Rob Oresteen

Link Farm.

Great question. That’s the obvious progression of thought so here goes…

Google says it’s OK to have up to 100 links on any given page. I thought that was a lot but if you check their Web Master Guidelines (hence their TOS!), it will mention something to that fact.

A Link Farm in its truest sense does nothing but harbor links from specific categories as to hopefully provide the user with traffic from that page plus passed PR rank from that page as well. But neither happen. Usually Link farms have thousands of links with in the same IP block so Google is aware of them.

If you have several pages that have links attached to them Google won’t care. As a matter of fact, this page is the #2 guy for chicago wedding photographer. This his one of his links pages which is pretty ugly and not meant for human consumption, but, it gets a Google PR of 3! If Google didn’t like it, it wouldn’t rank it. Also, notice the thread of his url. He may be getting a feed from a linking service as well. He also is hiding a bunch of invisible text on the page proceeding this one. He doesn’t realize it’s not necessary and Google may slap him for that, but what ever.

I have an idea about a good links page format that creates value for your link partners, gets some rank by Google, and can maybe bring in a few (I said a few as in little) bucks from AdSense and affiliate marketing. That post is coming.

Find a small out of the way to place a text link that says “Sources” or something like that on the index page? If not, put it on the first page in. One off the home page is usually best due to the fact most home pages get the highest rankings in Google but not always. The idea is that the link will pass on on some page reputation of your home page. But…

If a link partner has a problem with that, tell them that what really matters over time is the - yawn - sorry!!!!! - the anchor text of the link more than what part of the web site it is coming from. I’m not dreaming this stuff up - its what is happening right now, did happen two years ago and probably will continue to happen for years to come.

For great link-building software check out SEO Elite.

Link building takes work. It’s not hard. But it takes work and patience. Even though it’s considered “old school” by some, it is a fundamental not unlike blocking and tackling are to football. Not very hip to talk about but no games are won without a good display of both.

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