The best advice

[Real Estate Forum]

I can give Real Estate Webmasters is to get local web sites and real estate sites to add you on pages.

If local businesses like you and fellow real estate ppl respect you, Google will assume that you're cool!

http://www.sitetutor.com is page 4 G for "San Diego Real Estate" and I don't even want that term ... not for that site at least.

Stay away from ANY link exchange or such programs ... it will hurt!

[Andrew Wright]

When you say "local" I assume that does not apply to the real estate sites. Does it matter where in the U.S. the realtor is that you link with? I just wouldn't want to link with a local realtor due to competition. Thanks for the post.

[Chief Tutor]

In regard to real estate, you look at whom you trade URL's with using the following standards:

First, if it is a another realtor, then you are trading URL's with antoher industry specific webiste which is positive.
Second, if you are trading URL's with a non industry related website, then you do so to create a geographic association with your website. For Example, linking to your local city website, creates an association with that city.As a result, the search engines use these links to define the area you are located and the industry to which you are focusing. These links then support the content of your website and various optimization aspects (ie title tags, alt tags, H1 tags etc, to know where to properly index your website.

[Shimmer]

thanks chief.. .

[vrem]

Yes make sure your links are relative to your site. I see so many sites with links that do not pertain to the main site and that is a no no.

[MoreMobile]

I know they don't help nearly as much as relevant ones, but to they actually hurt your cause?

[Monkeyleg]

Can they hurt? With Google, almost nobody knows what the real rules are.

But it's pretty well-known that Google doesn't like link farms. If you have a real estate site, why would you have links to jewelry or book-related sites?

[FlatFeeKing]

Overall a link is good. If your a real estate site and you have a jewelry link its not bad, just not as good. if that jewelry site links back to you, its even less good. As long as you are not in st. louis, I would recomend everyone in your office that has a realtor site linking to each other. it will only make your offices web stronger. If you want instead to get all 1 way links. You can link to bob, bob links to jeff, jeff links to susie, susie links to stephanie, stephanie links to george, and george links to you, etc etc. IF you are in st. louis, give up optimizing your site, I plan to dominate you, so dont waste your time.

[ChristianOC]

In-house linking can be dangerous, especially if you can suddenly add a thousands links. If there are too many links coming from one IP neighborhood, it can be very, very bad for the site's lifespan in the index. Be careful.

[FlatFeeKing]

A few years ago I was at a big company and considered proposing to all the realtors we do a link trading scheme, like a links to b links to c links to d links to e links to a type of thing, but I have heard that can be very damaging to ratings

[gjtrafl]

Chief,

Thank you for the advice you have given me thus far. My rankings continue to improve and I am right on track from what you told me would happen. I have also seen other competitors fall out of the rankings by not heeding your ideas.

[rainier]

it's good to link on local if your site is in local too...