Link farms are pages that consist solely of links to other pages but fail to offer any kind of useful content themselves. Link farms are also link pages that holds links from other sites that do not relate with each other. Link farms are web pages which have nothing good to offer to an internet user. They are built for the sole purpose of artificially increasing the number of incoming links to a website to increase that site’s index ranking in the search engines. Link farms are websites that are nothing more than massive collections of links. Link farms are considered to be unethical and search engines don’t like them. Link farms are a blatant attempt to inflate your link popularity, and search engines take a dim view of them.

Links

Links to your website can come from developing content-only feeder websites, getting reciprocal links with non-competing yet related websites, being published in e-zines and newsletters, submitting articles to the many article directories, participating in industry related discussion forums, blogging on sites related to your industry, gathering friends on social networks, sending out publicity notices, writing product reviews for press releases, etc. Links are always encouraged by all the Search Engines, but only if they are related to your theme or subject, providing your visitors with valuable information on those topics. Links also generate a means for users to find you outside of the search engines. Links must be relevant and make good use of keywords for creating them. Links are a sign of popularity and are a vote of confidence from web users, and as such the search engines give a lot of value to them, but they must be relevant and add deliver true user benefit.

Farms

Although some link farms can be created by hand, most are created through automated programs and services.

Link farms were developed by search engine optimizers in 1999 to take advantage of the Inktomi search engine’s dependence upon link popularity. Inktomi was targeted for manipulation through link farms because it was then used by several independent but popular search engines. The link farms helped stabilize listings primarily for online business Web sites that had few natural links from larger, more stable sites in the Inktomi index. However, the link farms became susceptible to manipulation by unscrupulous webmasters who joined the services, received inbound linkage, and then found ways to hide their outbound links or to avoid posting any links on their sites at all.

Ranking

Although link popularity is used by some search engines to help establish a ranking order for search results, the Inktomi engine at the time maintained two indexes. When the Google search engine became popular, search engine optimizers learned that Google’s ranking algorithm depended in part on a link weighting scheme called PageRank.

Link farms are frowned upon by the search engines and are something that marketers should avoid. Link farms are not a search engine approved method of increasing ranking and joining a link farm could be potentially risky to your site. Search engines recommend that webmasters request relevant links to their sites (conduct a link campaign), but avoid participating in link farms. Backlinks from relevant sites are clearly the best way to boost traffic to your site as well as Article Marketing.

Seb Thomas works for www.backlinkswarehouse.com. Article Marketing and link building services is the focus of their services. Contact Seb today for your two for one special on all packages at www.backlinkswarehouse.com.

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