Link building is not exactly scintillating – it won’t make you jump for joy in the morning or weave through traffic because you just can’t get to work fast enough to continue link building initiatives. However, the importance of link building cannot be overstated when it comes to creating an effective SEO campaign. There are many ways to go about link building, but due to the potential consequences of black hat practices, such as creating a link farm (how about having your website removed from search engine results?), great care must be taken to find quality backlinks and to avoid websites that make a living out of violating search engine Terms of Service (TOS). You may find yourself wondering how to tell the difference between good quality backlinks and a link farm, and believe it or not, you aren’t the only one.

What is a Link Farm?

A link farm is basically a collection of webpages that all hyperlink to each other in an effort to create as many backlinks as possible and take advantage of search engine algorithms, such as a Google PageRank. In a traditional and effective link building campaign, you should search for quality backlinks and reciprocate just as selectively.

For example, if you are a local hardware store, you might dream of one day receiving a backlink from a nationwide hardware chain. Therefore, when it comes to providing backlinks to other websites, it would be odd for your hardware store’s website to exchange links with a dog cosmetics company. However, in a link farm there is no filter as to where your backlinks come from or for the websites for which you provide links. As a result, link farming is now considered a black hat practice and you run the risk of severe penalization, which may result in your website’s removal from the Google index. Therefore, another tip to maintaining a quality link building campaign is to decide whether or not a potential backlink or outside link is relevant to your industry. As a hardware company, it is definitely logical to network with a building materials company or various tool vendors, but if you are asked to link with a variety of companies that have nothing to do with each other or your industry, the chances are that you might be associating with a link farm.

Google PageRank

At base, Google PageRank is a search engine algorithm that ranks webpages based upon their importance. Every backlink to your website is equivalent to a vote of support, so you might assume that the goal is merely to obtain as many votes as possible. However, while it is true that every quality backlink builds your website’s PageRank (I stress, quality), the system is, unfortunately, not that cut-and-dry. To put it simply, all votes are not created equal, and obtaining backlinks from one website with a high PageRank can potentially be more influential than the combined backlinks from any number of low-ranking sites. There are numerous websites and browser toolbars that are easily obtainable via a Google search, perfect for utilization when determining the PageRank of a potential backlink. These are great tools for determining which websites you want to target during your link building campaign. Every page is ranked on a scale from 1 to 10 — the larger the number, the better the PageRank. As a general rule, a higher Google PageRank means that a website is more likely to be trusted; however, you should still be wary of link farms.

Identifying and Avoiding a Link Farm

We have touched upon a few ways to avoid a link farm, including paying attention to the trust value of Google PageRank and maintaining selective, relevant backlinks. However, there are several other common giveaways you should look out for when identifying a link farm. First, unlike online directories that might be industry specific and offer some form of categorization, link farms most stereotypically are portrayed as an extensive list of links with little or no attention to page design or detail. Another potential giveaway is the lack of website content or an apparent site function, such as a product, service or even informative materials. A link farm is strictly a tool meant for building search engine rankings, which means that individuals maintaining link farms typically do not focus on creating aesthetically pleasing website elements to house their links, and it is not uncommon to see a “bare bones” link farm website design.

White Hat Link Building Procedures

During your link building initiatives, remember that it’s not easy to create an effective link building campaign. Walking the line between white and black hat procedures can be a tricky process, as search engine TOS change over time. If you have the budget, it’s always a good idea to consult an experienced internet marketing and search engine optimization company for link building inquiries and strategies, as they most often know how to identify link farms and other black hat practices that may otherwise lower your PageRank or result in your website’s removal from search engine results.

Recently, a master’s candidate asked if I could provide examples as to why black hat tactics may be beneficial to SEO methods in the short term, but may ultimately negatively affect a site in the long-term. Given some experiences over the past year, my first response was to smirk. Yes, smirk. You see, it used to be difficult to “sell” clients on the idea that white hat tactics were the best way to go when implementing SEO methods and recommendations. However, after several events that occurred in 2011, things have changed. For instance, dare I mention jcpenney? Or PANDA?

Although black hat tactics may garner great results initially, utilizing these methods is similar to not paying your taxes and hoping the IRS won’t catch you. Of course, the argument can be made that not many sites get penalized for using black hat SEO methods. But do you really want to chance it? I don’t know of any site that can afford penalization for violating search engine guidelines, especially on the monster known as Google!

Additionally, on that same note, your black hat SEO methods could be in danger of being “outed” by credible, well-known sites and news sources, such as the New York Times, for not following search engine guidelines to uphold quality. The New York Times wrote a piece exposing jcpenney’s link building black hat tactics after discovering that thousands of low-quality links pointed to their website, jcpenney.com. Soon after, similar articles began popping up – just do a search for the keyphrases “overstock” and “paid links” for evidence.

Now, you may think you are in the clear if you have conducted black hat tactics and have not yet been “caught.” However, your competitors, who may be jealous of your rankings, could potentially examine your site to determine which SEO methods you used to achieve these results. There are free and paid tools available to determine which tactic is used – on or off of a site. If your competitors used these tools on your site, and found that you are in violation of search engine guidelines, they could potentially report you to those credible news sources, like the New York Times.

Our SEM firm, Medium Blue, has told our clients for years to avoid having duplicate content on websites. No matter how much time it takes or how much money it costs to write content, website copy should be uniquely-written (and hopefully, optimized) content that is unique from page-to-page on your site as well as from other sites. Our white hat SEO methods used to get so much pushback from clients and other SEO companies regarding our approach to copy; however, we continued to promote this recommendation because a website containing duplicate content is similar to paying for links – both black hat tactics are against many search engines’ guidelines.

Thankfully, “sticking to our guns” and continuing to promote SEO methods that utilized only unique content ended up paying off.  Earlier this year it hit. Google rolled out PANDA 1.0 in February 2011, which penalized sites for having duplicate content. Since the original PANDA algorithm, several more versions were rolled out to continue to “clean up” Google from sites that used black hat tactics, such as duplicate content.

The bottom line is, search engine guidelines have been around for a long time and are easily available on each respective search engines’ site. If you want to gamble your site’s success and engage in black hat tactics in order to receive a boost in rankings, your site may ultimately suffer in the long run. I doubt link building schemes and duplicate content penalizations are the end of Google’s (and other search engine’s) attempts to “clean up” the web. Do you really want to jeopardize the future of your site? Is it really worth it? No — especially when you can achieve the same results with white hat SEO methods!

On the flip side, if you are in the market for an SEO firm and/or are implementing internet marketing recommendations to your site, be sure to ask questions, such as “Are these recommendations aligned with the search engine guidelines?” If not, you may want to reevaluate the recommendations… or even your SEO firm.

Yes, you read the title right.  My company recently performed extensive search engine optimization on a client website, and the results were staggering.  Within a month, organic search traffic had dropped by over 60%.  Inbound leads from organic search had dropped by over 50%.  And the client was absolutely thrilled with the results.

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The newly coined term ‘results measurement’ is used by companies to define the purposes of lead tracking in SEM campaigns, and is a valuable means of understanding the many decision factors your prospects use to choose your company for its products/services. A finely-tuned lead tracking channel – often aided by your search engine marketing company – demonstrates to the potential customer that his or her inquiry about your company’s products/services was received with a sense of urgency.

For SEM campaigns, proper lead tracking may not be the only fast track solution to increased sales, but does give potential customers insight into how your company values its leads. With a greater ability to track leads and responses, an immediate follow-up is also possible, allowing prospects to decide if your response time was fast enough and if your company provided a better customer experience than your competitors.

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