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How can I tell who's linking to my website?

By
Real Estate Agent with RE/MAX Shoreline New Hampshire & Maine

Even if you have the most wonderful website in the world, a perfectly optimized, professionally created, graphics marvel, and all that jazz, it still needs some outside help to rise in the search engine rankings. It's kind of like having a telephone; if you don't give out your number no one is going to call you.

Backlinks, that is, links back to your website from other websites are an important key to rising in the search engine rankings.

There are several ways to get backlinks; you can:

  • Trade links with other websites. If you're going to trade links you need to have your website ready to accept outgoing links to the sites you trade with; label it "Real Estate Professionals" or something similar, just DO NOT label it "Links".
  • Submit your website to directory sites. A couple of good real estate links directories are Reals.com and LinkRE
  • Buy some backlinks from authority sites.
  • Comment on blogs; you get a backlink from doing that
  • Buy old websites and put your own backlink on that; especially sites with a DMOZ rating that have been on the web for a period of years.
  • There's probably lots more ways for the creative.

After getting all these backlinks going, then how do you tell how well it's working and who's actually giving you a valid backlink?

That's the simplest part of the linking game.

Just go to AltaVista.com and type in the search bar: "Link:http://www.YourWebsite.com" and viola, a list of how many backlinks you have and where they're coming from.

Just for fun I checked http://www.activerain.com/ and found they have 1,090 backlinks. THAT number alone should make the search engines like ActiveRain a lot.

Posted by

Jim Lee , REALTOR®, Certified Residential Specialist (CRS)

http://JimLee.com  RE/MAX Shoreline

100 Market St., Suite #200, , Portsmouth, NH 03801 Phone: (603) 431-1111 x3801

Visit New Hampshire Maine Real Estate.com to search homes, get Seacoast area information, and find out how great living on the New Hampshire and southern Maine Seacoast really is.

 

Follow RealtorJimLee on Twitter

Comments (33)

Roger Stensland
Keller Williams Realty Puget Sound - Maple Valley, WA
Let's Move!

Or, did you mean "cello"? 

Actually, I found the post very informative as well as several of the responses.  These are all things that I am going to have to consider soon, when I start to get my website operational. 

 

Mar 12, 2007 02:32 AM
Anonymous
Toni Rozycki

I'm working on my whiz-bang website right now and this is perfect timing!  Thanks for sharing the great info - I'll definitely be back to visit!

Mar 12, 2007 03:26 AM
#15
Neal Bloom
Brokered by eXp Realty LLC - Weston, FL
Realtor CRS-Weston FL Real Estate

I had simular questions when I wrote my blog Web sites...Are they Ciber space or just wasting space?

I did not get alot of responses to it for some reason.

Mar 12, 2007 04:02 AM
Jeff Belonger
Social Media - Infinity Home Mortgage Company, Inc - Cherry Hill, NJ
The FHA Expert - FHA Loans - FHA mortgages - USDA loans - VA Loans

Jim... I am not an expert in this area.... gee, I hardly know most of this. I need and want to learn about this kind of stuff. Thanks for taking the time to talk about this and show us what to look for.\

 

                                                                                                    jeff belonger

Mar 12, 2007 04:15 AM
Kaye Thomas
Real Estate West - Manhattan Beach, CA
e-PRO, Manhattan Beach CA
Jim- Thanks for posting this.. one of the things I also learned was to make sure all your links are working.. many times I've found a number of links that are broken..
Mar 12, 2007 04:32 AM
Randal Keberlein
Weichert Realtors, Precision - Kenosha, WI
In my humble opinion, this is the best information I have found on this site.  Thank you, thank you thank you!  I appreciate this very much.
Mar 12, 2007 04:41 AM
Rob Parker
London web Marketing - Toronto, ON
Hmmmm, BUY SOME BACKLINKS - I would not advise anyone to do this, go read Google's webmaster Guidelines, Matt Cutts blogs and any others you can find. IT may work in the short term, but look for solid good long term solutions.
Mar 12, 2007 04:42 AM
Mark Pilatowski
myClosingSPACE - Manhattan, NY
Kaye, great point. Another thing to watch out for is how other sites link to you. If you want any SEO benefit make sure that they do not use no-follow or redirects. They should link directly to your site so when you mouse over the link it shows your site without any additional code. Also if you are getting links for SEO benefit do not use any tracking as this will take away from the link popularity you are trying to gain.
Mar 12, 2007 04:43 AM
Elaine Reese, REALTOR® in central Ohio
Real Living HER, Powell Ohio - Powell, OH

I use SubmitExpress.com to check back links. It shows Google, Yahoo, AltaVista, MSN and a couple others.

