Thanks, Suzanne.  I get a lot of requests for reciprocal links, too.  I'm #6 on Google page 1 for 2 of my search phrases, so I guess that makes me a target.  I only have about reciprocal links and still seem to do fine on Google, so I'm happy and better yet, not worried.

Suzanne you look really mad today!  Do you need some coffee?  I will see what I can do.

Jana

Suzanne!! You look like my Mother-In-Law, Yikes

Darken you hair, you are giving us blondes a bad rep. lol

Darken you hair, you are giving us blondes a bad rep. lol

Suzanne, Love the pic!  I just got an invite for a reciprocal link and will investigate further because of your post.  Looks ok on the surface but I your post has made me think further.

Thanks!

AAWWWWW vacation in the Hamptons is just wanted I needed.  Now I am back and ready to throw my two cents in on this very interesting and timely topic.

There were some good questions brought up in the reposting of that article but no real answers.  Don't you hate that?  I know I do.  Why can't people post the questions and then give some real concrete answers?

Part of the problem is that they have no answers.  They may be good at restating the obvious but getting down to the nitty gritty is not what they do best.  Because I love realtors so much I am going to try and do that for you very fine and beautiful people. (I love realtors so much because I have so many of them in my family.  They are also some of the most caring and honest people in any field or business I have ever had the pleasure of working for and with)

These two part videos were about 24 minutes long total and for most people a complete snoozer.  You really have to be a geek to love to listen to this. I am such a geek I listened twice and took very good notes.  I wanted to share with those of you that are too busy selling houses what the gest of the entire conversation was about.  Before I do that I apologize of this is a bit boring.

Matt Cutts basically revealed what we already know about Google.  Google does its best to change the search engine results in order to keep ahead of the other seach engines.  They want to have the freshiest and most relevant results in search engine heaven.

They do this by constanty changing their algorithms.  Which is nothing more than a fancy way to add, subtract and divide by the square root of pie the entire internet.  They of course have evil little elves who do nothing but research for them.  If fact it has been said they have more researchers than systems engineers. These evil research elves seek out ways to annoy and tick off every webmaster and websiet owner.

But in the defense of these evil research elves I must say they battle the spambot on a daily basis.  These spambots go out of their way to scrape info from these search engines to use against you.  The spambot will scape this info and then sell it to OTHERS .  Who are the OTHERS?  No one knows but we do know the OTHERS work behind a  large curtain to hide their identity.

The OTHERS enjoy telling you that you must have 50,000 links to your site in order for the search engines to rank you high enough for people to find you.  The OTHERS make promises like they can rank you on page one of Google in as little as 4 weeks.  The best part is that it will only cost you $300 per month, you must sign a 6 month contract and if you cancel they get your first born and your cd collection.

I am of course being a bit silly here because I am a funny guy.  Right?

Here is the nutshell I promised.

1.  Links are good

2.  Too many links are bad

Now how do you know if you have too many links.  Mr Cutts made that simple.  He stated that if you have 50,000 links to realtors in CA and you are in MA then that is probably going to work against you.  However if you have several links to realtors in CA and you are in MA then that will not hurt you.  He did not get more spcecific than that and for good reason.

He compared links to a guest book.  Here is an example of what he is talking about.

Example:

You are looking for a plumber but are not sure who to call.  Now you can call Realtor A or Realtor B.  

Realtor A has the name of 5 different plumbers and can vouch personally for each one.  In fact Realtor A has had work done by each plumber and was very happy with each one.  Now Realtor A knows other plumbers but would never recommend the others because of the shabby work they have done.

Realtor B also knows of 5 plumbers and is happy to recommend anyone of the 5 plumbers to you.  Only problem is that Realtor B only knows one of the 5 plumbers personally. The one plumber Realtor B does know does shabby work but its a family member and Realtor B fells obligated to help.  The other 4 plumbers Realtor B only knows by name and has no idea of the quality of work of those 4 plumbers.

Which Realtor would you want to get a plumbers name from?  It is ok take your time for the answer, I can wait.  Good for you.  Realtor A.

Well this us what Google is trying to do.  They want those links to be relevant and trust worthy.  They want to make sure that the links are honest and relevant to your site.

So if I were one of you wonderful people I would do the folowing when it comes to good links.

1.  Before excepting a link I would check out the links request site.  make sure the information is relevant to your site.  Do not link to a site that looks like it is a redirect or just full of crap not related to real estate.  Make sure they do not have 50,000 links to them.  Google will not like that.

2. Make sure the links are relevant to your site.  Would you link your site back to a joke site or to a site that shows local day cares in your area?

3.  If you are part of National Real Estate company then link back to them.  That is a very good think. If they have agents in other states then link to those sites as well.  That would be a very good link and one that would please the evil research elves.

4.  Linking to agents that are not part of your National Franchise is good as well but limit those to just a few.  Too many can actually hurt you here.  Now if you are not part of a national franchsiee then this would not affect you but still limit how many

5.  Do not link to more than two or three out of state realtors.  Too many from the same state can really hurt you and this goes back to the Realtor B problem.

here is how to check backlinks on Google and Yahoo.

Google:  In the search bar type the following: link:www.domain.com or link:domain.com  You may get different results with each so try them both.   You will see the results like a regular search and at the top it will tell you how many links. Avoid linking to the ones that have tens of thousands of links.

Yahoo:link:http://www.yourwebsite.com

You will see the same type of results.  

It is a very good idea to try both because from my research both can give very different results.

I hope this helped and if did not please tell me.  I want to know.

It should have taken you 4 minutes to read this.  I saved you 20 minutes of your life by watching the video for you.  Now do something useful with that 20 minutes.  Go hug your kids or better half or the goldfish.