What is a Link Farm?

March 2004
By Alice Seba

We've all heard the term "link farm" and have even heard it's a bad idea to participate in these linking schemes designed to artificially boost link popularity.  So, what exactly is a link farm anyway?

It's funny, but in all this time of Internet Marketing, I never truly understood the term until good friend Tara came to the message board came to message boards and talked about a link program she was involved in. It wasn't a type of program I've ever participated in...but I still didn't realize it was a link farm. It was just a group of moms in business trying to find a way to promote each other. But of course, our moderators, Sharon & Roy put us straight fairly quickly.

Okay...Getting to the Point: What is a Link Farm?

A link farm is when  group of website owners get together to link to each other. One main links page is created with links to all the participant's websites and each participant places that links page on her website. Voila! Instant links to your website.

Now whether or not your purpose is just to help promote one another as opposed to boosting search engine rankings...you still run the risk of being punished or banned by search engines. Search engines cannot understand motive and this could be seen as an "illegal" link popularity scheme.

So What Should You Do to Generate Links to Your Website?

▪ Read our article Increase Your Link Popularity: Building a Link Popularity Strategy
▪ Consult our Link Popularity Tools Reviews

More Search Engine Information: Highly Recommended! 

Check Aaron Wall's SEO Book.  Aaron's book doesn't leave any stones unturned.  He covers everything you need to know about getting traffic to your website and legitimately ranking well with the search engines. His book covers all the nitty gritty details in an easy-to-understand way.