Thanks for the encouraging emails I got from my last post, “Creative Link Building, Real Estate 101“. One of the questions that kept coming up was, “how do you determine domain authority / trust?” To answer this question, SEOmoz has a great video about domain trust and authority. In the video Rand explains that trust can be determined by,

“Who links to you and who you link to.”

This is an important concept towards establishing trust for your real estate website.

Linking out to trusted sites can be a difficult idea to understand. The reaction I get from most agents when I first recommend this concept is, “why would I send people away from my site once I get them there?” Well, if you link to sites with good, relevant content, those same people will come back to you because they trust you. And establishing trust with your site visitors is the premise behind getting leads from your website.

So what’s a trusted site? Sites that don’t link to other sites with spam, to name a few:

  • Your Local MLS,
  • Newspapers
  • Schools & Universities
  • Government sites
  • Realtor Associations
  • Non Profits

Rand goes on to explain that authority can be determined by your linking structure. A natural linking structure is going to bring the most authority to your domain. So what’s a natural linking structure?

  • One that grows over time, matching the growth of your real estate business.
  • And one that links to pages across your entire website (opposed to links built to only your home page).

As an agent or brokerage, you cannot expect to get a bunch of links to your website, rank high in the search engines, and “just” start doing business on the web. Ranking in the SERPs is a reflection of your business’ popularity within your target market and is something that will grow over time.

I hope I was able to answer your questions, and in the future I encourage you to leave your questions in the comments of the post.