Define Link Farm

[Buskerdoo]

I recently read the following.

"Don't Link using Link Farms
This means interconnecting all your pages to give the effect of a lot of information being available on the web site."

They went on to say this is harmful to optimization and it's a trick.

I don't get this statement. Should'nt I try and link all my pages together?

Someone help me, maybe I'm missing this persons point.

[GeXus]

A link farm is typically a page that has hundreds of links on it.. and nothing else..

It seems a little bogus.. what they say, where did you read this?

[John Scott]

A link farm consists of sites that link to other sites for the sole purpose of increasing their link PR. Off-topic links. Viagra links alongside home loan links.

[Buskerdoo]

Thanks guys. Pretty much what I thought. I couldn't tell if this person really thought what was writen was correct or they just couldn't express themselves.
It was an article I found on a SEO company site. I'm at home right now and its in my office.

[I, Brian]

Link farms are a pretty standard SEO tactic. There seems to be a lot of "wolf" calling about the term, though.

[thing2b]

To me, Defining link farms comes down to one thing. Will this page of links help visitors or is it only there to help my site. The second to me is a link farm.

[I, Brian]

So the DMOZ directory is a link farm, then.

[thing2b]

Hum.

I suppose that because DMOZ aims to provide quality links for is visitors, it could be deamed a link "Farm" as it collects links. But DMOZ is not bad.

A "Bad" link farm would be one structured so it ranks well on search engines but at the cost of its usefullness to its users?

A good link directory/site would aim to help search engines AND its users?

[Davo]

So how does Google tell the difference between a directory like DMOZ (or bluefind) and a 'orrible link farm?

[I, Brian]

The distinction is pretty arbitrary.

After all, when was the last time anyone here rushed to DMOZ to find a particular product, service, or website they were interested in?

Now - when was the last time anyone here rushed out to DMOZ to get a link approved, because of the potential search engine ranking advantages?



If that's mainly how DMOZ is being used then it is being run as a links farm.

Are link farms therefore a bad thing? Not necessarily at all.

Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean that a link farm is a particularly efficient method of helping rankings. But I would personally shy from general condemnation of the term as being too simplified and over-generalised.

[Buskerdoo]

Interesting.

I almost always read the term in a negative way.
So, if I create a "Useful Links" page and I end up swapping links with a site out of my sites area of interest; could it be seen as a link farm?

[awall19]

Originally Posted by Buskerdoo

Interesting.
I almost always read the term in a negative way.
So, if I create a "Useful Links" page and I end up swapping links with a site out of my sites area of interest; could it be seen as a link farm?

it could be. semantics, opinions, and ignorance lend differing terms to differing ideas. it is more HOW you implement something than what the primary idea is

it doesn't really matter what I call it or you call it, it matters how it works.

if you find yourslef linking to just anything with no quality standards then eventually you will probably get a penalty.

[Davo]

Originally Posted by awall19

if you find yourslef linking to just anything with no quality standards then eventually you will probably get a penalty.

Does this just come down to guess-work then? I mean some link farms/bad neighborhoods are really obvious, but in other cases its not so clear. For example there's a list of directories in a forum posting on this site but in my opinion a couple of them look dodgy so I haven't used them. If I had a better idea of the method google uses to identify link farms then I could make a more well-informed decision. But all the things I've heard so far (eg lots of links on a page) would equally apply to directories which are clearly OK like DMOZ.

[dave conz]

John hit the nail on the head. It's about the quality and relevance of links.

DMOZ is not a link farm because
(a) It is a structured directory which groups topics together in a meaningful way.
(b) Sites are rejected if they are not considered appropriate or high quality.

Link farms care nothing for these things. They are all about quantity of links, nothing more. Like John said, stick your crappy viagra site next to a crappy home loan site - they don't care.

BTW, I get around 20 click-throughs per day from my DMOZ listing (and that's not counting the other sites that use the DMOZ database). I think it's very wrong to say no one uses DMOZ to find sites. I even use it myself sometimes.

[Buskerdoo]

awall19 wrote:

if you find yourslef linking to just anything with no quality standards then eventually you will probably get a penalty.

It also appears that you get better weighting if you have links from sites that are along the lines of your topic so recipricals would typically come from those sites. I guess this holds up unless you are talking about gambling and male enhancement. Ok, I'm rambling now.

[I, Brian]

If we move "link farm" to just mean anything goes, stick anything anywhere for no reason than it's links - then I can certainly see the logic of applying the word in a derogatory manner.

However, I'm not convinced the boundary is ever going to be so clear. DMOZ may certainly be structured, but there's a still a lot of abuse reported there.

But it's good to push the topic.

[I, Brian]

My bad - been reading more on it - link farms apparently as a network of sites that cross-link simply for the purposes of passing on ranking benefits.

[pcarlow]

Originally Posted by I, Brian

the term as being too simplified and over-generalised.

I couldn't agree with you more. I read articles and forum posts everyday from people who throw around terms like "link farm" only to confuse matters and further cloud the murky waters of SEO knowledge.

I'm seeing that people tend to give advice on SEO that sounds good as opposed to specific realities. When I write my search engine marketing article and say "don't link to bad neighborhoods and don't link to link farms" then it sounds like I know what I'm talking about when it really doesn't mean anything.

Linkstoyou has PR0 and a search on Google will show all the pages that participate in their linking scheme have PR0 also. That is clearly a link farm and is a complete waste of time. I've seen plenty of viagra and casino sites with hundreds of links that pass PR just fine. So while you may call that a link farm, fact is, right now it's working for a lot of web sites.

Don't get me wrong, I don't condone link pages like this, nor do I accept link exchanges from pages like this. I reject these junk submissions from my directory every day. It's because of personal prefrence and not because I uphold some silly idea about seo that I picked up from some smoke blower. [/rant]

[ferret77]

link farms apparently as a network of sites that cross-link simply for the purposes of passing on ranking benefits

who would every think of doing that

[nandini]

Originally Posted by I, Brian

My bad - been reading more on it - link farms apparently as a network of sites that cross-link simply for the purposes of passing on ranking benefits.

I read somewhere that...

If most of the points mentioned below are ticked for yes, consider it a link farm

1. Page/website whose sole purpose is to exchange links for search engine rankings.

2. Unrelated links

3. Titles or descriptions for the links in most cases is absent

4. Link farms are generally a group of websites crosslinking with each other.

5. They would never give you link without a reciprocal

6. Only designed for search engines and not for the user.


-- Just my opinion ---