What are Link Farms and why to NOT use Them

What is a Link Farm?

Link farms profit by providing the same types of links that search engines want you to avoid. A link farm will sell you 100's of "high quality" links to your site, none of which have any relavance to what you do. The theory being that more links equates to higher search ranking.

This practice is one of many that fall under "Black Hat SEO" and, it is very dangerous if you want to maintain a web presence. If a search engines find a Link Farm that you are involved with your site can be "blacklisted" by, making it almost impossible to find your site.

How to recognize a Link Farm:

• Require reciprocal linking – this means that you have to put a link to their site, before you can have a link on their site. If you come across this don’t do it.
• Laundry list of sites on a Deep Level Page with no description about the site.
• Unsolicited emails telling you how great your site is and you should form a partnership with them.
  In some cases, there will be a page called “Link Partners” or “Links”.
• No discrimination for sites included.
• Ask for a link on your links page even if you don’t have one.

If you should run across sites that have one or many of the characteristics, do not participate. Contact TaosW3 if you are still not sure.