Site authority plays a vital role for improving your search engine rankings. And Backlink is the only way to achieve site authority, because backlinks are the powerful signals, that tells the search engines about your site worthiness. By now, every website owner now knows the importance of link building and it’s positive efforts. That is why, they majorly focuses on the link building options.
Building Authority is a long-term process and you need to have patience. Therefore some marketers takes shortcuts to achieve faster ranking and relies on the illegal and shadier tactics of link building. But Google and other search engines are getting smarter with the passing days and they can easily identify the links which are organically earned or obtained with shortcuts.
Therefore, today with this article, we are going to discuss the black hat SEO technique which is termed as “Link Farm” and we will see how it can have a negative impact on your site performance. So, Read this article till the end, know if your website is not affected by the link Farming?
Let us Know about the Link Farm
What is Link Farming ?
Just like in farms, group of plants exists to grow, link farm can also be defined as the group of websites, which are created for the purpose of increasing the another website’s page ranking by linking it to the website from various pages of link farm. Sometimes, it is also called spamdexing, as it is the form of spamming the index of the web search engines.
Link Farming is the illegal tactis prohibited by the Google and other search engine guidelines. If any websites found link farmed, search engine penalised the websites by deindexing them affects their performance.
A Brief History of Link Farms
Let us recall some history of Link Farms,
Link Farms were first introduced in 1990. At that time , InkTomi was the most popular search engine and it’s ranking algorithm relies on the volume of backlinks. That means if your website has high volume of baklink , it would have high ranking on search engines.
It was mean that the number of links alone indicates the amount of interest and the attention that the user has towards the websites. The most dominant websites can have the higher number of backlinks.
At that time , Inktomi restricted it’s search engines to just 100 milllion listings. And the website which has fewer inbound links facking the diffculties in ranking while website with solid links not only getting better ranking, but also extending some of the site’s exposure to the secondary search engines which has incidentally pulled some of the results from the Inktomi. Then Yahoo, was also one of the popular search engines , that also became the victim of the link farms.
As search engine continues to develop over the years, link farms became the spamdexing tactics. And many online businesses were chasing for link farms to increase their poor backlink numbers. And this was the time where search engines struggle to identify the organic links from the established platforms.
Are they important for SEO?
Link Farm is one of the popular Black Hat SEO technique and this technique is strictly prohibited by the Google and other search engines. However , Google not always able to catch the links , that’s why many marketers makes use of them. This technique is majorly popular on industries where , it is hard to build links naturally.
But if Google found your site a link farm, then it can penalize not only the sites whithin the links but also those website where link farm is linking to. So, it is better to avoid this technique , because it can give you a huge loss. Link Farming does more harm than benefits in SEO for the Long run.
What are the Purpose of Link Farms ?
Link Farms has only one goal, they just boosts the search engine rankings of their member websites with the false backlinks. It set ups the websites which are intended to provide backlinks to the webpage, that are specified to provide good amout of backlinks and enhance the search engine rankings.
Link farm is made up of low-quality websites which are linked to each other by the huge network of fake published hyperlinks.
How to Identify Link Farms ?
Getting Links from another website is good, but before that you have to make sure that whatever links you are getting from other sites that doesn’t belong to the link farm. Some links farms are easy to identify but sometimes it becomes difficult to find out those links.
That is why , White Hat SEOs and Webmaster have to learned some tricks to detect the backlinks and avoid getting them.
Examine the Quality of the Websites
Links farmed websites are always badly written and designed with computer-generate content which covers unwanted topics. And, they usually use template design with little to no customizations. Websites of Link farms are more likely to have the Top Level Domain like .top or . xyz. The domain names don’t make any sense and covers only the random letters and the numbers.
So, while identifying this , you must evaluate the quality of the websites. Because, Quality is also one of the major factor that Search engine look for first.
Evaluate the Quantity of Backlinks to your Websites
High volume of backlinks does not boost your site rankings. Search engine looks for the Quality of links and whether it is from authoritative sites or not. Therefore , the one best way to evaluate the quantity of backlinks is to check the DA and the number of backlinks. If you have low DA inspite of having high quality backlinks , you may find that there might have some link farming done to your website.
For checking all links, you can use Google Webmaster Tools to check all the links to your website and can choose those from the link farming.
Check For Author and About Information
Link Farm website might have anonymous authors or it can display the fake author profiles by using fake photography. They can make minimal pages and the About pages which would not make any sense. It will make it impossible to know the one who is behind the website. These website won’t offer any contact information but they will make generic contact form.
