Last Updated 12/09/19
Our clients have been working hard to organically grow their property management websites so rental property owners can find them. This starts with making sure the property management website is up-to-date, continually improving for engagement, and using best practices for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and content.
SEO is not just about your website per se.
Consider your property management website as a puzzle piece. It might be a sizable puzzle piece, but it should still be thought of as part of a whole. Search engines look at a number of things to help them determine what results to show for each search term typed by a user. These these include relevant content and keywords found on your website, the strength of your domain, user experience design, and even your backlinks. We’ll explain that last one in a little bit.
Offsite SEO and Backlinks
Onsite SEO is the optimization you receive from content on your own site. Offsite SEO happens elsewhere on the internet. One of the biggest impacts on offsite SEO is backlinks.
What’s a backlink?
A backlink is when one website includes a link to another website and shares the content. It could be a URL from one site to another. It could be a hyperlink with images or text.
Here is an example of a blog post which has backlinks to other websites: https://www.redfin.com/blog/what-you-need-to-know-before-signing-your-first-lease/
How do backlinks help you, and how do they help your SEO?
Google and other search engines are always trying to improve user experience. They care about what people see once they get to your property management website. They track click-through rates and time-on-page engagement. They measure information about your business and whether it’s relevant to users by monitoring what people online say about you. So, linking from a website that isn’t your own to yours validates you.
Getting backlinks isn’t as easy as it sounds. There are things you should and should not do when you’re building your backlink profile.
Building a Backlink Profile: What to Do
It’s important to grow your backlink profile steadily and naturally over time. Any content should be industry-related and credible. The more backlinks the website linking to yours has and the more authority it has, the more value it brings you. So, look for industry-related sites with good reputations.
- Network with referral contacts and the companies you’re always sending business to. Talk to them about providing a link to your property management website on their services or referral page. You can offer the same for them. This will provide you with some potential new business and a strong backlink.
- Think about guest blogging. Providing content to other industry experts is a great way to get links back to your website. For example, if you have a relationship with a maintenance company and you write an article specifically for that company on deferred maintenance, they can post it on their blog and link back to yours. It’s simple and easy. Just make sure you’re creating new content. Don’t make one blog on deferred maintenance and share it to 50 maintenance websites. That’s not valuable for you or them.
- Get involved in local events. When you work with the Chamber of Commerce and NARPM, and you sponsor charity events, your business will be associated with these things, which creates an opportunity for a natural backlink.
- Get engaged with other people’s content strategies. If you follow someone’s educational videos or podcast, do an interview on their website. Normally, you’ll get a link back to your website.
Building a Backlink Profile: What Not to Do
It can be very enticing when you see an offer online or you get an email from a company that wants to build your backlink profile for $50.
These are not good links. They’re added to websites that have content for everyone, no matter what the industry or how general and irrelevant the content. That actually looks spammy to search engines. So when you’re looking for links or hiring someone to look for links for you, use best practices.
Lots of free websites will post anything you want. People will go to free blogging sites and listings and post links back to their website. That won’t do anything. And sometimes, sites like these can do more harm than good if Google thinks they are spammy.
Be careful with the places where you’re pushing your backlink strategy.
Quality is more important than quantity.
If you want to talk about backlinks or brainstorm some ideas, please contact us at Fourandhalf. We’d love to talk with you about how backlinks can benefit your property management website.
