Owning a Tourism Business is awesome

22 Apr 2007

What are link farms & why they are bad...

I'm sure you've all heard the term 'link farm' and have even heard that it's a bad idea to participate in these linking schemes designed to artificially boost link popularity. So the question I get form people is, what exactly is a link farm anyway?

It's hilarious, but in all this time of Internet and Online Marketing, I never truly understood the term until a friend came to message boards and talked about a link program he was involved in. It wasn't a type of program I've ever participated in...but I still didn't realize it was a link farm. It was just a group of small businesses in one industry trying to find a way to promote each other.

But so what, let's get to the point: What is a Link Farm?

A link farm is when group of websites get together to link to each other. One main links page is created with links to all the participant's websites and each participant places that links page on their website. Et voila! Instantly a whole load of links to your website.

Now whether or not your purpose is just to help promote one another as opposed to boosting search engine rankings...you still run the real risk of being punished or banned by the search engines. And once you are banned, getting back into the SE's and regaining your placement is a major uphill battle.

Search engines cannot understand your, possibly innocent motive, and this could be seen as one of the disallowed link popularity scheme.

These disallowed pages are ones that exist solely to increase the link popularity of those who post their links. Listing on these sites will most definitely cause you to be penalized in the search engines eventually. Avoid them. You do not need to try and 'cheat'.

Legitimate link building strategies work! See other posts for ideas...

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