There are many link strategies available that can help your site achieve the rankings you are looking for. You can submit your site to directories, write articles and push out press releases. One practice to watch out for is link farming. This black hat practice has been around for a long time and continues today. Be wary of link farm schemes and other tactics like this.

The idea behind link farming was to get as many links from websites as you could. It didn’t matter if the sites were relevant or not, as Search Engines would supposedly consider a site more “Popular” because it has so many links pointing to it. Most of the links in link farms have no relational subject matter to each other. They will most likely have a page on a site with a laundry list of hyperlinked keywords called Anchor text pointing to the various sites in the farm. When search engines see that a link farm has formed, they will penalize all involved, thus dropping ranks. Some have reported increased rankings at first, but soon after report a drop to lower than they were when they started.

Signs of a Link Farm

• Require reciprocal linking – this means that you have to put a link to their site, before you can have a link on their site. If you come across this don’t do it.
• Laundry list of sites on a Deep Level Page with no description about the site.
• Unsolicited emails telling you how great your site is and you should form a partnership with them.
• In some cases, there will be a page called “Link Partners” or “Links”.
• No discrimination for sites included.
• Ask for a link on your links page even if you don’t have one.

If you should run across sites that have one or many of the characteristics, do not participate. If you are still unsure, contact your Strategist at MoreVisibility and they will gladly assist you in determining the right link building strategy.

Lower PageRank has been a hot topic in SEO forums and blogs over the last couple of weeks. Many highly regarded sites experienced drops in PageRank and in some cases, the drops are significant as reported on SearchEngineLand last week. Complaints about lower quality search results have sent Google back to the algorithm in a real battle with spam sites and others who would take over all the top search spots and lower PageRank for some is the result. The prime targets of Google’s efforts have been directories, blogs and other advertisers that are providing links for money.

Along with falling PageRank have come reports of significant drops in the rankings for some sites. Interestingly, there is not a clear one-to-one relationship between lower PageRank and falling search engine results rankings suggesting that Google is discounting the value of PageRank in their algorithm.

This comes as no surprise to some who claim that PageRank has actually been devalued for some time now in favor of Trust Rank – a method of evaluating links based less on quantity of links and more on quality of links. In particular, paid links from directories and blogs are expected to become less valuable to search rankings in the coming months.

So, why am I not worried? Because any good link strategy will cultivate inbound links with the idea of getting traffic - not just ranking - and because ultimately, content is still king. As search engine algorithms improve the quality of results, a well-designed site with good quality content will always rise to the top.

In many cases, we as SEO engineers know how to evaluate a potential link or directory to get the maximum benefit for a website. Many of these sites are broken up into very specific sub-categories. Sites such as DMOZ, the Yahoo Directory, Go Guides and many others are called authority sites. They have been on the web for many years, some from as early as 1997. With the age of the site, the search engines have found that these are not fly by night Spammer sites that just want to host Google AdSense to make money. A lot of directories are human edited so not every site will get in on the first attempt. These are the sites that are worth going after in your linking efforts. They are the kinds of sites we recommend people submit their sites to.

At first glance, a directory or link site may not look like much, but if you dig a little deeper, you can probably find a category that will fit every business type. The key to submitting to these types of sites is finding the most relevant category for your company. And, remember, even if there is a category that is similar but not exact, it is worth submitting to.

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