90 Day Challenge – Day 31 Your Post: The Gift of Linking

Kids love a pinata. It is a “big hit” at any birthday party.  Give it a good whack and watch candies, goodies and trinkets scatter as the kids scamper and gather every little “gift” they find. Sometimes they might even share.

Your post can scatter “gifts.”  When given the option, your reader can mouse-click on the gift and unwrap relevant information. This gift is a technically called a  hyperlink.

The Hyperlink Advantages:

• For your reader — You do all the research for him. You shop, find, purchase and wrap it; he unwraps it . . . if he chooses.
• For your reader — You ask the question that may have never occurred to him and then you  answer it.
• For your post — Linked information may live, breathe and change. If the linked information is updated or corrected at its core, your post will remain current longer (or have a longer, relevant web life).  If you copied, pasted and/or quoted an article in your post, (just like printed material), parts may become stale or outdated more quickly.
• For you — You give credit to the appropriate author avoiding plagiarism and copyright infringement (much like the footnotes in your high-school term paper).
• For you — You exhibit thoroughness, expertise and attention to detail– your post becomes a reflection of your work ethic and mirrors the way you handle your Real Estate business.
• For you — You become a known and visible expert in your field on the worldwide web because you are achieving SEO. See Day 4 of the Challenge to review backlinks, pageranks, and search engine optimization (SEO).
• For you — Your reader will fall in love with you because of . . . all of the above.

Links Make Sense:

Could  you imagine reading a Martha Stewart magazine article where she has referred to last month’s Key Lime Pie recipe and the recipe is nowhere to be found in the current issue (because, after all, it is last month’s recipe and Key limes may have already gone out of season).

Your Aunt Juanita just brought you a bag of Key limes from the waterfront Islamorada home (you sold her), and she has dropped them on your front porch because you saw her coming up the drive, turned out the lights, and pretended not to be home.

Your mouth is watering for that pie.  You should:

• A.  Purchase last month’s Martha Stewart if you can dare fight the crowds at Costco
• B. Wait until next lime season for Martha to once again publish the recipe
• C. Suck it up and beg Aunt Juanita for her recipe or
• D. Pretend you are sick, ask Aunt Juanita to come back, pick up her limes off the front porch (you wouldn’t want her to catch anything), and bring back the pie.

In Martha’s blog, however, she would have courteously (deep) linked her Key Lime Pie reference to her prior post. It just makes sense to heighten the excitement level of the reader and give him more than he expected.

Relevancy:

If you were reading a travel post about Istanbul, Turkey,  and you had never been there before, wouldn’t it be wonderful if the author linked all the related areas of interest to the post?  The links must be relevant to the subject.  You would not find Aunt Juanita’s Thanksgiving turkey-and-dressing recipe linked to one of the “Turkey” words.

Print vs. Post:

From the author’s standpoint:  It would cost a small fortune to professionally write, publish and professional print and distribute the “Travel to Turkey” article with all its related links.

From your standpoint:  Not only would you have to physically seek out the publication, the print version would be equivalent to a coffee-table sized travel magazine, and the information would be outdated by the time it was edited, printed and distributed!

As I was gathering information for this post, I perused the “Listings” category on our EWM.COM website.  I noticed very few posts contained links.  Posting a blog about your listing (complete with healthy links) forces you to take a bird’s eye view of your listing  — everything in, around, through, on top of, within the radius of, near, far, everything existing entity that may affect that property.  Linking relevant entities to your listing is key to getting it noticed on the web.

Link = Relationship:

If you take the time to add “links” to your post, you are loving on your reader. The more you love on your reader, the more he will come back for more love and bring others with him.  Soon your business will feel the love, and you will feel the love for your business.

This video will show you the basics of adding links to your post.

Here are a few listing link ideas:

• School (County) websites:  www.Dadeschools.net or www.browardschools.com
• Actual school websites, such as Cypress Bay High School (FCAT Scores)
• Colleges and institutions of higher learning
• Specialty schools, such as art institutes or culinary institutes
• Restaurants
• Buildings (if a condo, the building (Condo Association) may have its own website)
• Neighborhoods (HOAs may have a website)
• Municipalities
• Malls and shopping centers
• Places of special interest (zoo, seaquarium, Parrot Jungle, Jungle Queen)
• Virtual tours (unless they are embeddable)
• MLX report page
• EWM.com photo and info page
• Maps (unless they are embeddable)

Use caveats where necessary.  For example — even though posts are time-date stamped, school boundaries change.  Therefore, if I include school information in a post, I state:  CAVEAT:  School boundaries are subject to change.  Please consult (“xxx” website) prior to purchasing any property.

Think Link:

Blogging is like weaving a tapestry.  We sometimes stare at a blank canvas trying to envision the final image. We stop staring and start weaving. We weave, we cut, we weave some more. Carefully lacing each colored yarn, we intertwine it  one with another.  With twists and loops and links to other colorful pieces, we stare at the mess we’ve made only to realize that we are looking at the back side of the tapestry.

Flip it over.

It’s a beautiful, unique masterpiece.

Other resources:

Linking for SEO – Tips and Secrets