It’s been a crazy week. Between attending Search Engine Strategies Toronto, “DemoCamp Toronto”:http://barcamp.org/TorCampDemoCamp5 (thanks again for the invite “Ken”:http://www.onedegree.ca/category/ken-schafer) and the “Sympatico MSN Digital Ad Summit 06”:http://www.digitaladsummit.com, I’ve learned and seen too much to digest.
One of the moments that is still nibbling at me is the power of reciprocated links in relation to Google Juice. At Search Engine Strategies Toronto, there was a Link Strategies panel that included Rae Hoffman of “Sugarrae”:http://www.sugarrae.com/. Hoffman is superb at getting links and clearly knows much more about the topic than I do. Hoffman asserted that reciprocated links are all but irrelevant to the smarter search engines. I posted in more details the chain of events here: “Rae Hoffman On Links At Search Engine Strategies Toronto”:http://www.twistimage.com/blog/archives/000550.html along with her full (and unedited) response here: “Rae Hoffman Responds”:http://www.twistimage.com/blog/archives/000551.html.
It turns out that understanding linking or even how search engines rank results is harder than breaking The Da Vinci Code.
In less than three days since my initial posting, it has secured the number three position in Google when you search for the term “rae hoffman” (no quote marks needed). It appears ahead of her core domain site. I’m stumped.