Rae Hoffman Responds

I was just en route to the Sympatico MSN Digital Ad Summit 06 and I noticed a comment from Rae Hoffman to my Blog posting from yesterday, Rae Hoffman On Links At Search Engine Strategies Toronto. I emailed Rae and got her permission to post it here:
“I wanted to let you know that I disagree with your post and wanted to give you the reasons why.
You said:
‘Well, Rae Hoffman, how come if you Google your name – Rae Hoffman – in quote marks (to ensure it does an exact search) this post comes up very close to the top of the search engine rankings?’
Well, actually, your post doesn’t come up in the top 100 (let me know if you need a screen shot). I’m going to assume you are expecting it to at some point and give my thoughts on why that would occur.
Rae Hoffman is not a competitive term, nor a commercial term, nor a highly searched term. Especially not in quotes. On page, in my opinion, would be enough to rank for the term – toss in a few links (of any kind) to the main domain or the post in specific and you certainly have enough to take the term. Add to that the fact that Google only shows 36 results for all in title and less than 350 for all in anchor and you’ll notice it isn’t a tough term to take.
But, the majority of people in attendance at SES aren’t looking to rank for non-competitive terms. Ranking for life insurance, credit cards or mortgages isn’t being done by new sites on solely reciprocal links (in Google). Reciprocal links have their place and their value – but they can no longer be a sole vehicle to success in competitive and semi-competitive industries, in my opinion.
Posting a post highly optimized for my non-competitive name on a six year old domain with over 6000 links showing in Yahoo to the /blog/ sub directory is not a test of reciprocal linking and it’s ability in Google.”
Thanks for putting your thoughts down Rae. If you took anything I posted in a negative way, I am sorry. That was not my intention.
As I re-read your comments, it makes me realize that we all still have a lot to learn about linking.