Now, the same people, forums, and communities that allow the link exchange schemes to go on become the market place for “advanced” seo– ” Give a 5 star rating to my real estate squidoo lens with all the links to my websites/webpages and in return, I will rate your your squidoo real estate lens with 5 stars .” Give me a break……. I just hope Google does not dig any more into Squidoo for all parties’ sake because the top three spam categories are affiliate/seo sites, porn, and real estate. Just thought I would give everyone an early notice.

P.S. Please do not rate the lens that I linked to unless you really love my writings here and give me a five stars and please don’t ask me to rate yours in return. I might not be so kind to give five stars.

All things aside Create a lens with Squidoo today!!!!!!! It really is a great hobby..

• Agent Search – $180 annually
• Realtors on the Web – Starting at $49 annually
• Real Estate Agent Map -29.95 initial fee- 29.95 per modification.

 Update: Feb 28, 2008

While 36 Towns was part of the original list, their featured listings (example in the link) do not fit to the above guidelines anymore due to the paying client being allowed to choose own anchor text without a nofollow tag.

Google sees backlinks from all directories but most of their value has been extremely diminished in terms of page rank since this post was originally written. I do not sponsor any of the directories above. The above are simply a guideline for directories to follow and the advice carries its value even to this day. I believe there is a benefit to submitting all directories where Google can cache the page your submission goes to (which means no “NOFOLLOW” tags, no robots text trick, javascript wrapped links etc.). Unless you have money to waste, I personally do not believe that money spent on directories are really worth it. But of course that is my two cents. 

For a second forget that Google exists… You really want to have a referral directory of agents you can trust your client’s referral to. How would you approach it???

Would you really …….

– put bunch of anchor text links that say <city name> real estate without even mentioning who the agent you are referring to is?

– put the same “optimized” paragraph that the agent requests you to put on your page that really does not tell anything about the agent (and probably is repeated in hundreds of websites around the world)?

– dump all those links or paragraphs under one state webpage without even defining any regional or city related boundaries related to the agents you link to?

If you really want to have pages of geographical regions you can refer your clients to and actually increase the user experience (and your dollar bottom line),

why not…

a) actually have a heart to heart talk with the agent and/or brokerage that you would like to set up a referral relationship with and learn about the relocation experiences and strategies, the brokerage or agent has

b)create a referral system and agreement on paper with that brokerage and agent if you like them

c) Create a profile webpage with unique content for each agency/agent you would like to setup a relationship with. On that page you should actually say why you are referring that agent/agency of all agencies. This page can be optimized for a certain area but honestly would you refer your clients to 10 agents in one area. One agent/agency per area (not state). Also make sure there is a defined contact form that emails both you and the referred agent/brokerage so that there is a record of referral for both parties.

In terms of linking to that agent…..

A link to the referred agent/brokerage is fine as long as there is a trustable agreement between both brokerages and agents in terms of referral fees and the link actually is relevant to the profile page’s content topic

If you are creating a profile page about a certain area you should link to the referred agent/brokerage’s relocation info page about the area you are writing about. Or if you are only creating a profile page about the agent then a link to the about us page that talks about the referred agent’s qualifications seems more appropriate and definitely increases your trust and relevancy rank. Also, I would pay attention not to link to an agent that uses bad linking practices and obeys the webmaster guidelines, even if you are going to use that agent as your referred agent. If you have done a good job of advertising the agent who knows, the agent might want to give you back a link to the page he is being praised from. Guess what!!!! Now that is an increase in trust and relevancy ranks. Though don’t forget…. Not everything is links and not everything is Page Rank.

Ultimately, you have three goals: Ethical best practices (both in terms of real estate and a website), healthy relationships with your clients, and website usability). This service in terms of ethics does include trustable referrals of other real estate industry professionals, and the best possible information you can give about those referrals.