April 25th, 2010 by Mike

Link farms spell death to any online marketing plan, yet many site owners are still falling prey to them. Often, they are lured into using them under false pretences. It’s unlikely you’ll come across this method of SEO link building if you use a reputable search engine optimization company, but if you’re sent an email or PM offering you a “sure-fire” way to get hundreds of backlinks from a single address – beware.

Online marketing is all about looking out for golden opportunities, and there have been plenty of established internet entrepreneurs who regularly hold out the “hand of friendship” to others. You place a link to their site, they place a link to yours, and so long as both the pages have quality content everyone – including the search engines – is happy. However, too often friendly messages turn out to be scams.

For example, SEO companies who offer link building services should be treated with care – especially if they suddenly appear as something that would normally be junk-mailed. Be especially wary of those who offer thousands of successful backlinks from their site. The chances are, they’re link farms. You probably won’t find them on a conventional search, as they’ll have been blacklisted – but they’re clever, and a few do slip through the PageRank radar from time to time.

There’s no reason why an SEO company shouldn’t have their own directory, and there’s no reason why another website owner shouldn’t PM you offering links. However, you need to tread carefully. So, how do you know what is a link farm, and what is a genuine offer?  There are plenty of telltale signs. These include:

- The site having no connection with your own site’s subject matter whatsoever.

- The page your link is on not being backlinked from any other site, meaning it’s floating in the world-wide ether, with no connectivity to human browsers.

- The URL of the page running off the end of the address bar, meaning it’s so deep in the directories (assuming it’s still got a place there) that it will never get picked up on searches.

- The page having hundreds of links to other sites, and being arranged in no logical manner. This means anyone stumbling upon it by chance will have less chance of clicking on your link, than you have of winning the lottery.

- The page just consisting of lists of links – no description of the sites, or carefully embedded anchor text to help browsers make an informed decision. No sign that the person who so gushingly reviewed your site ever went there.

- Links to low quality sites. Link farms will accept any link that’s live, irrespective of the quality. True directories are picky about the sites they list – and certainly don’t go out canvassing for links via email.

SEO link building is about being informed, which is why it’s best to use a search engine optimization company. They’ll explain that the worst SEO plans are those where links are listed next to thousands of others, on unknown or poorly rated sites.

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