Links: Frequently Asked Questions - What are “bad neighborhoods”?
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Bad neighborhoods are specifically mentioned in Google’s published Webmaster Guidelines as a “linking scheme” designed to trick the search engines, and are therefore subject to penalties and possible banning. The most well known bad neighborhood is the so-called “link farm.” A link farm is a pseudo-directory that purports to send traffic, PageRank, and link popularity to its member sites. The usual requirement of linking to any and all member sites, whether theme relevant or not, announces that the links are not natural, but are purely for gaining higher search engine rankings. As a result, even linking to a bad neighborhood or a banned site can result in a penalty, or even an outright ban for the linking site.
Can any incoming links to a site do harm to the site’s ranking?
Incoming links are generally helpful to the receiving site, but there are exceptions. Sites and Web pages are not penalized for incoming links because the search engines recognize that no one can control who links to their website. On the other hand, Google has placed a suspected filter on new incoming links, lowering their original passed along PageRank and link popularity. Purchased links are thought to not provide as much value as previously received. In general, however, incoming links benefit a site, while some incoming links, including those from guest books, provide almost no gain in the rankings because they are usually ignored by the search engines.
Can some linking activities cause a search engine penalty?
Becoming involved in any linking scheme solely designed to trick the search engines into providing higher rankings could result in a penalty, or even an outright ban. All such schemes should be avoided.
Do incoming links affect Google PageRank?
Incoming links usually pass along Google PageRank if they are clean HTML links. There is some thought that Javascript links are now passing along PageRank, but the evidence is intermittent at best. The bottom line for adding PageRank to a Web page is to attract more incoming links. Keep in mind that theme relevant links tend to pass along a higher percentage of the available PageRank than non-related links. Natural, one way, theme relevant links are the best links for PageRank transfer.
Are internal links within a site helpful?
Internal linking is an important part of any linking program. Internal links assist a page’s ranking in three major ways. One is the incoming link to the page itself. While not given extremely heavy weight in the search algorithm, all internal links to a page are helpful. Internal links add value if the link contains keyword rich link anchor text relevant to the receiving page. The internal linking also distributes Google PageRank to the various pages, where it might be required to assist in ranking. As a service to visitors, internal linking aids site navigation, and potentially improves sales.
Next: What are the alleged new link filters in Google? >>
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