll be using my home page intro text. 

Notice that I have a navigation section at the top, but I still reference my pages from the home page. This can boost your rank by increasing keyword density. A search engine will be more likely to point to these links because they are in the context of the home page text or article and are not just in the navigation. Google can now follow these links based on the importance of the surrounding text. Search engines no longer see the links as fulfilling navigation purposes, but as integral to your content. Analyze the keywords that need a boost and link for them in particular, either to your home page or to other relevant site pages. 

In my example, if I wanted to rank better in the image above, I would link the text that says “a local web designer” to my home page. Now I will be seen as relevant to the term “a local web designer”. 

Use internal linking only when it is necessary or useful. It is a good idea to check each page with the density tool so that you won’t be banned for “keyword spamming”. 

When you begin working on getting the links you want, the best way I have found is to find real estate agents who are in other cities and ask them to link to your keywords somewhere on their site. Often, sites will do this if you will link to their chosen keywords somewhere on your site. This is called “Link Exchanging”. Your site’s ranking should definitely rise when you use this method. 

The linking game is based on popularity. The more relevant your material is to other sites, the more they will link to your content. This is called backlinking and can get you more hits than keywords alone. 

Another effective way to use internal linking is to set up a blog within your site and add content to it often. You can install a blog, make a few references per week either to local events in general or to the local real estate market, and then link the comments to other pages within your site. 

For example, imagine that you posted about the “Orlando Mortgage Crisis” and then linked the text “Orlando real estate market” to your home page. It will match up with your keywords “Orlando, real estate, Orlando real estate”. By using this technique, your site will gain a high level of relevance for the keywords you want to emphasize. 

If you’d rather not install a blog on your site, you can find one at www.wordpress.com. This great blogging platform is free and easy to use.