In the past 6 months, Google has done alot of shuffling and changing to get rid of the spammers, and as always, to keep those of us who are trying to rank well on our toes. One of the main things that has changed so much is all the hoopla about reciprocal linking.
Google has always based more than half its algorithim on incoming links. When I first got into this business 4 years ago or so, it was fairly easy to work with links and link text...once you understood it. Realtors especially, had no clue about the search engines, and there were just a few of the internet savvy ones around who knew what to do to take advantage of the traffic that a top ranked website will bring. We talked to each other, traded links, learned from each other, and did well. Little by little our numbers grew, and everyone who had a good site with good content who didn't do the wrong things became somewhat cemented to the top. Life was good.
Then the hoards of so-called SEO people moved in. Emailing other people required too much time and too much trouble. They started inventing programs that sent out link requests automatically to hundreds of other websites. Sometimes they even tell you they've linked you first...as if that may make you feel more obligated to return the favor.
I've never done anything but delete these emails. I don't even check the site most of the time.
If someone doesn't respect me enough to send a private email to ask me for a link, then they can peddle themselves elsewhere. I've often thought it was amusing that so many of them (I probably get 10 or more a day!) are putting links to my sites on there for a week or two weeks...and the links get spidered! I never give them a thing, and even if they take it off after a couple of weeks, I still get whatever little boost there is from it, and by the time it's worn off, there are 10 more to take its place. These people are either nuts or just stupid.
But as that grew into a booming business and every town had someone who claimed they could SEO your site, reciprocal linking ended up being more and more of an obvious racket...and we've known that Google was going to put a stop to it sooner or later.
The first part of May, they did. Lots of real estate sites, particularly those put out by one of the biggest templated real estate website companies in existence, were manually removed from the index. It's assumed that by doing a certain number this way, it is intended to make everyone else get scared and remove theirs before they get it too.
And it WAS ridiculous in a lot of cases. Instead of having 2 or 3 pages with good solid links to well ranked sites with some age and "authority" status, this company had a deal going where everyone participating in the linking program was obligated to link to everyone else. They built state directory pages...many of them with 50 or more pages of crappy links to other real estate sites.
The whole thing was a joke. Again, that's how we all suffer from the actions of those who want to take the easy way out and not do the work. I would occasionally get one of their newsletters and it always ended with the most recently created new real estate websites and ordered the readers to add them to their link directories. I'm sure Matt Cutts saw these newsletters too...in fact I personally showed him several. And they realized it was getting out of hand and had to be stopped.
So many of the top ranked sites with those link directories are now banned, and have removed them...now with the problem of what to do with 50+ pages that will have to have actual content put on them...or deleted and presenting a 404 which can hurt your rankings.
It also appears that Google is either killing any boost to the rankings from ANY reciprocal links, or they've just figured out how to spot links pages. Almost everyone I know dropped an entire page rank last week. We didn't seem to lose our actual ranking in the seaches, but it will still hurt in the long run, I think.
In order to optimize a website for Google now, you are going to have to face the facts. It takes CONTENT. It takes one way links such as articles you write, press releases...blog postings...classified ads. It's going to put a stop to all these fly-by-night SEO companies very soon...which is a GOOD thing. There will be hoards of young people in India scrambling for a new job. (Outsourcing link building to East Indians was huge)
It will take months or even years before the rip-off companies will stop claiming the link exchanges still work. After 5 years I still see web design/seo services who will "submit your site to 1000 search engines monthly" and other foolishness that has never made any difference.
But if you're reading this, you're one step ahead. Stop wasting your time on doing hundreds of reciprocal links. Get rid of those inside state directories before you get reported and banned from Google like the "Progressive Passage" (haha) sites were. Hire a legitimate company with a copywriter and make your site informative and interesting about your area. Spend some time on the social sites like MySpace or writing articles and press releases yourself. If you can't do that, HIRE someone to do it. If you want a site that ranks, it's either hard work or money, your choice.
Linking is not "dead". It's how you link, who you link with, and taking the time to do it right.
Real Estate Marketing Tips from Echo Web Marketing...
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