Back links (links from another website back to yours) are still currently the backbone, holy grail and Grand Poo-bah of increasing Page Rank, Search Engine Results Positioning (SERP) and traffic. You have to have a good solid strategy for building links from other sites back to yours or else you can pretty much kiss climbing the SERPs "bye bye."  Here are a few of the strategies in an SEO expert's  toolbox for building quality backlinks:

As always, I'm going to give a big old shout out to the experts and direct you to some excellent resources before I get too deeply into this article. 131 Legitimate Link Building Strategies, is probably the utmost authority on back link strategies and provides a detailed document on exactly how to do it the right way. And of course, for those of you that don't already check this site out daily, here is a great back link article at SEO Book "101 Ways to Build Link Popularity in 2006" .  

Building a quality backlink campaign over 5-6 months:

Remember that growing backlinks naturally is the key.  If you build them too fast, you get penalized so a natural growth of backlinks should take about 5-6 months.  After a 5-6 month campaign a you shouldn't have to focus that heavily on it- since they should be growing on their own. Your campaign should be a multi-pronged approach that includes at least one PRWeb press release, directory submissions (at least 300 with PR 6 or above- grown slowly over -5-6 months), link bait tools (permanent homepage mashup (web app)/lead capture tool), posts comments on related blogs regularly and an automated ping service that will notify social engines and Google when content is updated for increased crawls.  The combination of those tools over a 5-6 month campaign should result in a healthy backlink number of at least 1000 new quality backlinks.  You want to grow backlinks conservatively but consistently to get the most out of their SEO value.  RSS Pieces has the ability to spike our backlinks into the thousands very fast, but we don't.  Why?  Because Google, specifically, would penalize us. 

Now, into the breech again, old chaps - here are my 12 favorite strategies to build backlinks and how a real estate or mortgage site could leverage them into quality backlinks and traffic.

1. Build Lists: "101 lists" and "10 easy tips..." seem to drive the most traffic. Also recommended is penning "top 10 myths" articles on specific category related topics for example a realtor might want to pen an article titled "Top 10 Myths About Selling Your Own Home." You can even create a list of other experts in your field and hope they will link back to you. We call this "the brown-nose back link strategy." Basically, take a page from this article and make a list then link to all your sources, butter them up and see what happens. Here is a great article about linkbait from a master baiter (I kid you not, that is what we call them in the industry).

2. Directory Submissions:. Directory Submission Marketing is a solid way to begin a Backlink Strategy.  Want places where you can find lists of directories?  OK, OK, here are a webmasters secrets: The Directory Archive and Best Web Directories (this is the only paid service I recommend.  Select the slow manual building method that hits 200 directories).    You really only want "Ultra-trusted directory" listings.  These "Ultra-trusted directories" typically charge for an editorial review, not a listing (meaning they can legitimately be trusted). Some of these sources I recommend are Google's Webmaster Guidelines, Dmoz, Yahoo! Directory, MSN bCentral and Business.com. There are also a bunch of real estate related directories out there that I highly recommend adding yourself to.  I may compile a list of those soon for ya'll let me know that you want that list.

3. Parasitic link sources: You can leverage the trust of older authority sites if they allow user-generated content such as Squidoo and Wikipedia. You can add links to Squidoo and Wikipedia.

Wikipedia: Do you have a real estate -related site? Do not try to add your homepage link to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_estate or en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homes. Instead, add the deep link to your "$0 Down Home Loans Explained" page from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/0_donwn_home_loans. It'll have a much better chance of still being there tomorrow.
Squidoo: Make your lens useful and link out to other authority sites in your niche - this will help to map your site into the neighborhood. Hey check out Teresa Boardman's Real Estate Squidoo Lens.

4. News, syndication and PR: Syndication is a wondrous thing. For those of you with blogs, you know the power of RSS feeds, for those of you without one- buy a blog!

Shameless plug goes here:

Check out our automatically SEOed real estate blogs at: www.rsspieces.com .

Back to syndication: Syndicate an article at EzineArticles, GoArticles, iSnare etc. Good article sites like these actually rank highly and send highly qualified traffic. Another great resource for syndicating your real estate related article is RealEstateVoices.  Same goes for Press Releases- use an online PR firm like PRWeb or PRLeap and track who picks up your news so you can offer them exclusives in the future.  RSS Pieces syndicated our launch press release back in September and it not only spiked our traffic but it also helped promote our brand around the web.  Just look at how many links there are on Google (167), MSN (244) and Yahoo! (944) to that single release.

