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Many people have told me that having too many non-related websites pointing to your site could make it eventually considered a "Link Farm" & penalized for it.
Would that only happen if your website has Many links to other non-related sites... or is it the other way around (too many links from other sites pointing to you).
I already have a pretty good amount links pointing to my site (both related & un-related).. So does anyone have any suggestions on staying "out of trouble"
Thanks!
Web sites that run into "link problems" (also termed link farms) have an unnatural link construction of either inbounds, outbounds, and/or reciprocals.
To avoid receiving this status follow a few simply guidelines.
1. avoid massive pages with tons of outgoing links. Google suggests a total of 100 links per page (internal & external), a better approach have 2 or 3 outgoing links per page of your site.
Many site owners add all links to a single page > and then start new link pages to continue their link exchange program. It is far better to avoid "link pages". Although you will unlikely get penalized for a few of these pages > the more you add the more likely can get in trouble > bearing in mind > too much of any one thing will get recognized by Google's filters.
2. avoid externally linking to same site more than twice from different pages. This isn't saying that you can't link more times to another site (different or same pages) just that the more unique a single outbound (and even an inbound) a link is, compared to all other links, the better that link is identified by Google you.
3. when more than 2 links are needed to another site >> use a profile page. Have all links to another site's page going to a single internal (your site) page noting topics and other interesting "related" information about the "link to" site.
4. just like the outbound links > receiving 500 links from one site does little extra good for you than 2 links. Therefore if many inbound links from a single site request a profile page and have all internally linked to that profile and a single (or few) physical external links pointing to you.
5. Relevancy (my initial comment) is important to link quality but poor quality won't get you penalized or banned. In this case -- link anchor, attributes, text around the link and page title is importqant to determine higher "link relevancy". e.g. -- a page title about "link" has not much to do with "widgets".
6. Backlink history or "link generations" - a link from a page that has > links to it > and those having links to it > and those having more links to them > and all having same/similar link anchors, attributes, text around the link and page titles all saying the same thing is far superior to relevancy than a first generation link (e.g. something you would get from a general topic link farm).
If you point to these sites/pages with long "blodd-lines" and other sites/pages point to you with long "blood-lines" or "on-topic" you will never, ever be, in anyway categorized as a link farm.
[edited by: fathom at 3:21 am (utc) on May 1, 2003]
I have made it a practice to try to Trade links with as many websites as I can.
yah. i noticed that. you might want to change the first sentence of your request letter, that one that says something like "i don't normally ever do this, but..."
IMHO it kind of reflects poorly on the credibility when the links section of the site requesting the recip. link (the one that normally never does it) has that many links on it.
anyhow. my $.02.
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edit: typo
[edited by: PatrickDeese at 3:40 am (utc) on May 1, 2003]
Alex
Okay, but what happens if you are running a link site / directory type site? Is there any way not to end up as a link farm, and therefore a bad neighborhood?
I think it depends probably how you make it appear to Google.
If your site is a *directory* that is far different than a widget sales site that also has a reciprocal link directory.
Also if you follow the DMOZ "template", most categories are broken down into subsections. Really huge sections have alphabars, so as to diminish the number of sites per page.
The "website design" section of a place like ODP is a good example of a huge category. ;)
As long as you stay away from that type of structure, you shouldn't have any problems.
The classic link farm structure that Google hates is the one where a network of sites distributes an identical links page/directory to all the participating members.
hmm... like the ODP RSS?
Is that why alot of the RSS-based sites have dried up in the SERPs?
As far as these pages and ODP feed goes, these will also trigger off "duplicate" alerts which to me is a much smarter way for Google to work. After all why have the same page available in more than one place? This is the internet after all, not a book or magazine - all public conent anywhere on the web, is accessible by everyone. A very good duplicate filter solves a lot of problems in one go.
That's a bit different than penalizing a site for being part of a link farm. In a classic link farm situation, everyone listed on the links page has the exact same set of links on their sites.
When I try to find link partners, I generally always target certain websites.. but when dealing with a higher volume, its hard.
I wrote a complete links system before, which worked pretty well. It had a automatic ranking system, partially based upon the sites pagerank, # of links on the page, etc. I'm renovating that now & just have something temporary for now.
Regardless.. I am still aiming for #1 placement for Website Design (#7 now).
Damn rankings haven't changed in 2 months! :(
and at least top 10 for web design.
If theres anything else that can help me get there.. I'm ALL Ears :D
that's pretty good for a competitive term. I would be more worried about going DOWN in the rankings!
>>Damn rankings haven't changed in 2 months!
As above that may be good for you! Our key query sERPS havent changed for 12 or more months, maybe just one or two sites going up or down one place, but the top 10 is the same, but in a comepetitive area you shouldnt expect much changes unless one of the leaders gets done for cunning stunts.
Being 19 years old, and paying for college via Internet services... that would really suck :)
I have seen quite a few sites move me down for certain search terms... Mostly those sites using Pages with the title, URL, and all content aiming at ONE keyword.
I hate that... but eventually I see them dissappear :)
Regardless.. I am still aiming for #1 placement for Website Design (#7 now).
Damn rankings haven't changed in 2 months! :(
Well, being currently #14 for the same term (and a recent recipient of your link exchange request) I can comment that I have been fluttering between #11 and #15 for the past 5 weeks.
Still, getting lots of queries, mostly from being on the first page of yahoo results, I think.
I hope you'll be seeing me on the "other page" soon!
:)
Well I hope to see you up at the #1 or #2 position with me someday :-)
I have noticed that their site has changed design once or twice in the last 30 days. I know it used to be blue and now it is orange/brown.
The main thing is that they have a lot of incoming links from all kinds of sites from "penile growth enhancement" to "hotels in Spain".
So, I guess unrelated sites can link to you without penalty (so far).
What I can't believe is that your "friends" in Orlando (#8)actually have left this in their page code:
<meta name="GENERATOR" content="Microsoft FrontPage 4.0">
:D
Great post.
I am interested in how you came up with #2 ( no more than 2 links to the same site.
Isn't it pretty common to have a link to a corporate homepage or other resource at the footer of every page? I can see GG not counting all the links towards your ranking but not penalizing sites for many links to the same site.
Would appreciate more on #4 aswell. I remember recently seeing a PR 6 site with over 500 backlinks, but Google only showed ~6 because the bulk were from two domains.
4. just like the outbound links > receiving 500 links from one site does little extra good for you than 2 links. Therefore if many inbound links from a single site request a profile page and have all internally linked to that profile and a single (or few) physical external links pointing to you.
Sometimes you can see the other links if you click repeat search with ommitted results included. GG doesn't list all the similar pages.
