Ask an estate agent what a backlink is, and most will tell you it is something SEO agencies sell. Ask them who links to their website, and the honest answer is Rightmove, Zoopla and nobody else. That is the gap. Links from other websites are one of the four biggest factors in local search, they are the one factor most agencies have done nothing about, and in a small town, a handful of them is enough to move you.
This guide is twelve ways to earn them without buying anything. It expands the “nothing links to you” check from our ten checks for a site that is not ranking, and it sits inside our complete guide to SEO for estate agents.
Why links matter for a local business
In the Whitespark Local Search Ranking Factors survey, link signals carry about 11% of the weight in the map pack and considerably more in the organic results below it. That puts them behind the Google Business Profile, on-page content and reviews, and ahead of citations and behavioural signals (Whitespark, Local Search Ranking Factors survey).
What makes links different from the other three is that they are the only signal you cannot produce yourself. You can complete your profile, write your pages and ask for reviews. A link requires someone else to decide your website is worth pointing at. That is why Google trusts them, and why in a town where every agency has a decent profile and reviews, the one with links from the local school, the football club and the town’s news site is the one that wins.
The other thing to understand is scale. An estate agent is not competing with national brands for national terms. You are competing with four or five other agencies in one town, and most of them have no links at all. Five relevant local links is a real advantage.
The two rules
First, never buy them. Paid links, link exchanges and “guest post” networks are against Google’s spam policies and the penalty removes you from search entirely (Google Search Central, spam policies). Second, relevance beats authority. A link from the parish council website is worth more to a local agency than a link from a national directory nobody in your town reads.
The twelve sources
1. The organisations you already sponsor
Most agencies sponsor something: the under-nines football kit, the cricket club scoreboard, the school fete. Almost none of them ask for the link. Every one of those organisations has a website with a sponsors page, and a link from it is the easiest you will ever earn. Send one email with your logo, a sentence of description and the URL of your area page for that town.
2. Local news sites
Your town has at least one news site, and it needs stories. A quarterly market update with local figures from Rightmove, Zoopla or HM Land Registry, sent as a short press release with a quote from you, gets covered more often than you would expect, and the coverage links to the source. The market snapshot on your area pages is the raw material.
3. The chamber of commerce and business groups
Membership of the local chamber, BNI group or town business association usually comes with a listed profile and a link. It is a modest link on its own, but it is the kind Google reads as proof you are a real local business.
4. Schools and PTAs
Parent-teacher associations run websites and newsletters and are permanently short of support. Sponsoring a school event, donating a raffle prize or paying for the sports day marquee earns a thank-you with a link, and the school’s website carries weight in the town.
5. Charities and community events
The same applies to the local hospice, food bank, Christmas lights switch-on and summer festival. Support them, ask for the link on the supporters page, and put the event on your own site, which gives them a reason to link back.
6. Your suppliers and partners
The conveyancer, mortgage broker, removals firm, photographer, EPC assessor, and surveyor you recommend. Each has a website, most have a “partners” or “recommended by” page, and every one would rather link to a local agency that sends them work than not. Ask.
7. Your own local guides
Write the guide to moving to your town that does not exist yet: the schools, the commute, the streets, the pubs. Pages like this get linked by relocation forums, by employers’ HR pages, by the schools themselves and by people writing about the area. It is slow, and it is one of the few pieces of content that keeps earning links for years.
8. Market reports as data
Journalists and bloggers link to numbers. A page on your site that publishes the average sold price, time to sell and stock level for your town every quarter, with the source stated, becomes the reference other people cite. The regional press, property bloggers and even the portals’ own editorial teams link to sources that make their job easier.
9. Local directories that people actually use
Not the 400 generic directories; the ones your town uses. The parish or town council business list, the local “what’s on” site, the visitor guide, the business improvement district. These overlap with the citations in our list of 60 for UK estate agents, and many carry a live link as well as your details.
10. Podcasts and local radio
Every county has a business podcast, and most have a community radio station looking for guests. Twenty minutes on what is happening in the local housing market earns a link from the episode page and a recording you can reuse.
11. Employers and relocation
Large local employers (the hospital, the university, the barracks) often keep a page for new staff moving to the area with links to local services. Being the agent on that page is worth more than most links you could buy, and a polite email to the HR or facilities team is usually all it takes.
12. The trade press
The Negotiator, Estate Agent Today and Property Industry Eye all take contributed pieces from working agents. A short column on something you know from the ground, how you handle a down valuation, what changed in your town this year, earns a link from a site Google trusts heavily in this sector. It is the hardest on the list and the most valuable.
Where the links should point
Not everything to the homepage. A link from a school in Aldershot should point to the Aldershot area page. A link from a mortgage broker’s partners page should point to the homepage or the valuation page. A link from a market report citation should point to the report page. Spreading links across the pages you want to rank is what makes the area pages move, and it also looks natural to Google, because it is.
Keeping track
Keep a simple sheet: the organisation, the contact, the date asked, the page linked, the page it points at. Check it quarterly, because organisations rebuild their websites and links disappear. Twelve months of steady asking, one or two a month, is a link profile no other agency in your town will have.
When to bring in help
Sources one, three, four, five, six and nine are yours to do; they need a relationship and an email, and you have the relationships. Sources two, seven, eight and twelve need writing, data and follow-up every quarter, which is the standing work inside our Local SEO for estate agents service. If you want to see who currently links to your agency and to the agencies you compete with, book a discovery call and I will pull the comparison for you.
Sources
- Whitespark, Local Search Ranking Factors survey: https://whitespark.ca/local-search-ranking-factors/
- Google Search Central, spam policies (link spam): https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials/spam-policies
- HM Land Registry, UK House Price Index: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/uk-house-price-index-reports