5. Social Bookmarking: Now, Social Bookmarking is a fabulous tool. "Me love you long time!" Our blogs have this super cool tool built-in which really helps drive traffic and create valuable links. Basically, people can tag your article as helpful and submit it to Yahoo!, Del.icio.us, Technorati, Digg etc. If people find the sites you tag to be interesting, emotionally engaging, or timely they may follow the trail back to your site.

6. Local Links: Your business is local, so market locally even online.  You can use services like Local Launch and Reach Local.  You can also join the local Chamber of Commerce, get linked on state and governmental resource sites, libraries and other local business sites. My only concern here is that the quality of the backlink might not be all that great. You do want to look at the Page Rank of the site that is linking to you as Google does care that your back links are trusted, quality sources. That being said, I still think it is a good idea.

7. Post on forums, groups and blogs. Be the expert, answer questions on Yahoo! Answers and Google Groups and provide relevant resource links (including one to your own site). Commenting on blogs with relevant interesting posts is another great way to drive traffic and backlinks back to your site.  Be aware that many blogs have placed "no-follow" tags on comments so you can lose some SEO value but you will pick up traffic that way.

Read also: Teach your old blog new tricks: 5 simple SEO tricks that can have your blog ranking better in 24 hours

8. Review other sites and products. Review products on Amazon.com. You can draw in direct customer enquiries and secondary links by doing this. It also recommends creating product lists on Amazon.com that review top products and also mention your background (LINK!). So, as a real estate professional, review real estate, lending or investing books.  Another great strategy is to review related sites on Alexa to draw in related traffic streams.

9. Blogs. Oh yeah, baby. We love blogs and what they can do for you. You must too, since you're reading mine right now! Blogs drive traffic. When you blog about things people care about and you execute it all well, you will drive both back links and traffic. To help drive some initial traffic be sure to comment on other blogs and forums. You can also get involved with Technorati! Their tag pages rank well in Yahoo! and MSN, and even in Google. Even if your blog is fairly new you can have your posts featured on the Technorati tag pages by tagging your posts with relevantly. Also make sure to list your blog in a few of the best blog directories.

10. Web 2.0 your site. This is another one we hold near and dear to our geeky little hearts. Have your developer design a few AJAX, Lightbox, or other web2.0 app that complies with www.w3c.org standards, use social bookmarking, redesign your site with a Web 2.0 look (mirrored effect, glossy menus, frosted glass images, etc.), use CSS properly. Once you do that you can submit your site to places like www.cssbeauty.com, www.cssremix.com, www.cssvault.com and other more technical sites that look for AJAX and cool super-geek technologies. SEOmoz also runs a web 2.0 contest annually you can submit to.  For example, one of my favorite real estate blogs, Sellsius received an honorable mention last year.  So, it makes sense to pay a developer to revamp your site with web 2.0 design or add a web 2.0 application.  The reward in quality backlinks and traffic will far outweigh the cost.

11. Hold contests, enter contests. If you have some decent traffic, hold contests on your site. We've run some contests for Realtors and Lenders that have driven some great traffic.  If you have the skill set, enter contests. You can enter web design, web 2.0 and other real estate or web design related contests. The best thing about contests, is that if you win- you can garner some grand titles that you can use to market yourself with on your site in addition to all those useful links. I mean, what Realtor wouldn't like to be called "the Grand Pooh-ba of Northern Florida Real Estate Blogging?"

Check out our monthly contest and Enter to win a free blog

12. Blog Carnivals. Get involved with the hottest thing in blogging today, Blog Carnivals.  According to wikipedia, a blog carnival is a blog article that contains links to other articles covering a specific topic. Blog Carnivals are often referred to as another form of viral marketing because it provides participants another way to increase traffic and gain links to their blog. Basically, a blog carnival is a type of aggregator where one "hot" industry blog displays the best of posts across the Internet on a particular topic.  It's a great tool for introducing a blog to a community and driving substantial traffic to it. Just check out Carnival of Real Estate. Click here to learn more about Blog Carnivals.

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