Most website owners know by now that content is king in the eyes of the search engines but simply adding articles or blog posts to your site is not enough to get you the first page of the major search engines. The most important factor that search engines like Google use to determine ranking is linking. However not just any links will do. You need the right links from the right sites. Here is good way to evaluate if the site you want to a link from is good or not.

Links that you get to your site need to be relevant. That simply means that links from sites with the same or similar topic or theme will be more valuable than from other sites. For your real estate website you need links from other real estate related websites.

Some sites are considered by the search engines to be an authority in the field of real estate. The more of these authority sites that you can get links from the better your chances of increasing your rankings will be.

Trust is another factor used to evaluate a link. A link to your site from a trusted site will tell the search engines that your site is really about real estate not spam.

It can be difficult to find links that have these attributes but there are ways of finding them. For example if your target keyword phrases is "Washington Real Estate" type "Real Estate" into your search engine of choice. Try to get links from the sites that show up on the first few pages. A couple of hours of search engine optimization a week with greatly improve your rankings and traffic.