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I remember when I first got started blogging I read everywhere. “To get a high pagerank you have to get quality backlinks.”
True, and a good piece of advise. How do you do that? “Write quality content that people want to link back to” Sounds good so far doesn’t it.
Now add into this little formula the fact that you are the author of a hyper local blog. How many people are going to link back to a post you have written on topic for your local market? Let’s see, after the number zero nothing seems to come to mind does it.
Outside.in
Find the local URL for your town or area of Outside.in and create an account and read about submitting your blog and posts to outside.in. Maybe your blog is already there and you didn’t know it. They keep changing their policy on what blogs are listed automatically and content pulled by Outside.in to their site. However, you can submit your post to Outside.in manually.
Open your tabbed browser with your newly published post in one and your outside.in in another.
- Select Submit
- Add title
- add url to the post
- add tags (the more tags the better)
You can also add tagging to your post for it to be picked up. I have a where tag automatically added to the bottom of all my posts on one of my blogs for the local area code.
Bonus Gem: Here is an example of an Outside.in page on Reid Park Zoo in Tucson You will notice I have two links to posts on Tucson AZ Real Estate. This Outside in page has a pagerank of PR2. If you follow the links to those two posts (tucsonazrealestateblog.com) I’ve referenced you will see both posts also have a PR2, coincidence? (If you follow this link you just might see the guy in the red shirt in the “Neighbors” navigation on the left.)
Create A New Blog
Huh? Yep, start a new blog about something you are interested in. If it is about something you are passionate about it will be easy to write. You end up creating a who new sphere of influence and audience.
It will make you a better blogger because you are writing more.
I know there are things you think about and want to write about but it doesn’t fit the theme of your RE blog a.k.a. the business blog. So start another blog. You can link to it, you can reference posts and topics that might be of cross interest which generates back links to your RE blog.
When I started the Lab it was as a hobby, I even call it my hobby blog. I was setting up my first blog for RE and couldn’t believe how bad the documentation was for getting a blog going, from hosting to platform, choosing a theme and which plugins to use. The programmers must have a deficient gene when it comes to documentation. They either leave out a lot of steps or they don’t document at all, they just figure somehow we will all figure it out. DUH! I work at this stuff, nothing is intuitive to me, I’ve said this before.
I wanted to write about the experience but it didn’t fit with the theme of Tucson real estate. I wrote a post about new blog or not, keep the theme of the blog focused or write about tech issues and local real estate. Some of the pioneers of RE blogging that came to the internet in covered wagons weighed in (by invitation). The decision was to keep the focus and start a new blog. The Real Estate Blog Lab was born from that post and comments.
Bonus Gem: For every link you put in a post to another blogger or blog post you are sending out a personal invitation to come and read this post. I know I do. I see a backlink where someone has put a reference in a post to the Lab or a specific post in the lab. I’m all over that clicking to find out what they said.
Read before you write, “Out-link” generously and you will sow seeds for back links in the future. But the key is still to write something they will be interested in reading.
When I posed the question about starting the Lab in the post referenced above, do you think anyone would have even seen the post if I hadn’t sent the personal invitations included in the post?
This hobby blog has more PR on pages than all three of my RE blogs added together. It has a higher number of readers, again add all the readers from the other three and they don’t add up to the Labs subscribers.
Barbara sometimes wonders about “What good is the Lab for our business?”
- It helps me be a better blogger
- It is my personal online journal (hey I forget how to do this stuff so I come back and read my own posts)
- It shares the love (I share the juice with other bloggers, and plenty goes to the hyper local blogs I author as well.)
- It lets me give back to the RE blogging community
- It gives me an outlet to share something I’m passionate about
“Oh, that’s good isn’t it.” “Yes, that’s good.”
Craig’s List
Sometimes Barbara just does something because she heard something at the office, she read an article, etc. I don’t know the source for this one. But one day I noticed in my Hittail results a link that looked strange. It didn’t come from a search engine, it came from Craig’s list. Barbara had entered a listing of ours. She had read about how to do this and what to include and not include to be within the Craig’s List guidelines. We got a few hits from it and I looked at the Title she had entered. Then we had a discussion about Title Tags.
Bonus Gem: From time to time I’ll be blathering on about things like the importance of “Title Tags” and showing Barbara how we are ranking because of the words in the title. I usually get this deer in the headlights look indicating either “I don’t get it” or “I really don’t care about this at all” usually it is the later. But Title Tags stuck. She started writing some really great title’s for her Craig’s list submissions and putting links in to the single property sites for the listings as well as the blog which is closest to the listing (geographically on topic).
