Link
Popularity - Warning Link Farm Ahead
By Kim
Krause
Are you
sick and tired of receiving "I just visited your website.
I linked to it on this page. I would love it if you would link
back to mine" emails? When you go to the page to locate
your URL, if you manage to find it at all, your site is in the
company of hundreds of others. Does this help your website?
Will anyone ever go to that page with the hundreds of websites
and miraculously click on just yours?
These pages
with countless links to other websites were created during the
fervor of link popularity when it was thought that the more
links that linked to your website, the higher your website ranked
in search engines such as Google.
It was also
thought that a reciprocal link between sites, any site, counted
in your favor. Link farms sprung up, and website owners have
been bombarded with reciprocal link requests ever since. Software
and entire websites were launched to make creating link farms
easier.
But, many
SEO professionals refused to use them, finding them to be a
waste of time and website real estate, and an obvious desperate
measure. My advice to my clients was from a usability perspective.
Pages listing hundreds of websites leading OFF your website
was illogical, especially if your website was trying to generate
sales leads or sell products or services. The appearance of
link farm pages made some websites appear unprofessional.
It didn't
take long for search engine databases to become clogged up with
pages upon pages that did nothing more than link to websites.
This was their only purpose.
Since search
engines and directories want to provide relevant search results
with quality pages for their users, link farm pages became quite
a nuisance. Search engines began to penalize websites containing
link farm pages. The workaround for that was to disconnect the
link farm pages from the main site, but keep the game going
in an effort to convince people to link back to your website.
Link Farm Request Checklist
The gig
is up. Here's a checklist based on my own experiences, and those
of other webmasters who contributed their thoughts on the subject
in a recent Cre8asiteForums.com
thread on this subject. If any of these seem obvious to you,
link at your own risk:
-
Their site has no possible connection to your subject matter
whatsoever. The page they put your link on isn't linked to
FROM any page, meaning it's floating out there in never-never
land and is a ploy to get you to link to their site.
-
The page where they put your link is on a URL a mile long
and several directories deep so engines will never find it.
-
The
page looks like a farmer's field with nicely arranged rows
of links to hundreds of sites which aren't necessarily organized
in any logical manner, but that doesn't matter because someone
told them the link is all that counts
-
It's
a link and a link only. No description. No proof the person
ever actually reviewed the site. They
don't seem to know that links leak PageRank in Google, not
the other way around or that the link that does you the most
good is the one that shares space on a page with about 2 other
outbound links, not 3596 other ones.
-
Signs
they'll accept anything that shows evidence of being a "live"
link. A true Directory has criteria, frets about the quality
of sites it links to and doesn't have people out begging for
links. Instead the reverse is true, with people begging to
be let in.
-
They
ask you for a link on your links page, even though you don't
have one.
-
Watch
for scams such as sub-domain one-way traffic feeders where
the page your site is linked to isn't part of the main website.
Study the URLS carefully before you decide to accept a link
request.
Despite
the negative approaches to link requests, there's definitely
good reasons to seek them. If you see a website that offers
something of value to your target audience, by all means, link
to it. I always appreciate hearing from well researched inquiries.
I can tell
when someone has studied my website and has shown me a great
spot on theirs to link mine. They take the extra step of pointing
out on my website where they think their website should be linked.
Most times they're correct.
Remember
that it's not just the number of links back to your website
that contribute to your rank jackpot. What counts is where your
URL is placed, the amount and quality of its neighbor links
and whether or not the page is even linked to the main domain
at all. And that's just for starters.
There's
a lot more to linking and influence on rank than just a few
basic guidelines. If you really want your website to rank well,
build a good website that people find useful and want to return
to, study branding and how that can help you, and of course,
like everything else in a competitive environment, promote and
market it effectively and wisely.
Kim Krause is the owner of Cre8pc.com
and Cre8asiteForums.com.
A self-employed, single mom who is self taught and believes
everyone deserves a chance to succeed, she became an advocate
for home and small businesses who wanted a website presence.
She specializes in what she calls the "marriage between
search engine optimization and usability" and to that end
offers Cre8pc as a teaching site devoted to Do It Yourself oriented
persons who want to learn more.
