In today's blog post I am going to give you some real examples of link building. But I do hope that when you are done reading with this post, you are left with more questions than answers.

Are you trying to get more customers to your website? Do you want to create more buzz online? If you said yes to these two questions - then this blog post is for you.

The more backlinks you have pointing to your website from other websites, the more traffic you will receive. Also, if done correctly, increasing the number of quality backlinks will also improve your rankings on Google - which will again increase traffic to your website. Below are 15 different ways to build quality backlinks to your website. All the tactics mentioned below were gathered by analysing the backlinks of three websites using OSE. Although all of them are from the real estate industry, similar tactics can be used by businesses in most industries.

#1 Resource pages

Identify and contact websites that have resource pages that promote information related to housing. Contact these websites and make them aware of your website. As with all link building tactics, you will have better conversions if you spend time identifying the correct person to contact, and editing the message you are going to send him/her. Are you just going to email them regarding your website or are you going to help them with something first (hint: broken links) before asking them for a favour?

#2 Target EDU websites

Getting links from university websites (.edu or .ac.uk etc) are always helpful and will in-turn improve the relevance and authority of your website. Besides using these links as a way to get your website in front of students, it can also improve your rankings on Google if mixed with other link building strategies. Most university websites have a section that is dedicated to helping students find an apartment. If you are in the real estate vertical, this should be your approach.

#3 Make use of your inner pages

Most real estate websites have a page dedicated to each individual apartment/house listing on their website. Start working backwards by identifying individual listing that are popular. Add something fresh and relevant on your pages, and contact websites that have mentioned these properties in the past. If your page has enough value for their readers, they will link to you each time they mention the property.

#4 Partner with high traffic websites

There are websites like Reddit or Moz that get tons of traffic each month. If you can get listed or a relevant mention on websites that attracts your potential customers, then you will get some good referrals from them. For example, Reddit has a section that is related to moving that can be useful for any real estate website. If you can add value, then you may get a link to your website.

#5 Create detail guides

Create detail neighborhood guides for each area you are targeting. Then, contact local websites and promote your neighborhood guide on their website. An example is Trulia's neighborhood pages which gets links from local websites in that neighborhood.

#6 Create content

When people are moving to a new neighbourhood, they are concerned about how safe the neighbourhood is. Can you create something which will make them more aware of the safety standards of the neighbourhood? This will get you a lot of links and relevant traffic from people who really want to know how safe a neighbourhood is, such as crime maps.

#7 Write content on big data

If you have access to the behavioural patterns of your customers, you can use that to create a study on how their behaviour is related to the changes in the economy. I have noticed that most big editorial websites in the real estate section refer regularly to studies that are somewhat related to mortgages. When editors are writing their story, they need to refer to something that will back what they are saying. Can you create these content pieces that will help them tell their story better? If so, you will get a lot of links.

#8 Blog Roll Links

The approach to getting links from blogs is similar to tactic 1. Identify blogs that are linking to businesses that are similar to you and contact them via broken links. Not including a picture here, as it is quite common.

#9 Partner with Complimentary Business

What are the other services that your potential customers uses? Can you partner with them to promote your business? An example of this is a real estate company partnering with a primary school website to provide options for homes for the parents. When parents move to a new location, they are also looking for schools for their children.

#10 Answer big questions

How well do you know your customer? In the real estate industry, one topic that keeps coming up is the 'Rent vs Buy' questions? Should I buy an apartment? How many years will it take before owning a home becomes more financially advantageous than renting the same home? A tool that helps answer this question will get promoted online.

#11 Answer more questions

Similar to point number 10, you should spend time identifying all the problems or pain points that your customer could face, and come up with tools or widgets that will help them get to an answer quickly. These tools and widgets will also be used by other related websites which will again get your more links, and brand awareness.

#12 Take advantage of celebrities

This is an easy one. Identify all the celebrities that are living/renting/owning a property in the areas that you are present, and build detail pages for these properties. Each time news outlets carry their story, they will link to your website if you can offer something new, or present the same old in a a different way ;)

#13 Create something exclusive and useful

The below example involves Obama, and this is a tough act to follow. But what you should take from this is the idea that interviewing experts and making them answer relevant questions is always a good tactic to get links. This is something which is also done extensively in the SEO industry.

#14 Widgets

In the real estate industry there are many websites that will promote your widget if you can offer something exclusive. Below I have attached a few pictures of some widgets that gets promoted a lot. There is more opportunity : If your website also deals with rentals, can you provide a 'Recently Rented Home's' widget, or a widget that will easily allow someone to check if they are paying too much rent?

#15 Promote in relevant directories

Identify good quality directories that are related to you, and get links from them.

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Although the above mentioned 15 tactics are in the real estate vertical, this approach can be applied to all industries. Here is another link build blog for the hotel industry which I wrote around 18 months back. If you want more ideas to build links, then I would suggest these two articles.

Before starting to building links, I would spend time understanding the customer. This is where a ink builder or an SEO can really add value for the client. There are different ways to try to understand the customer better, but in this blog post I am going to give you a few questions to ponder about your customers. The more time you spend answering these questions - the better you will know your customer, which will in-turn allow you to create better marketing strategies to reach them.

Questions:

1. What is the normal state that your customer feels most of the time (This is in relation to your industry - for real estate, the normal state could be someone who goes to Craigslist to search for apartments to rent)
2. What is the ideal state that you want your customer to be in (Instead of going to Craigslist, they come to your website to look for apartments to rent)
3. Why do people move between these two states?
4. What happens when someone moves between these two states? What do they feel?
5. How can you push people from their normal state to their alternative state?
6. What is going on in their surroundings that will naturally help them move to the alternative state?
7. Can you make this process faster?

The above questions will help you understand your customer better, and also hopefully make you understand why they do the things they do - help better identify the motivations behind their behaviour. I would also spend some time identifying who your different customers are - the ones who are quick to use your product or service, the ones who wait for industry experts to voice their opinions, the ones who are lagging behind and will convert once the early majority converts. Each of these different customers are important and will require different marketing strategies to reach and convert them.

Using this you should build a customer journey map that shows why they behave in a particular way, and what needs to be done to change it, if needed. Once you have this customer journey map - you will have many different ways to approach your customer. Based on this, you should look to build links and create content that will convert them into the desired state that you want.

I do hope that this blog post has inspired you and left you with more questions than answers. If you would like to contact me you can send me a message via twitter. This is me on Twitter. Do say hello!