You gentlemen chewed on this one for a while. Linking is still important to Google ranking, but not as much as before. The new algorithm searches for content more than links. Anyway, if you link to a lesser site it will drop your rank. Or if you link to a site that is banned, you might be banned. If you create a “link farm” you might be banned for spamming.

The top post by Doug is great, and still applies today. Especially the part, “Exchanging links does work - but not when you are exchanging them with the vast majority of template web sites.” Cookie cutter sites are like nipples on boar hogs. They are anti-search engine specific.

What we must ask ourselves is, “are we creating our websites for search engines or people? The idea within that question is the direction search engine spider algorithm is headed.

Google is a mystery in lots of ways, but clear in others. Many SEO professionals are still playing with tricks and quick fix strategies. Here is a link, easy and basic. http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html

And for those that are upset with poor results online, new blog here: http://websitefrustrated.blogspot.com

RK

This whitepaper is very informative. It comments on the new Google patent request and its algorithm.

http://www.site-reference.com/Search-Engines/5714/index.html

RK

Again, I post an interesting commentary about the link string.

http://www.site-reference.com/Search-Engines/5756/index.html

rk

Some recognized seo professionals have been saying it for a years, its about quality not quantity. Now, google has come out and said it too. Get quality links, not mass quantity or pay the price. I'm sure the others will follow suit. Nice tip on cyberspider.com, Doug.

It's quite possible that Google has and will continue to downgrade link popularity. It was an excellent idea when first instituted but it spawned a cottage industry whose only focus was to subvert Google's purpose. Now, does google say "hey guys we made a mistake" or do they quietly change. If you notice Google does many things to confuse their competitors. I am not suggesting that we give up linking altogether but perhaps it is prudent to spend less energy in linking just for the sake of linking and more time in developing good content.

Some really good observations posted here. Google has been pretty good at keeping the spammers at bay. It is a huge task when you are serving up 8 billion documents. I personally think the quality of Google Serps have declined since one of there many recent updates in February.

Having said that from my experience you must check your linking partners regularly to make sure your link is still active and in Google's cache. You can use a script to conduct this task for you. I have also heard good things about http://www.clicksentry.com, but I have not personally used it.

whew, lots of mouthfuls about links. i posted somewhere else in here already about links, but will add it here. links are important, without links we would come to the end of the internet. as not all domain names are something you nor i would think of to be able to even begin to search. pondering links:
link farms are bad, bad neighbors are bad, in the real estate industy you all know this too well. as you have seen one bad apple move into the neighborhood and drop market value considerably.

there are some good points in here, about knowing who you are linking to, is reciprication necessary, not actually, but it dont hurt, as somebody posted in one of the other forums i frequent, if you see a good site that has good content or good information, and you want to add that link to your site, by all means do so, if the site owner is a good steward of his site, he will notice you are linking to him, and may very well recipricate that link. there are factors of incoming outgoing links that are relevant to the theme. in the real estate industry (which i have no knowledge of except common sense) there are many possibilities, that would prove to be good linking neighbors. just to list a few

• Construction Contractors
• Insurance Agencies
• Pest Control Companies
• Landscape Companies
• Utility Providers
• Home Improvement Companies
• Home Inspectors
• Appraisers
• Just to name a few

these all fall into the theme, or realm of real estate. of course that is MHO, i could be wrong. but i think about a car, or a mechanics garage, and all the avenues that are available to that individual should they desire "QUALITY" links. imagination is a bigger factor, in thinking of what is beneficial to the viewer. somebody posted, are we building websites for robots are humans. the robot is supposed to be programmed to be human emulation, ha ha ha, good one huh.

well i have rambled enuff here, i like this forum, and the activity it has.

holla,

So...I checked my site on linkpopularity.com. How do I know if it's popular or not? Some sites have 20k links, but he's using a link farm.

What's a good number of links?

Depends on the structure of your site and how powerful the sites are you are exchanging links with. I only exchange links with sites that have rankings and where I trust the webmasters. That way I know that the search engines like the site and the webmaster is not very likely to make a bad move.

Mike

I have added a few links here under "search engine marketing".
Click on the "msn" link and that one will not only show you your msn rankings but also the real amount of backlinks validated.

Mike

I think the question needs to be rephrased to will reciprocal linking continue to work?

The proposition that two sites trade links for no other reason than to hopefully boost their SERPs goes against Google's intent that linking be a natural process.

Google is not that stupid. With each SEO linking strategy to game the system, Google put in alogos to filter out the non-natural effects. I am sure most SEO marketers anticipated that Google would or will do the same with the "Let's swap links" scheme and filter the artificial effect. What SEO marketers have not anticipated, and will take many two years or more to realize, is that Google is or has changed the rules by changing the method of measuring a link's value. When you read Google's recent patent it is apparent that Google, while maintaining the value of the link, has shifted focus and importance from the link itself to the process of linking. In other words an external link has little or no value if it has no features of being 'naturally' obtained. Let's swap links completely misses that criteria. Google will probably not penalize sites that continue to trade links, but will most likely smile on and say "go ahead and waste your time."

We found that a link exchange worked great for us. It only took us a couple weeks to get indexed by Google and other major search engines. Vic start and Van start.com were the best choice for our location.

If anyone has property that they're trying to sell north of the border comes list with us. We're just starting out and as such are offering the first 20 users free listings.

Thanks,
CanadaMoney Real Estate Listings
contact@bcmoney.ca

People need to worry more about their anchor text(and varying it) with their link partners far more than they need to be concerned about the actual number of links.

You need to hunt for GOOD links and stay away from quick fixes. If you want things to work then consider the reason link popularity is good for rankings to begin with. If a site with similar content and/or of high value features your link on a page with subject matter related to yours, it tells the search engine that your site must be good. You are blessed by association.

If you appear on a list of 100 recommend businesses of the same kind, common sense will tell you that you are not that special. I do have a real estate directory which has been indexed for quite a while and I do feel comfortable with it since my site does not focus on any specific area but rather is structured to give info about all 50 states and the main topic is of course real estate.

however, if your web site is about homes in Las Vegas, does it really make sense to have a directory attached to it when you want to focus on a specific market?

I think that it does make sense to recommend realtors with good web sites nationwide, but being selective should come first rather than adding more and more sites that can turn into bad neighborhoods lateron.

I would always look at the site and use my instinct where it is headed long term. Is the webmaster serious, reasonable, reputable or are you taking a risk?


The best way to gain good link popularity in my opinion is to create a tool, some great info or anything that webmasters will link to voluntarily or show off on blogs and in forums. Those are natural links that have benefitted me more than anything and those don't normally appear on farm like pages.

Whatever your strength is as a web developer and webmaster, find it and use it. Get your name out there as much as you can and chances are, they search engines will notice and surprise you with some great rankings.

Mike

Had my first real estate website online 1996. It was much easier to get a site known then. The original site has been used the past 3 years to supply property information to known investors only in a protected area. Just one page remained public. Checked and marketleap.com still finds approx. 20,000 links and Google has a few hundred links pointing to this domain on other real estate related sites listed.
Another site - http://www.globalrealtyforsale.com - was launched a good week ago and gets about 50 to 100 individual visitors per day now. Google picked up the sitemap file but did not index yet.
Maybe I should use the popularity of the old site and another site I have where marketleap.com finds 522,991 links and place links there to get the new site moving.
Looks like search engines still honor the age of sites to a certain extend ???
... or I simply swap the usage of the sites and make the old one the new one again.

Helmut P. Fleischhauer