Link Farming: No Good Harvest - A Few Good Linking Strategies

So you know that link farms don’t work and in fact can get you penalized in the SERPs. But you also know that you need to have links if you want to build your position in the SERPs. Link farms may get you lots of links fast, but the links aren’t relevant – and relevant links will ultimately do far more for you than large quantities of junk links.

So how do you get these relevant links? There are a number of articles here on SEO Chat that cover link building and link trading. And if you want a good general approach, you’d be wise to follow the advice of Larisa Thomason, Senior Web Analyst for NetMechanic. It’s every bit as relevant now as when she first gave it in 2002. She emphasized four points:

• Stay with your theme. Make sure that all of the links that appear on your site are relevant to your site’s topic.
  
• Hang out with the popular crowd. Search engines look at the relative importance of your links, not just their number. According to Thomason, “It’s far better to have 100 good inbound links from popular pages than 1000 links from a link farm stuffed with spam sites.”
  
• Avoid automated link generators. This doesn’t mean you can’t trade links with other sites, but if you do, don’t send automated emails. Do your research on the other site – and make sure anyone who sends you an email for a link exchange has done their homework about yours.
  
• Put links in context. This helps the search engine algorithms work in your favor. As Thomason explains, “Links that are included in page content and contain the page's keywords are more valuable than links exiled to a site’s ‘Related Links’ page.”

If you’re looking to grow your web site’s popularity, don’t do it with link farms. All you’ll harvest is search engine penalties and annoyed visitors. Keep it real, and keep it relevant. Remember, most things of value – including a good web site – take time to grow.