Links have long been a significant component of how search engines determine a website’s trustworthiness. Initially, the more links a site had, the more credible it was and therefore the higher it would rank in the search engine results. To prevent site owners from engaging in questionable tactics in order to obtain more links, however, Google has cracked down, ensuring only sites with quality backlinks rank well. If you’re willing to put in the work, here are a few ethical link building methods that can help your property management website perform better in the search engines.
What are backlinks and why do they matter?
Backlinks are simply links to your site from other external websites. Each of these links is considered a vote of confidence that your site is of good quality. After all, if other site owners are willing to link away from their own sites back to yours, you must be offering something of value. The more confidence your site garners, the more authority you’ll achieve and the higher you will be ranked in the SERPS. (To get an idea of where your property management website is currently in terms of ranking authority, here’s a handy tool.)
You may be thinking, great – the more links the better. Not necessarily. In reality, the only backlinks that really count are those that come from other reputable websites, preferably with equally high authority and ranking. In fact, a handful of links from authoritative sites will have far greater positive impact on your ranking than dozens of backlinks from low-quality sites. Furthermore, links that come from questionable sources can actually harm your site’s ranking. So, it’s a big deal.
4 Effective Tactics for Getting More High Quality Backlinks
Guest Posts
Guest posts are articles that are published on someone else’s website or blog. Backlinks may be included in the bio section or within the body of the article itself. To be effective, guest posts should be of high quality and provide value to the reader. They should also only be submitted to other high authority sites. Consider reaching out to an industry publication or an established business that is complementary to the property management industry. Not sure where to begin? Try scoping out your competitors’ guest posts and contacting those sites to see if they’d consider also publishing your content.
Resources
Creating valuable educational resources, such as lists, stats or infographics, is another great way to garner more backlinks to your site. Figure out what others in the property management industry or your local community may be interested in and compile away. For instance, you might create a list of the top restaurants in a particular geographical area. These types of resources are great because they make a good source of references for other site owners.
PR
Getting your property management company mentioned in news publications and press releases, with links back to your site, can also be a highly effective backlinking tactic. You can, of course, publish your own press releases. Or, you can get creative by connecting with journalists who may be looking for trustworthy sources to cite on reports they are working on. The site Help a Reporter is a great place to start if you’re interested in taking this route.
Broken Links
Just about every site out there has a few broken links on it. These are links that lead to 404 blank pages. You can capitalize on this by locating broken links that were once redirected to content that is similar to yours, contacting the site owner to let them know their link is broken and then requesting that a link to your content be used as a replacement. In this scenario, everyone wins. To use this tactic you can use Ahref’s Broken Link Checker to check sites that might be relevant to the property management industry and/or your local niche.
These are just a few of the many techniques you can use to get more backlinks to your property management website. The most important thing to remember is that quality matters. If you can secure a link from a few reputable sites, you’ll be well on your way to improving your ranking.