I can always tell when she has been entering on Craig’s List, the traffic spikes and we bring a lot of readers to the various blogs through these links which are (back links created by us). Think about it, these are people looking for a home in the area we live and work. They find the listing, they find the blog, they find us. THIS IS TARGET MARKETING!
A Picture is Worth A Thousand Words and Juice
There is one more way to create some quality back links but it is part of a post of it’s own in this series. I really like this one and my love of photography is a perfect fit. I found this one quite by accident, but I found it by knowing where to look. And yes, Title Tags once again play a very important part.
You can create your own backlinks. I look at it like this, every post I write, no matter which blog it is on is another line in the water, another strand in the web another sign post on the net to get the attention we are looking for from those looking for what we provide in our hyper local market. Hyper Local content and message broadcast to the entire world.
I love the internet and I love blogging : )
Post Tags: Craigs List , Hyper Local Blogging , Hyper Local Marketing , Outside.in
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24 responses so far ↓
1 Hyper Local Target Marketing Create Your Own Backlinks | The Long List of Odysseus Medal Nominees | Realtors and real estate, mortgages, lending, investments // Feb 25, 2008 at 11:54 am
[...] Hyper Local Target Marketing Create Your Own Backlinks, by Dave Smith. [...]
2 Real Estate/Buisness News » Blog Archive » Hyper Local Target Marketing Create Your Own Backlinks // Feb 25, 2008 at 11:54 am
[...] Original post by Dave Smith [...]
3 Lydia Taylor (6 comments.) // Feb 25, 2008 at 12:49 pm
You are definitely right about Craig’s List, Dave. I see a lot of traffic from listings there. I repost them every couple of weeks. You’d be surprised what one home listing ad will do- I usually will get 2 to 5 visits a day per ad and those visitors will stay for at least 12 pages average.
4 Bill (2 comments.) // Feb 25, 2008 at 3:22 pm
I know Outside.in is a great site. I have been trying to get it to accept my blog for days. I finally gave up. I followed their instructions to the tee. I know I am doing something wrong but can’t figure out what.
5 Dave Smith (445 comments.) // Feb 25, 2008 at 3:25 pm
It isn’t the submitting of your blog, but the individual posts.
Have you created an account with Outside.in?
Are you providing the URL of the Post, not the blog?
Are you providing the Tags?
If you do this and submit, it should appear in a matter of moments.
6 Eric Blackwell (42 comments.) // Feb 25, 2008 at 9:07 pm
I am with Lydia and you, Dave, on Craig’s List…We are just starting to use it…good results so far…
Off to try Outside.in Thanks for the insight
Best
Eric
7 Julie (2 comments.) // Feb 26, 2008 at 6:15 am
Thank you for the interesting and definitely useful information. I checked the site Outside.in and it looks good. Isn’t it interesting how these things work? Someone links to your blog and you get higher pagerank. I work as a Toronto realtor and I was just thinking about starting writing a new blog, so this article came really handy. I haven’t heard about the Craig’s list but after reading your article I’ll definitely look into it. Thank you again for advice.
8 Bob (1 comments.) // Feb 26, 2008 at 11:24 am
This is the key, the most important factor in SEO, if you do nothing else, do this. Did you know you can rank #1 for a keyword that’s not even on your web site? Back-links is how you do it.
9 Rich in Fort Worth (1 comments.) // Feb 28, 2008 at 10:09 am
I’ve used Craig’s List in the past with pretty good results. Might need to start up again.
I’ll also give Outside.in a try.
10 Dave Smith (445 comments.) // Feb 28, 2008 at 10:14 am
The thing about Craig’s list for bloggers is the win win you create for yourself. If you just see it as maybe a way to snag a buyer it doesn’t seem like the time to enter and keep it updated is worth the effort.
If you see it as building good backlinks to yourself and bringing potential buyers looking for homes in your area of service it becomes time well spent. All in how you view your efforts.
Of course you have to put in the title tags and back-links. Without those it is just a hook in the water hoping to snag something. Not the same as real fishing : )
11 The Odysseus Medal competition — Voting for the People’s Choice Award is open | BloodhoundBlog: Real estate marketing and technology blog | Realtors and real estate, mortgages, lending, investments // Mar 2, 2008 at 12:09 pm
[...] is this week’s short-list of Odysseus Medal nominees: Dave Smith, Hyper Local Target Marketing Create Your Own BacklinksJeff Corbett, Just Write Relevant, Compelling Articles About Real Estate and/or Mortgage and You [...]
