All of us spend a lot of time, money and energy in real estate link building to fight the cutthroat competition that prevails in the industry. At times, we might get over enthusiastic about our real estate link building efforts that result in a sudden spike in our links count. Link spikes are nothing but the sudden rise and fall of links count for a website. Such link spikes are looked at with suspicion by search engines. Search engines look for natural link building and their algorithms are developed to assess the importance of websites based on the growing links count. All our artificial link building efforts that try to forcibly increase the number of back links for our website are considered manipulative efforts by search engines. If there is sharp increase in the number of back links then it will certainly trigger the search engine flags. Therefore, you should pay attention to such link spikes that will do more harm to your websites than good.

Not all link spikes set off the flags. If the link spikes to your website are associated with something that is happening around on the web or if it is based on a special event, then such link spikes may not be looked at with suspicion. For example, if you have a link worthy article or news that are time bound talking of a particular trend in the real estate market, it might attract the other website owners to link to you and such links may disappear when the news or the article is no more link worthy. Such link spikes are explainable.

Search engines look at paid links with contempt and hence link spikes that are not explainable are also looked at with contempt because number of website owners try to increase their links count by getting paid links. Web masters try to increase the links count to boost their ranking for certain keywords that are most widely searched for; link spikes that are associated with such trends may elicit penalty if you have not used legitimate or natural link building methods.

Here are some examples where we can expect natural links spikes:

Press Releases – Press releases are bound to cause link spikes. For example, when you expand your real estate services to a new area you might go for press release distribution to spread the word across and this will result in natural links spike when the press release is distributed across the web.

Social Bookmarking and Social Media – Social media can bring about link spikes based on trendy topics. Your social bookmarks may be followed by many if they are impressive enough.

News Breaks – If your website is related to something that features in the news then you can expect a natural links spike.

These are just few situations where we can expect natural link spikes and these are not necessarily mutually exclusive situations. At times, a combination of these situations can bring about link spikes.
We should also know the types of link spikes that create trouble. If you happen to get sudden rise in the number of links to your website or blog without anything happening that relate to the increase in links count, then you should know that you can be in trouble. So do not implement any real estate link building strategies that will create such an effect on your results. Try to go for phased link building approach for your real estate websites.

We need to pay special attention to link baiting efforts. If you post link worthy content and promote it well, you will end up with link spikes that can affect your website. Careful execution of link baiting strategies is very crucial.

Interestingly, if you can manage to set a regular pattern in link spikes then search engines will not look at your link spikes with suspicion. For example, if you happen to distribute press release articles at the end of every month on the hot properties that you have sold and the new properties that are listed, then it will become an expected trend rather than a spike. Therefore, careful planning is crucial for all your real estate link building efforts to that your own efforts will not work against you.

Tags: Link Building