The Link Directory: Just Another Form of Link Farm? - Caution, Links May Be Dangerous

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1.  You can receive penalties for linking to a site that is considered spam.

Think of it in terms of reputation.  Google uses the Hilltop algorithmic principle.  Hilltop emphasizes the voting power of what it considers “authority sites"; this involves analyzing the links between pages on the web on the assumption that pages on the topic link to each other, and authoritative pages tend to point to other authoritative pages.  In order to build your good, you must not have associations with shady characters.  Being linked with spam sites, or other sites that use black-hat SEO would probably inflict negative results upon your reputation. 

The same can be true for websites.  If your website is associated with poorly reputed sites, then their bad reputation can certainly reflect on you, and your search engine positioning.

2.  Linking to irrelevant sites does not help you in any way, and in fact may hurt you.

No one is exactly sure how a search engine ranks relevancy, but you certainly don’t want to give them a reason to consider your site irrelevant.  In an extreme case, linking to too many irrelevant sites might give search engines the impressions that your directory is nothing more than a link farm.  The consequences of this are not worth the risk of being banned in the search engines, all for mere hope that it might bring you a little questionable value.

3.  There seems to be little value in creating a link exchange with some websites.

There is much controversy among SEOs, webmasters, and designers over whether there is any value at all in reciprocal linking.  It’s a lot of work and effort to maintain a link exchange, especially in a directory form, as well as trying to find good websites to link with.  Some webmasters simply do not participate in reciprocal linking programs at all; instead focusing on receiving one-way links only.  I think the jury is still out on this one, however.  Still, the theory may be sound: creating link exchanges with blogs or forums (sites which are particularly open to spamming techniques) retain little value at all.

Next: More Reasons for Linking Caution >>
 

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Comments On: The Link Directory: Just Another Form of Link Farm?

· At the time of writing this article, the Jagger Update had yet to be completed. So...    · I've gotten 13 emails since this article was posted thanking me for the article, and...    · Good analysis about the way to get links but you forget to mention the 'dark side'...    · You ask where to find good directories...This last update, even DMOZ links appeared...    · Hello, I understand that inbound links are only effective when they come from...    · We don't really know how well Googlebot can distinguish between related and...    · I see a lot about unrelate links. However, some are by choice, for example we are...   >>> Post your comment now!