I am new to this and working different areas for link development. For example I look for exchanges in forums, link exchanges, competitor links, and use WEB CEO link tools. During this I come across a lot of sites that seem to be just a bunch of links and advertisements. But they occasionally have a PR4 or higher, which is sort of what I am looking to exchange with. How can you tell if a site is a farm? Does google ignore link farm?
You should avoid link farms, if you need good links in amount counted in thousands you should think about forum links, from profiles and posts.
Instead, focus on high quality,original, useful content and perform some traditional marketing and quality links will come...
I would always avoid link farms if I were you that do not do your site any justice. Pretty pointless links really.
Yeah....link farms are where good traffic goes to die. It takes time to develop backlinks. Think of it like a steroid user in the professional sports world. You may slip past the officials for a while...but when you get caught you're gonna fall, and you're gonna fall hard.
Google see the patern from where your links come from. Unatural linkbuilding don't have much value in google eyes.
I would not waste my time with anything like that. And you definitely never want to get involved in any kind of link exchange where you link to a "bad neighborhood" doing this is a good way to get your site on Google's bad side for a very long time. I know this from personal experience unfortunately (years ago!)
It's simple. Link Farms = Bad News. Period. If you've been near a link farm you might want to go wash off by posting a few blog comments or forum posts with your signature just so you feel a bit cleaner