How would Google's ranking algorithm respond to the following: A group of computer experts across the nation link to each others site. Each member in the group links to all other members in the group. Could this result in penalization? I'm concerned that it might be auto-classified by G's spider as some sort of link farm. Are there any other ways we (the computer experts) could help each other out with SEO?
This seems more work than it is to be honest, not sure how this will help businesses through if they saturate their website like that.
I don't think there will be a penalty, but it depends on how many links we're talking about. If it's ten there will be no problem. If it's millions, Google may flag it... Keep in mind, one-way links are always preferred over reciprocal links.
Yes, excessive links exchanges will get you a big penalty. Google does not link link exchanges schemes - and that is exactly what google calls them "link exchange schemes". Just do a google search for link exchange scheme and see what comes up. Excessive link exchanges can cause your site can loose the ability to pass page rank. And could have a negative impact on where your site ranks in the results pages.
If you can pull this off then go ahead. I think organization will be the problem. I had though of this too though.
You don't want 100 percent reciprocal links across a limited network like that. Too easy to detect. Contact me if you want something automated that gets around that.
Not entirely true. I've been ranking top 10 for thousands of terms for months now because of one we engineered over the past 2 years. Nearly impossible to detect what we are doing too. But, go ahead and continue to live under that rock