Real Estate Link Resource Guide

A Higher Authority.......

Quality, not quantity is the key consideration when getting links to your website. You want links to your site from high quality “authority” websites. Authority websites are websites that the search engines (especially Google) consider to be of high importance on a particular topic or set of keywords. Typically these “authority” websites will have many pages of concentrated themed content and a high Google PageRank.

As a real estate professional, the authority websites whose links will help you the most are obviously centered around the subject of real estate. Getting links from websites that are out of the realm of real estate will generally not help your search ranking as much. In some cases, the wrong links can even hurt your ranking. So, be selective and only go after high quality links coming from websites which are centered around some aspect of real estate. Once you have received some of these high quality links, you could then focus on getting more peripheral type links such as from a mortgage lender and other local service businesses that operate in your farm areas.

How to Begin......

A good way to understand which links you might need is to investigate your competition. Go to Google and type in the name of one of your farm areas plus the words “real estate” (ex: “Historic Montclair Real Estate Denver CO”).

In large metro areas and especially in a popular neighborhood/farm area, the first few listings might be large companies. Scroll until you find the first individual realtor listing. Copy down the url of the first listing. Scroll again until you find another realtor listing in the search results and copy down its url.

The next step is to go to http://www.alexa.com/. Alexa is a free service from Amazon that will show you who is linking to any website. At the top of Alexa homepage, paste or type in the urls you found earlier and click “web search”. The next page you see will contain three separate links that read: “Overview, Traffic Details, and Sites Linking In”. Click on “Sites Linking In” and you will then be provided a list of websites that are linking to your competition. By clicking on those links you can learn a lot about how your competition has achieved their high ranking. Undoubtedly, you will see many of the directories and links that are described below.

Important Directories

There are two types of directories that you will be interested in getting links from. The first type is a general directory that has many different categories which are further broken down into many different sub-categories. Typically you will be listed under a Region/City and then under Real Estate Agents. The other types of directories are just real estate specific and in some cases just list real estate agents only. In either case, directories are edited by people and some are free and some charge.

General Directories

  • Open Directory Project (DMOZ)  PageRank 9—Free Listing: Many of the large search engines including Google, use DMOZ to populate their own directories. Thus, getting listed at DMOZ will essentially get you listed in multiple directories. This is the most important of all the general directories. Some real estate website companies will get you listed as part of their initial setup. See our 3 Simple Things page for detailed instructions on how to get listed here.
  • Yahoo! Regional Business Directory PageRank 9—$299/year: At one time the Yahoo! directory was free. The current yearly fee of $299 is still worth it and if you buy only one link this is the one to buy. It is an authority site and carries great weight. You will want to be listed under the following hierarchy: Directory>Regional>U.S. States>Your State>Cities>Your City>Real Estate> Agencies> Residential>Agents. To get listed, click on the link above and then drill down using the above categories as your guide. Once you see a list of real estate agents in your city, click on the link at the top of the page that says “Suggest a Site”. Then just fill out the form, give them your credit card and you will be listed.
  • JoeAnt  PageRank 6—$39.99 one time fee or free if you become an editor: Certainly not as important as the above two directories, but it is a highly regarded directory with many agents listing by city. To be listed go to: http://www.joeant.com/DIR/cat/7403/By_State. You will see a list of states on the left, click on your state, click on “By City”, click on the letter which is the first letter of your city, click on the name of your city, click on “Real Estate”, click on “Agents”. You should now see a list of real estate agents in your city. In the top right corner of the page look for a link that says “Add URL”. Click on that link and follow the simple steps.

Real Estate Directories

  • (PageRank is subject to change)
  • Real Estate ABC  PageRank 6—$25/year or Free if you link back to their site: This is an excellent real estate site that provides information to consumers and has a large agent directory. They also have a large resource guide with many useful links for real estate professionals. They have been around since 1998.
  • ABC Real Estate Directory PageRank 5— Free, but you must link back to their site: This is strictly a nationwide directory of real estate agents. They have over 28,000 agents listed.
  • REALS.com PageRank 7— Prices range from $19.95 to $499: Reals is a family of websites with reals.com being the main directory site. Besides their basic listing they have many other packages. Their main site with the basic fee seems to be the best value.
  • The Real Estate Library PageRank 5— $60/year: The Real Estate Library is another nationwide directory ordered by state.
  • JustRealEstate.org PageRank 5—Free: You Must link to them before you add your site: JustREalEstate.org is actually a world-wide directory. The USA real estate is organized by state and then city.
  • REW Real Estate Directory PageRank 5—Price ranges from free to $40/month: Free if you put their link on your homepage. This directory was created by Real Estate Webmasters (REW) which is a company that also designs web pages for real estate agents.
  • Total Real Estate Solutions PageRank 5—Price ranges from free to $90/year: Owned by inetUsa who also designs websites. The site has many directories of resources and tools concerning real estate—including an agent directory. The link provided here is for the free listing.
  • Agent Preview PageRank 5—Free?: Nationwide real estate agent directory sorted by state. They recently changed their submission policy and pricing. You will need to go to their site and check.
  • Real Estate Clip Art PageRank 4—$25/year: Not a real estate agent directory per se, it is a list of members who have joined for $25 year. You also get access to a huge collection real estate clip art create by the owner Dusty Meads. Since it is real estate related and the fact the site has a page rank of 4, she has attracted quite a few members.