A friend of mine asked me how many websites could he safely direct to his one main website's landing page.

Directing too many websites to another using specific, relevant rich keyword text links can be viewed by Google as a gray hat SEO technique and will do more harm than good if the broker or agent (doing their own SEO) doesn't fully realize what they're doing. Because LESS is more. Google removed the relevance once created by the Inktomi popularity links.

Google changed quite a few rules this year when the released the first part of CAFFEINE. Also, putting in too many relevant key words can create websites to be dropped because of key word spamming. CAFFEINE is the code name given for the new Google updated engine this year. It has taken several months to implement the new changes, but many of the new rules are now in effect. And SEO professionals like Danny Sullivan, Bruce Clay, Aaron Wall and myself who make their living on SEO and SEM know how to recognize SEO rules from SEO myths. What once worked to rank your site five years ago... simply has zero impact today. Google has a 2nd algorithm that is used for ranking websites that should be on page one of any Google search. They applied for new patents on this technology two years ago and I chronicled that in my last book, "The Problems with Real Estate Search.. Getting FOUND." Essentially, the new rule is pretty simple:

Assume you have the key phrase, "houston homes for sale," or "houston real estate" and Google's algorithm ranks more than 20 websites that are qualified to BE on page one.

Houston... we have a problem...

There are only 10 positions on any one Google search results page that are natural (organic). And on most real estate searches, several of them are going to be dominated by larger players like, Realtor.com, Trulia.com or Homegain.com. These goliath websites are so entrenched into Google's database with hundreds of thousands of references that no broker or REALTOR is ever going to be able to trump with a five to fifteen page website.

So really this only leaves 7 slots open for any broker or agent site to fall into one of the remaining slots. So if Google looks at the relevant key words and they all fall within the recommended 2 - 6% density, Google might qualify that more than ten other websites belong on page one. But physically, it's impossible to list them all on page one.

Quite literally, thousands will never qualify. Only a few really optimized, really relevant websites can ever rank naturally on Google's page one search results page for any one key search term.

So if you keep pouring on the key words, and redirecting lots of websites to point to your website... it can create the opposite effect. Thousands of websites (including many REALTOR sites) have been dropped by Google for key word spamming -- meaning, too many key words were used and Google dropped them. Jane Paulus of the Edina Realty is a client of mine and her site is a prime example of this mistake.

I am mopping up the mess created by their site having way too many Minneapolis key phrases in their site. Plus they were linked to a BAD neighborhood in MerchantCircle.com.

The site was on financial life support when I stepped in and the site will soon be back on page one early next year. By the way... MerchantCircle.com is ranked as one of the WORST companies by BBB, and many websites linked to that site have been penalized by Google. I do NOT EVER recommend you use their service for an inbound link. You're better off going to ActiveRain.com and blogging about your site and point relevant incoming text links to your website, and be sure to include localized content too, as they have a section for LOCALISM and a place to post stuff about your properties, too.

So back to topic here, if Google finds a lot of highly qualified websites to rank on page one for a particular search term, the algorithm now looks at their 2nd ranking protocol. Google looks at the AGE of the domain and how many MORE years the domain is registered for. So for those REALTORS registering their domains / renewing them every year, is a bad practice. Google will look for OLDER domains and also check how many MORE years the domain is registered for.

Rule of thumb: Have your domain name pushed out for at least 5 to 7 more years. All of this information (above) was discussed at this year's Search Engine Strategies (SES) show in San Jose. It's an annual event, and it's the grand daddy of all SEO - SEM events, akin to you or me attending Inman Connect or REALTOR Expo. Ironically, few REALTORS attend the SES show.

Which is why so many old SEO myths abound today about Google and many fall into the trap of practicing old things that no longer work. Such as Keywords. Google has not used meta tag (keywords) since 2002 and all you have to do is Google that, and you'll find where Matt Cutts, a Google software engineer and Danny Sullivan confirm that.