Understanding the dangers of link farming
It is no secret that link building is a very important part of SEO. Not only does it increase your authority on the search results, but it boosts your reliability as a source.
However, some link builders take advantage of this by overlinking on their sites without considering the content, which greatly affects their credibility.
This practice is called link farming, and here’s why you should avoid this black hat SEO technique.
What is link farming?
Link farming is the process of running a group of websites for the sole purpose of gaining backlinks.
There is less importance put on the quality of the content and overuse of links to manipulate the search engine and increase their rankings.
Back then, the value of a certain website was partially attributed to the number of links. Now that search engines are smarter, they can detect organic, high-quality links from inorganic ones.
Why you must avoid link farming
Link farming is a form of cheating as it tries to trick the search engine into believing that your website is credible enough to be at the top of the results page.
When in reality, link farming does the complete opposite. Overlinking to the same websites or low-authority ones can have your site penalized and deindexed by the SERP.
Low-quality backlinking ruins the user experience and decreases the quality and authority of your website. It gives the reader unuseful or irrelevant information.
What does a link farm look like?
Link farms have several telltale signs that you need to look out for. Be careful not to link to these sites as they may damage your own.
Irrelevant links
The clearest sign of a link farm is the overuse of irrelevant links, both internal and external. If you will include links to your article, make sure they are related to your brand or topic.
Links are there to help the reader gain valuable information, and any links that do not serve this purpose will only damage the site’s credibility.
Poorly written content
Poorly written content is another giveaway. The only goal of link farms is to link from one page to another, meaning the content does not matter.
If the site does not answer the user’s queries, is poorly formatted, or does not provide any useful information, chances are it is a link farm. These sites usually recycle content or, in the worst cases, copy-paste it.
Common backlinks
A clear sign of link farms is a group of websites linking to only each other instead of to high authority sites.
Having many links on your site may fool the search engine, but it is not worth it if the links are low quality or irrelevant.
How to avoid link farming
Link farming can be avoided with the right white-hat SEO techniques. Here are a few ways to keep yourself safe from getting involved with them:
Connect with legitimate websites
Reach out to websites with high authority or domain rating. These sites are reputable and provide valuable information to the reader, so it is worth it to connect with them.
You can use site analytics tools to determine the credibility of these sites.
Thoroughly vet the site’s owners
Take the time to crawl through the entire site. This includes reading the content and finding information about the author.
If there is no verifiable author on the site, chances are no real person is behind it, and it is being used for link farming.
Check the number of links
Link farms tend to link with hundreds or even thousands of irrelevant sites. Even if the site might have a good ranking through PageRank, it only got there artificially.
Outsource an SEO expert with MVP Asia Pacific
Reputable agencies like MVP Asia Pacific can help you find a full-time SEO expert to attain high-quality and organic backlinks for your site.
Having a team of full-time SEO specialists ensures you rise on the search engine rankings to drive much-needed traffic to your site.
Reach out to MVP Asia Pacific to learn more about its services!
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