Is that true that google has changed it SEO policy?

[Bogdan at London4Jobs]

I've just read an article that Google has made defunct 7 SEO techniques, including:

<<1. Reciprocal linking. Many sites were penalised with a -30 penalty for excessive reciprocal linking.
2. Checking the supplemental Index. It is now harder to check which pages need extra work as the suplimental index has been merged into the normal index.
3. Directory Links. Directories have had Page Rank striped and the links devalued.
4. Paid for links / Sponsored Links. Google has heavily penalised the Page Rank of many sites selling links.
5. Sponsored blog post. Google has penalised people generating money from sponsored blog posts
6. Dominating the SERPs with sub domains. Google has made it harder to dominate the SERPs with multiple Sub Domains.>>

Do you think that it is true?

[Marcis G]

It is true. But Google still can't figure out everything.

[Stephanie F]

Google has made many changes recently to the guidelines for linking and the points you made above are mostly true.

In the Google Linking Guidelines it stats that paid links do not follow the guidelines. Google's goal is to make the search results as relevant as possible for the searcher.

Google does not penalize for a few reciprocal links, however many reciprocal links may be penalized as google will see that these are not natural links.

Many directories have been stripped of their ability to pass PageRank. However, there are still directories out there that are good o be in: BOTW, DMOZ, business.com or a directory that is niche and edited by humans.

Unfortunately these new changes do have some effects for SEO's and make our job slightly harder and more tedious, but if you are doing SEO correctly you will eventually be able to build a strong linking community naturally.

The best bet advice is to follow the Google Webmaster Guidelines: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters...swer=35769

[Singen P]

Google changes every so often and although it is not always beneficial from an seo ponit of view you have to adapt, there are always new methods of finding good quality links and powerful ones, if you keep up with the experts and listen to what they have to say you can keep ahead.