BackLinks - Why are links so Valuable?

Posted June 12, 2009 – 10:01 am in: Link Building

Links are the main source of a page ranking for a given term in the search engines.

I recently read a book called Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion and one of the persuasion tactics in the book called Social Proof reminded me a lot of SEO and the high value placed on links. The persuasion tactics in the book generally generate an automatic response. And for good reason, generally social proof(one of the tactics in the book) is a reliable way to make a quick and correct decision.

Heres a scenario: You are walking to the beach to go catch some waves, rays or whatever you like to do at the beach. As your getting close you notice that everyone is running away from the beach. You decide that because everyone else is running away that you should turn around and do the same. It’s a good thing you did because there was a huge tsunami coming right for you. This is just one example but you most likely make many decisions on a daily basis based on Social Proof.

What does this have to do with Links?

The way the search engines are using links to rank web pages is based on social proof. The more links to your page, the more people are talking about your store. The anchor text used in the links to your page is what people are saying about your store. So it only makes sense that if a lot of people are talking about your store and saying that it’s the best place to find “cheap shoes”… Then your web page should rank for cheap shoes. right?

There’s more influence factors in this book that I believe are being used in placing value to pages and links.

Authority is another influence factor that generally generates an automatic response. This has been adapted to search engine rankings as well. The authority factor in the search engines is a little more complex and isn’t directly related to links but to a website domain. Links from an authority domain carry more weight for relevant topics.

Example: site A is an authority site about cheesecake. So if site A links to site B saying that site B has the “best cheesecake recipe” than that link will carry more weight for “best cheesecake recipe” than a link from another site about something irrelevant to cheesecake recipes.

So, if an authority site about car repair links to you with the same best cheesecake recipe link, it won’t carry as much weight because the site is an authority on car repair and has no credibility when it comes to cheesecake recipes.

Trust I believe is derived from the Liking influence factor in the book.

Trust as a ranking factor is why you sites like Wikipedia ranking for many different search terms all on completely different topics. When a site is trusted by a search engine it is pretty much given the benefit of the doubt. So any new pages created on and linked to on a trusted site are going to inherit the trust of the domain and be able to rank for competitive keywords a lot easier and faster than a page not associated with a trusted domain.

Also, getting a link from a trusted domain will carry more weight even to pages not on that domain. The link should be from a relevant page to carry the most weight possible.

There is a good video on Domain Trust & Authority over at Seomoz you can watch to get an idea on how the search engines calculate Domain Trust and Authority.

There are two more influence factors in the book that I don’t associate with search engine rankings but they can definitely help improve conversion factors if you adapt them for use on your website. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion

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Get Your Real Estate Template Site Ready for SEO

Posted June 1, 2009 – 9:12 am in: On Page Optimization

Real estate template websites fresh out the box are bad for SEO. You will need to make some changes to get your site ready for search engine optimization and this article is going to cover the first thing you should do.

The Problem is the content on your new out of the box real estate website is the same as every other new site from that provider and it is considered duplicate content by the search engines. The problem with duplicate content is that the search engines see your site as a copy of another site and for the most part only the one that the search engines deem the most important will rank well.

How to Fix This

Before you get started you should do some keyword research to find out what keyword(s) you should be targeting.

  • The first page you need to change is the Homepage of your website.
  • The main keyword for your homepage will most likely be “(your city) real estate”

You will probably end up targeting multiple keyword with your homepage so you should find out what they are. Check out the keyword research section of the real estate seo guide.

After you find your keyword(s) you are going to need to change all the content on your homepage. Any images are fine to leave if you want but the text will need to be changed. So your going to need to write some new content.

Go to your homepage and get an idea of what your going to need to write. Go to other real estate websites to get some ideas if you need to(go to websites from different cities and states). Don’t copy someone else as this will have the same duplicate content issues.

Once your creative juices are flowing, go to your word processor and start writing some content. Keep in mind that your keywords should be in this content. You can put your keywords in headlines, in paragraphs and anywhere else you see fit. Make sure you don’t just throw in a keyword where it doesn’t make sense… someone may actually read what you wrote. =P

When you finish run a spell check and proof read it.

Go to your website editor and find where you can edit your homepage. Change the content to your new original content that contains your keywords and save it. After you save it, go to yourwebsiteurl.com and proofread it again. Does it look good? You might need to format it a little differently if not. Is it easily readable?

You will be changing your homepage content again in the future, but this will work for now. I wrote a good article a while whit some ideas for the setup of your homepage but I can’t seem to find it. I’ll take a look around and see if I can find it. If not I’ll have to write another post about it.

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Link Building Section Update

Posted May 29, 2009 – 1:27 pm in: Updates

I just added a new page the the link building section titled building links.

The building links page is really long and full of great information about building links to your website. It covers link building guidelines, 5 reasons why some links are where you can get links to your website.

Important: One thing I didn’t cover that I want to inform you about here is about first link anchor text priority. If you submit articles to article directories as recommended in the building links section don’t put multiple links to the same page. The search engines only pass the anchor text reputation through the first link.

You can read more on page reputation here.

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On-Page Optimization Section - Update

Posted April 8, 2009 – 12:08 pm in: Updates

I’ve been working on the on page optimization section of the site and have added a few more steps.

Getting your meta tags set up is something you should get done and this article explains how these tags can effect your ranking and also the likelihood that your search engine listing will be clicked. Added yesterday.

Today I just added a new step on Optimizing Page Copy. This goes a little into some best practices for SEO copy but about half way through I start into conversion practices. Your on page content efforts should be more focused toward users and lead generation than SEO. But don’t ignore the SEO part altogether, it’s about striking a balance between the two.

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REASEO.com is Live

Posted March 30, 2009 – 9:15 pm in: Updates

Welcome to the REASEO Blog.

The site is now live with a bit of content although there is a lot missing and on the way.

I put the site up and as I suspected there were some kinks. Actually, there still are some kinks that should be worked out soon.

The Real Estate SEO section is up and there is a bit of content there to get you started. More to come on that later.

I am going to redo the homepage at http://www.reaseo.com soon. But before I do I am going to save a copy so I can show you a few things that should help you get your websites homepage moving in the right direction.

As for the blog, I think there is an issue with rss so if you can’t subscribe to the feed at the moment it should be fixed sometime in the near future.

Also, I wanted to make a video(if i can) to show those of you who don’t use feed readers what it’s all about and hopefully get you set up on Google Reader. There are a lot of tools provided by Google that we will be teaching you to use. So, if you don’t already have a Google account you can head over to http://www.google.com and sign up. Click the “sign in” link at the top right, then in the lower right corner click create an account now.

We love questions, comments and all that good stuff so don’t be shy and leave a relevant comment beneath any post. If you have any questions pertaining to real estate SEO go here and fill out the form with your question.

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