SolveYourProblem
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Series
Do Not Use Link Farms In Your SEO Strategy
So you want to get ahead of the competition
on the search engines, and you decide to use a link farm.
Stop! There’s danger in link farms as with all SEO methods
that seem to good to be true.
Your
website shouldn’t link to, or be linked from, websites
with any of the characteristics of link farms. Link farms
are web sites that have been set up for no reason other than
to contain masses of links, exploiting search engines’ link
popularity algorithms. They serve no real purpose, other
than getting everyone who joins to link to and from them
and boosting the rankings of everyone involved. This is a
big problem, as most people consider it to be nothing more
than search engine ‘spam’.
Do
not get link farms confused with directories which are
excellent places to get your site listed. The difference
here is that a directory attempts to provide its users with
a nice organized way to get to the information that they
want while a link farm simply posts a ton of links (generally
at cost to the linkee) and serves no purpose to anybody on
the web.
Avoid
all link farms and similar sites! If you try to use
one then the end result could be a ranking penalty, or your
website might even be banned from the search engine altogether.
Being banned from a search engine is a terrible loss for
your site and will generally lead you to creating a brand
new site out of sheer necessity.
Remember: the
number of links to your site isn’t as important as the
quality of those links. You’re trying to get people
with real, quality sites to link to you. There are even rumors
(which are being validated daily) that Google is implementing
a quality control algorithm for links which includes the
amount of time that a link has existed between two sites
as well as the reputations of the two sites based on how
many links they send out. For example, if you have a link
from a site that only links to three sites all together and
this link has stood strong for months, Google will consider
it a valuable link. On the other hand, if you get linked
to by a site with a massive number of links, Google could
care less. Remember, Google is the Santa Claus of the internet,
it’s always watching.
Free
for All (FFA)
An FFA is a links page where anyone can add a link – quite
similar to a link farm. Don’t be fooled into listing your
site on these or linking to them. Many programs will submit
your link automatically, to hundreds of FFAs all over the
web. Don’t use these programs! The search engines will steer
clear of your site for a long time if you do.
Who Should I Link To, and How?
Be very selective about your outbound links and your requests
for inbound links, and avoid any site that’s anything like
a link farm. Look for websites that have similar subjects
to yours, good rankings and good traffic. Depending on the
topic, they might be hard to find – but then you should find
it easier to rank highly in these topics.
Once you’ve found a few good sites, the next step is to
email them and request a link. You should, of course, offer
one in return. You will run into some opposition with this
method and you will sometimes be ignored completely, but
you should have a reasonable amount of success. We can’t
stress enough, though, that you should be careful about which
sites you link to, and check your links regularly.
The
Bottom Line
Link farms are dangerous to your website and a complete
waste of time. They can bring your business crashing down
by getting you banned from the search engines. You should
be concentrating on real marketing methods – even though
they’re not a ‘quick fix’, they can work if you give them
some time.
There are many real ways to get traffic to your website,
and using professional methods can give you a big increase
in traffic. Using link farms and FFAs is a good way to get
yourself nowhere fast.