Question for Mark's last comment: Are you saying we shouldn't use the tracking widgets like SiteMeter and the one Linda Davis posted about yesterday?

Mar 12, 2007 05:20 AM
Mark Pilatowski
myClosingSPACE - Manhattan, NY

Elaine, it depends on whether the tracking widgets require you to append the URL in the link. I use HitsLink and it can track any clicks coming to the site whether they are appended with a code or not but it also allows me to track specific campaigns like AdWords separately by adding a tracking code to the URL.

Here is what I am talking about. If you want to get SEO benefit from links you should use.

wwww.your domain.com

Using a tracking code like wwww.your domain.com/source_website or any additional code will take away from any SEO benefit you are trying to get.

 

As long as the tracking widget you use is able to detect referrers without a code on the URL you will be fine. 

Mar 12, 2007 05:38 AM
Elaine Reese, REALTOR® in central Ohio
Real Living HER, Powell Ohio - Powell, OH

Mark, you're over my head. I don't use AdWords, so there's no need to track links from them. The SiteMeter I have installed on my blog only tracks visitors to the blog's domain name or subsequent pages on that blog. The info I then get from SiteMeter just shows me the traffic (and other details of that traffic) to each of the pages on the blog. So, if I interpret your last comment correctly, I guess I'm OK with the search engines. Am I right? 

There's so-o-o much to learn!

Mar 12, 2007 06:01 AM
Mark Pilatowski
myClosingSPACE - Manhattan, NY
It sounds like it. Basically if you do not have to add anything to the domain name in links you have on other sites to track it you should be fine. 
Mar 12, 2007 06:14 AM
Cynthia Sloop
Community Association Manager - Indianapolis, IN
Hey Alta-vista said I have 23.  Guess I have a ways to go to catch up to active rain.  Interesting post and thanks for the website.
Mar 12, 2007 08:22 AM
Kaushik Sirkar
Call Realty, Inc. - Chandler, AZ
This is a great post and a great discussion.  I have sooo many things to try and implement, but soooo little time.  Your post has been bookmarked!
Mar 12, 2007 09:28 AM
Jim Lee, REALTOR, CRS, ABR
RE/MAX Shoreline - Portsmouth, NH
Buying or Selling? Ann & Jim are the local experts

SEO is as much an art as a science and what works one time may or may not work next.

All I know is what I do gets me top positions and lots of business.

 

 

 

Mar 12, 2007 09:52 AM
Scott Insley
United Capital Mortgage - Hollywood, MD

I have a good suite I think. I get hits and that is it. so then what do you do. I don't know much about the web stuff. I would like to have some customers look and the call me to use my services. so maybe if you have some more info that would help that would be great.  www.loanzone123.comis my suite. maybe you could see what you think.

thanks for the info on the back linking by the way.

Mar 12, 2007 12:46 PM
Edite Liepina-Lawrence
ERA Tradewind Real Estate - Longmont, CO
Interesting info, thanks! No wonder my activerain info on google often comes first.
Mar 12, 2007 02:35 PM
Jim Lee, REALTOR, CRS, ABR
RE/MAX Shoreline - Portsmouth, NH
Buying or Selling? Ann & Jim are the local experts
Just a few observations Scott. To appeal to the broadest base of Internet consumers your website should be designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator as well as the high tech geeks with the latest and greatest everything. Your template site uses flash which is both distracting to me personally and not usable by a significant percentage of surfers. Your geographic locattion and contact information is hidden towards the bottom of the page; it's hard to find out how to contact you and where you're located. Generally I find that these 3 things make a successful website. 1. Consumer have to be able to find it readily with common search terms for your area. 2. Once they're found it there needs to be enough compelling content to make them want to stay on your site to look around. 3. You must have compelling reasons for them to want to contact you to do business. I find that offers of free stuff work well. You could offer something like free upfron prequalification to tell people what price home they could qualify for. Once they make that initial contact and develop rapport with you then tend to stick around to do business. Accomplishing some or all of the above suggestions should move you further down the road to Internet success.
Mar 12, 2007 02:42 PM
William Collins
ERA Queen City Realty - Scotch Plains, NJ
Property and Asset Management

Jim,

Thanks for the post. Great reference material. I tried the Altavista sight and was surprised, in a good way.

Mar 12, 2007 04:32 PM
Jennifer Fivelsdal
JFIVE Home Realty LLC | 845-758-6842|162 Deer Run Rd Red Hook NY 12571 - Rhinebeck, NY
Mid Hudson Valley real estate connection
Jim you always have such informative posts.  I know I need to work on this, I am heading over to Altavista to check my site. Thank you.
Mar 12, 2007 09:42 PM