I was reading about wordpress today and came across this article excerpt and was wondering what everyone thought about this. I guess it kind of makes sense, but I couldn't find any recognized SEO expert that confirmed this.

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Austin Texas Real Estate | Coldwell Banker Austin | Austin Texas Real Estate

What was the source of this "SEO advice"?

I still go back to this - Are you linking to someone because a reader of your blog might also find something else interesting on your "recommended" blog on your blogroll or are you linking to increase your rankings?

If you think it's a good fit for readers, go for it.

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Ryan Ward, REALTOR® - Keller Williams Realty Consultants. (404) 630-3187
Atlanta Real Estate - My featured area is Alpharetta Real Estate and it is where I call home. Read my Atlanta Real Estate blog.

Here's where I saw the post, but it's out there in other places too.
http:// www. mydigitallife. info/2007/11/05/add-nofollow-relationship-to-wordpress-blogroll-to-increase-pagerank/

The reason I see it as a potentially good move is that those links (on my site anyway) persist throughout the site. Maybe google would think it's a paid link?

I dunno.

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Austin Texas Real Estate | Coldwell Banker Austin | Austin Texas Real Estate

The key phrase there is:

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---cK

CK Chung is an independent SEO consultant who provides premium Holistic SEO services, including services specific to Real Estate SEO. You can find his alter-ego, Kid Disco, spouting off on his SEO blog at SEOdisco.

I'm not sure I would add nofollow to a link that is reciprocating back. That seems somewhat unethical (at least to me) so if you have outgoing links that you want to nofollow, why do you even have the links? Are they providing your readers with additional value? If not, just remove the links. Also keep in mind that you cannot selectively nofollow. All of your blogroll links will then be nofollowed.

I suppose in a technical sense you are sending some PR away from your site, but, it also sounds to me like SEO tunnelvision (an illness that I sometimes suffer from).

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Ryan Ward, REALTOR® - Keller Williams Realty Consultants. (404) 630-3187
Atlanta Real Estate - My featured area is Alpharetta Real Estate and it is where I call home. Read my Atlanta Real Estate blog.

I just started my blog like two weeks ago or something like that. I wanted to make it a useful resource so I was thinking about adding things like links to the appraisal districts, property search pages, texas real estate commission, etc. They aren't really to other people yet, but are for sure useful. Maybe blogroll, as the name implies, is the wrong place for the links now that I think about it. The sites are widely recognized and so I don't think the issue would be with linking to bad sites, but I don't know much about the google changes with paid links, etc.

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Austin Texas Real Estate | Coldwell Banker Austin | Austin Texas Real Estate

The whole point of using a blogroll is to point out sites you like, sites that share your topic, friends of yours, or useful information for your readers. If you are using a blogroll in that fashion, I hardly see why that should incur a penalty.

I could care less about reciprocal links back. In fact, I would be surprised to have a standout site in a given topic that wouldn't have those links reciprocated (everybody links to the standout).

My ahem..take..on the whole topic:
Unless Google is a whole lot better than I think they are, they haven't developed any algorithm that can detect intent behind a link. Their first attempt to show link sellers using the PR bar was a disaster. They don't need to go after blogrolls. Why make the mess worse?

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Lydia Taylor, Realtor & Broker

Augusta GA Real Estate | North Augusta SC Real Estate | Augusta GA Home Search

Great quote, Lydia. I tend to take the "use common sense" view on this one. Is it natural to blogroll to a few sites? Absolutely - that's what they're there for. Is it natural to blogroll to 50 sites? Maybe, but it's not natural to have 50 reciprocal blogroll links. (at least IMO.)

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Eric Bramlett

Take your blogging to the next level. PM Me For a Free Self-Hosted Wordpress Blog on YOUR URL!!!

Austin Real Estate | Austin Texas Real Estate | Austin Condos

I just started my blog a little while back, but I deifnitely agree with this comment! I have seen blogs that have a roll of about 50-75 sites and it is so tedious to even browse through the sites suggested.

Just like you said, I would use common sense with this one, and really link to the sites that you think would be either beneficial for your audience, or sites that really interest you. Just my opinion, but great question!

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Andy Scherer
Senior Loan Specialist
Mortgage Trainer

The big g is faltering and they can't fix it so they are doing a lot of huffing and puffing. If they had an algo for this or even one in the works it would be kept top secret.

It is time for them to spend some of those billions and develop algos that just analyse content. This whole link thing is antiquated.

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