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The importance of inbound links.

By
Services for Real Estate Pros with PaperclipCMS
I was thinking about SEO yesterday and I decided that I needed to talk about the importance of inbound links. Inbound links are probably one of the single most important elements of real estate website search engine optimization. They are a primary indicator of popularity. Popularity, is of course, a very subjective thing so let me rephrase that. Inbound links are a primary indicator of web saturation. In other words, how connected your site is with the rest of the web. Further, inbound links show search engines that a site contains enough quality information to make it popular amongst outside users.

Inbound links are simple and easy to use. They consist of a simple hyper text link that points to particular site. “Real Estate Website Design” is an example of an inbound link from this blog to www.paperclipcms.com.

There are two major parts to an inbound link. First, the url or address. This is the destination that the link will take a user to. This is fairly important because when dealing with real estate website SEO, you want all inbound links to be pointing to a)your site and b) the page you indicate. The second and most important part an inbound link is anchor text. Anchor text is the lettering used to construct the link. In the above example the anchor text is “Real Estate Website Design.” Anchor text is crucial because search engines use it to determine the relevancy of the link. In our previous example, I could have written the anchor text read “Really Nice Cars And T-shirts.” There are no rules as far as creating anchor text, however, search engines love to see relevant anchor text; anchor text that ties in with the theme or content of the site it is linking to.

So heres how it works. A search engine will come by, go through the content of this blog post and see that there is a one way link to www.paperclipcms.com. It notches up a point for www.paperclipcms.com. Search engines are not in the business of giving out points for nothing. Search engines are in the business of providing quality web sites for their users. In fact, their very existence depends on giving people what they are looking for. To ensure all is above board, the search engine then looks at www.paperclipcms.com to see what its all about. In this case, the site is indeed about “real estate website design” and this blog is about real estate websites. Thus, the link has value.

The process by which search engines assign and use link values is a little complicated to be sure. After all some of the best minds in computer science are employed to make sure it stays that way; to ensure that search engine continue to provide quality results for their clients. That being said, ignore how it works and focus on why solid inbound links are important. The bottom line is how it works is not nearly as important (or exciting) as seeing your site climb the search rankings.

Robs Three Pointers For The Proper Utilization and Implementation Of Inbound links

1. Inbound links are crucial

2. One way inbound links are dramatically better then real estate link exchanges. They are harder to get but worth it. But when you are starting out, don't scoff at link exchanges.

3. Inbound links have more value if their anchor text is relevant to their destinations.

 

Right now we have some great posts regarding links and other real estate SEO matters at our group Active SEO.  Come by and check us out. 

Mark Pilatowski
myClosingSPACE - Manhattan, NY
Excellent synopsis Rob. One thing I would like to add is that links have more value if the site the link is on is relevant to the site they are linking to. A real estate related link on a real estate site is going to be more relevant and therefore more valuable than a real estate link on a pharmacy site. 
Oct 12, 2007 06:12 AM
Dave Cheatham
INC Financial - Bartlett, IL
great post.  i love the information.  It is so true.
Oct 12, 2007 06:36 AM
Rebecca Invisible Assistant VA
InvisibleAssistant Services - Kalamazoo, MI
Rob, thanks. I hadn't realized that the anchor text mattered, too. I need to go back and check some of my inbound links now.
Oct 13, 2007 08:57 AM
Mark Pilatowski
myClosingSPACE - Manhattan, NY

Damon good followp, I just want to make a point on your number one point. It is probably true that if your site has received a few links over a period of time and suddenly gets 100's or 1,000's of links from a bunch of junk directories with a lot of reciprocation there could be a potential problem. I can't see Google penalizing a site for getting a bunch of one way links though. Just because if they did it would be really easy for competitors to simply go out and get a bunch of links and eradicate your site from the SERP's. On top of that, if you create some great linkbait that gets picked up by the social media sites it will get a LOT of links in a very short period of time. This is good old fashioned viral marketing and I have yet to see a site penalized for it. 

It's all about what you can control. You can't control everyone who links to you and if you get a bunch of one way links you are not going to get a penalty. If you link back to a bunch of those sites or are obviously involved in some sort of link scheme (reciprocal, three way, etc) you can bet that Google will notice and could put the hammer down. 

Oct 24, 2007 01:51 AM
Mark Pilatowski
myClosingSPACE - Manhattan, NY
Wow, kinda cool that you were coding for HotBot. I was doing "SEO" for a start up starting 99' and we used to try to game HotBot, Lycos, and all of the other on-site focused engines. I had no idea what SEO was before that so I thought what we were doing was fine but I soon realized that it was not really what the engines wanted. Once Inktomi and Google came along we had to change our techniques and moved to more search engine friendly optimization but when we started it was all about cloaked redirects and other shady techniques. But that was when SEO was new and a lot of "SEO's" were doing the same exact things. Kinda funny looking back on it. I can only imagine how complex the algorithms are now.
Oct 24, 2007 02:23 AM
Mark Pilatowski
myClosingSPACE - Manhattan, NY
It is amazing at how things have evolved and how it is still evolving. 
Oct 24, 2007 02:40 AM
Jim Johnson
Century 21 Smith & Associates - San Antonio, TX

To some extent, the info in this is correct, but it errs by omission in a few important factors.

The kind of links that should be the focus of this post are what's called contextual links. Contextual links require that both the anchor text (which should be a keyword related to the content of the page receiving the inbound link), and the content of the sending and receiving page have the same context. The example given (the link to paperclipcms.com) was therefore not contextual. Though it is a one-way link within content, the context does not relate to the context for paperclipcms.com. It therefore does not optimize the value of the inbound link.

To optimize the value of inbound links for the users of this forum, it would be necessary for us to partner with other members of this forum to trade blog posts that review one another's sites. This would of course provide each with a one-way inbound link.

Better still, any such partnership should post several articles with contextual links to single aspects of their partners' sites. Should a group form for this purpose, I'd suggest that each article post review the same aspect in each of six or more of their partners' sites, and each partner randomly select the partners included in their article.

One more comment about a little known fact should wrap this up. Writing articles of this nature will actually contribute to the relevance of your blog, due to the outbound one-way links included in it and the contextual nature of the links.

There is little chance that any of us will get inbound contextual one-way links gratis by any other means. I would of course enjoy partnering with the members of this forum. PM me.

Dec 31, 2007 08:26 AM