12 The Odysseus Medal: “Free has emerged as a full-fledged economy” | BloodhoundBlog: Real estate marketing and technology blog | Realtors and real estate, mortgages, lending, investments // Mar 3, 2008 at 12:36 pm
[...] week’s People’s Choice Award goes to Dave Smith with Hyper Local Target Marketing Create Your Own Backlinks: Sometimes Barbara just does something because she heard something at the office, she read an [...]
13 Hyper Local Target Marketing Title Tags // Mar 3, 2008 at 7:31 pm
[...] of trickery. I’ll explain how to do it in the next post which ties together the concepts of creating your own back-links and creating good title [...]
14 Scott Ficek (40 comments.) // Mar 3, 2008 at 11:17 pm
Dave-
Have you ever used GeoRSS for Outside.in? It appears someone built a WP Plug-in that you can select the GeoLocation on each post.
See it here: http://georss.org/
15 Dave Smith (445 comments.) // Mar 3, 2008 at 11:25 pm
No I haven’t and when I click on the link I don’t understand a bit of what he is saying. Like I’ve told others. I live in the desert. We don’t have nice addresses that fit in with goe tags or outside.in. I picked my home zip code and use it as the where for everything I write in and around Tucson.
16 Scott Ficek (40 comments.) // Mar 3, 2008 at 11:28 pm
My impression was that if you use this GeoRSS, it will automatically be entered into outside.in based upon your Geo code (even if it is always Tuscon).
This page at outside.in talks about it:
http://outside.in/public/geo_tagging#4
17 Dave Smith (445 comments.) // Mar 3, 2008 at 11:44 pm
You must think I’m way smarter than I really am. LOL Pay no attention to the blogger behind the curtain.
4. GeoRSS
For the more technically-minded. Any blog that includes GeoRSS data in its feed will be parsed and each post will be assigned a specific location.
Scott, do you see “For the more technically-minded” that left me out. : )
I barely get RSS, but GeoRSS Data in its feed.
18 Lori T (1 comments.) // Mar 4, 2008 at 7:28 am
You wrote:
“She started writing some really great title’s for her Craig’s list submissions and putting links in to the single property sites for the listings as well as the blog which is closest to the listing (geographically on topic).”
Regarding putting links into Craigslist ads. Could you elaborate? I was under the impression that if you had a link in your ad they wouldn’t post the ad. Do I misunderstand what you’re describing or did Craigslist change their policy?
Thanks!
19 Dave Smith (445 comments.) // Mar 4, 2008 at 7:41 am
I’ve never seen Craig’s List. I know she puts a link to the Property’s website and a link to the blog for that area Ex. Tucson or Oro Valley.
She’s been doing this for almost a year and not had any issues or rejected submissions.
20 Scott Ficek (40 comments.) // Mar 4, 2008 at 7:55 am
Craig’s list allows links. I use it to drive traffic to my blog by posting under Real Estate services with a link to my home page. They simply put them as nofollow.
Worst case scenario is that they will simply remove the ad if they don’t like it.
Funny thing is that I have actually seen those entries show up as backlinks on some reports, despite the nofollow.
21 Eric Blackwell (42 comments.) // Mar 4, 2008 at 8:04 am
@Scott- Yep. They do show up as no follows. and ’tis true that often “no follow” links DO show up on Google Webmaster Tools and on Yahoo site explorer. That doesn’t mean that they have value, just that they show up. I use a FF extension that Joost De Valk built that does an excellent job of showing you the PR, the anchor text, and if a BL is no followed.
It’s solely the traffic you are after with CL…so the fact that it is no followed is no big deal IMO.
22 Dave Smith (445 comments.) // Mar 4, 2008 at 8:30 am
Thanks for weighing in on this. I checked with Barbara and she said she just puts the URL in the description no special code involved.
If they weren’t going to allow links I would think they would turn that off.
23 Jason Brown (8 comments.) // Mar 4, 2008 at 12:01 pm
I signed up and tried Outside.in but I’m not sure. My blog was accepted but no posts show up in my area. I’ll wait to see what happens. Maybe I have to go into my posts and tag them with zip codes, if I’m understanding this right.
24 Dave Smith (445 comments.) // Mar 4, 2008 at 12:11 pm
Did you manually submit a post or just sign up for outside.in?
If you want to get them in for sure manually submit the post. The title the URL an excerpt tags and submit.
This is how I get them in. Once I hit submit I usually see the post in the results right away.
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