Help! My Boss Wants A Link Farm Options

[decca1o]

My boss is upset because a couple of our best keywords got wiped out from page one in google (still not sure why). To make up for it, he wants to get involved with a link farm. I am still new to SEO and am looking for some solid arguments for or against Link Farms, but am having trouble getting direct up to date results in the forums. Any advice for a newbie with a small business site. Am I wrong, and link farms may be the way to go? Thanks for your help.

[redsonia!]

Oh, no! You definitely don't want to do a link farm! When Google sees that type of activity on a site they may ban you. Then you won't just be off the first page of serps, you'll be completely out of Google! Definitely NOT the way to go!

[SERPico]

Refer him to this article and if he still wants to continue with it then tell he can be sure that his site won't be found for the keywords he would like to be found, in fact he may be removed entirely!

Also tell him that fluctuations can occur, and things will probably be turning back as it was soon enough.
No need to turn on the panic button. These thing happen!

Have you done anything that could be perceived as doing something that is against Google's webmaster guidelines?
If not then just be patient.

[Jill]

First, I think you need to tell us what he means by Link Farm. Not everyone has the same definition, and it might not be as bad as you think. Doubtful it will help if you've been wiped out of Google though. Perhaps he's doing some other shady thing that caused that?

[Randy]

Think he would get the idea if you pointed him to Google's Webmaster Guidelines (see the Quality Guidlines - basic principles section) or the more specific Link Schemes warning from their Webmaster Help Center?

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/angel_not.gif)

[decca1o]

Thank you all for the help and links! I have been in charge of the site and have not done anything aside from playing with keywords, so no shady SEO tactics. We randomly lost 4 of our best keywords back in October/November and have not seen them since. No big changes were made at that time. I noticed that our competitors have a ton more inbound links pointing to them than we have. This is why my boss wants a link farm. How did they get so many links? Jill, we do not have anything specific in mind, just something that offers many reciprocal links from websites in our genre.

We have always had 2 urls that point to the same site, I am not sure if this would be duplicate content? We also have our main links at the top and bottom of every page, could this be duplicate content?

Thanks again for your help.

[KingPin]

Step 1) Tell you're boss Link Farms are fround upon by the search engines. In fact, email the main guy who is above your boss a link to this thread.

Step 2) Go ahead and create the Link Farm.

Step 3) Once the site gets penalised (if it does), it will be your bosses fault, not yours as you were following orders.

Simple. I know It's not mega helpful but that is what I would do, seriously.

KP

[Jill]

Jill, we do not have anything specific in mind, just something that offers many reciprocal links from websites in our genre.

What makes you think it's a link farm?

Do you have to link to every other site in the network?

[decca1o]

So are you saying it may not be that bad to use a solution that offers to provide links that are similar to the subject matter of our site (as long as we don't go at it too fast)? It feels like I am not respecting what the Google Link Schemes Page says about partnering for cross linking purposes, but at the same time they are not irrelevant random links. Thanks again for your advice.

Reason for edit: Removed link per forum rules.

[Randy]

I beleive what she's saying is that what you're calling a Link Farm isn't really a Link Farm.

On link farms each site links to every other site. This doesn't sound like what you're describing.

If you're simply building relevant, incoming links from quality sites that's link building. Not link farming.

[1dmf]

Where does that leave companies that offer 1,000's & 1,000's of one way inbound links, placed on relevant websites, that leave no footprint.

Is that still 'Black Hat' and would cause a penalty / ban from the SE's if caught.

Or is it perfectly fair game to get as many links as you can from as many websites as possible, is that simply paying someone to link build on your behalf, and as luck would have it they have access to a huge number of websites?

[Scottie]

Where does that leave companies that offer 1,000's & 1,000's of one way inbound links, placed on relevant websites,

I'd pay a hefty fee for this service. Especially since so many markets don't have close to 1,000 relevant websites in them, much less 1,000 relevant websites where you can place a link.

[M.Kane]

I'd pay a hefty fee for this service. Especially since so many markets don't have close to 1,000 relevant websites in them, much less 1,000 relevant websites where you can place a link.

The only way you'd get a service like that is by paying a blackhat with coding skill to link drop the heck out of your site on relevant sites, a mass link drop could tally up to around 2-5k links a day for niche sites or not. But, i used the words black and hat in my first sentence, together...nuff said :P

[1dmf]

I get the feeling Scottie is a little black hatter in her spare time (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink1.gif)