Link Farming 101

i have never paid attention to "link farming" tactics and how google may give your site less relevance in google searching.

what is there to prevent others from posting your site in link farms to lower your site's google ranking?

if anyone has google information on this please post it here

 

The problem comes when "YOU" link to a link farm not when a link farm links to you.

 

Exactly what IS a link farm??

 

Define: Link Farm

Definition: A set of web pages that have been built for the sole purpose of increasing the number of incoming links to a web site. This is done in order to increase link popularity and search engine rankings. Link farms usually require a reciprocal link from sites seeking listings. Link farms are a known spam tactic and sites that participate in them are likely to be penalized or banned from the major search engines.
websearch.about.com/library/glossary/bldef-link-farm.htm

 

In plain English (well Welsh English in my case )

The traditional link farm was where you would take the links page, add your link to it, and post it complete on your own site as your links page. Things have moved on from there however, and many now triangulate link farms, where there are three groups, A, B, & C. A links to all the B groups, B links to all the c groups and C links to all the A groups. B never links to C making it a trianle. The search engines cam pick this up now though.

In it's purest form a link farm could be described as a load of links that are shared that are not relevant to the sites it links to. Oh Hang on , isn't that a directory (Joke) .

If you are worried about joining a link farm by mistake, then my advice would be to look at the links page, look at the structure and content of it. If it is ful of links from sites as varied as 'Aunt mables pie baking recipies' through 'ch3ap C!4lis Pharmac3y' enlarge your p3nis, $50 bet free at our casino, etc, then if it is not know, it is likely to become a bad neighbourhood sometime in the future, and your linking in to a couple of sites like that could get your site banned.

Review the site, review the links page, and if your visitors will benefit from having a link to the site, then link to it. If not, walk away IMO

 

Looking at the above definition ... "directories" requiring a reciprocal link would technically be a link farm then ... and this is where I get confused

 

Here are a couple of articles I found that may help clarify the difference for you.

What Exactly Is A Link Farm?

Link Farms Grow Spam (Net Mechanic)



Cricket

 

Thanx Cricket the articles made it a lot clearer and it should help Clubmedia as well.

btw .. whats your url ClubMedia

 

Is there a quick simple way to check to see if you are linked to a link farm or they have a link on your site?

 

more good info guys, thanks!

payoutwindow, all my sites are now listed in my signature if you want to check them out

 

I am still having a hard time discerning what is a link farm. I think there are some obvious cases as mentioned in this thread.

But why would something like linkdash be considered a linkfarm? Is it too automated?

 

I think LinkDash is a potential farm.

if you read the article here ...

and then looked at the linkdash description ...

hope this helps a bit

 

Yeah I read the article but there seems to be gray areas to me. People can put up the ODP directory which is more or less cookie-cutter even thought its intention is much differrent.

Hmmm... food for thought though.

 

You are right about ODP content, but also note that ODP has categories ... Linkdash says nothing about categories ... IMO just better safe then sorry. From what I have read here ... if your url gets blacklisted by G, you might as well forget about that URL.

 

Yeah linkdash has categories also. But maybe it is better to be safe than sorry as you stated.

 

Can a site be penalized for bad inbound links. for example a number of sites offer one way links for a small amount of money but eventually you find unrelated sites linking to you is that forbidden.

 

one word answer .... a big NO!

 

It's been a while since this thread - has anyone got any feedback on LinkDash? I am considering paying the $9 a month to see what happens, but I have a respctable PR5 on PokerDIY and don't want to jeopardise it...

 

My suggestion is don't bother with linking schemes. As Google says in it's webmaster guidelines.

 

too funny...............