Check the Amount of Linked Websites
Linking to the relevant site is best SEO practice, but linking to the huge number of a website is not a good sign. This can go even more for the separate page. So, just check if each page has got the tons of inbound links then, it might be the case of Link farming.
You can check various online SEO Reporting tools which are available for free and you can examine the backlink reports from there.
Check the Anchor Texts
The Unnatural Anchor texts is the another signal for the website having link farm. If the huge number of anchor texts are keyword – rich, then the site’s SEO is must be manipulating the lists and there is a chance that your website is must be under the link farm.
Never Let the SEO Metrics Tricks You
If a Website is a well-defined and having relatively high DR , it does not mean that it does not belong to any link farming category. Some webmasters and SEOs enhance the DR of their site specifically for the purpose of selling links. It’s better to look for the organic search traffic as well as the history of the organic traffic. It will give you the idea of site’s growth process and you will actually get visitors.
Other thing to analyse is the keyword ranking, check out the site ranking for the keywords. For instance if the 3 years old site is ranking for 300+ keywords and then there might be something off. And if the articles are stuffed with the keywords then it’s best to avoid.
Following these things you are more likely to get the link farming, sometimes it becomes difficult to find the link farmed websites , but the if you follow the above metrics properly, you will surely detect those sites.
Why Does Google Hates Link Farms ?
Earlier in the days of PageRank, each link to the website was considered as the vote of authority, which increases the overall site value and the popularity. And then the Link farms first started popping out in response to the PageRank as well as Google Ranking Algorithms.
Site which has more backlink are considered to be the more valuable and it was difficult to find out the difference between the genuine links and the fake links which had been created to manipulate the algorithm.
But with the evolution in the algorithm , Google became more smarter and intelligent, steps were taken eventually to identify the link farms and prevent them from the dominating SERPs.
That is why , the sites which comes under link farming often get penalised by the Google as well as the rest of search engines. And , Sometimes it becomes more difficult to achieve it back.
Google is the top level and trusted search engine. And it believes in delivering the qualitative results only. That’s the reason , Google has set some search engine guidelines for the site ranking. And , Link farms is the black hat technique , which works against the search engine guidelines. Therefore , Google hates link Farming as it damages the integrity of the Google’s SERP’s .Therefore, it is better to wait for getting organic results rather than getting penalized.
Why Link Farming is not considered an Effective way for Link Building ?
Below are the some reasons, why Link Farming is not considered as an effective way for the link building and why you should avoid them at any costs.
You can’t Trust the Quality
You should never make sure that one backlink is just as good as another. Google and the other search engines keep check to access the quality of the backlinks and evaluate it’s link source. And, poor quality backlinks are never rewarder
- Always keep in mind that , High – Quality Backlinks are –
- Natural, genuine as well as organic
- They come from the reputable as well as trusted source
- Comes from the source which is relevant to the linked content
- They integrates with the surrounding content which makes sense.
And backlinks from the link farms does not have any of these things and therefore , they can surely harm your SEO efforts.
You can’t Make sure the Longevity
No matter , if the owner of the link farm has the capability to avoid getting shut down or penalized, you would have no guarantee whether those links will remain active over the long period or not.
Link farms often can come and go instantly. That means , the backlinks you paid for could suddenly get disappear. And there is even no more guarantee, that your specific links won’t be removed or changed.
You could have severe penalties
There is a severe risk of penalization , when poor quality of links are associated with the link farms and it would be difficult to overcome.
These kind of penalties are often applied by the algorithm filter. And Evenmore , members of Google’s spam team manually review sites for the potential violations of their search engine guidelines. And these are severe penalties that could not be recover further.
These are the enough reasons , now you can understand why link farms are not considered the effective way of building Backlinks.
The Conclusion
If you want to remain top among your competitors, then you should definitely go for organic results. These results would take time but it would give your fruitful output. It’s better to avoid the techniques like link farming which could cause you more harm than good.
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FAQs
What is meant by Link Farming?
Link farming is the group of websites which hyperlinks to other sites for the purpose of increasing SEO Rankings.
Is Link Farming illegal ?
Yes , Operating Link farm is prohibited by Google and other search engines. If Google catches link farming in your website , it could even penalize your website
Is Link Farm Good for SEO ?
No, Link farm is the illegal activity and it is not good for SEO. And it works against the search engine guidelines.
Does Link Farming work ?
Link farming is an ineffective way of building links and can even lead you a big loss.