What is a link farm and how are they treated by search engines?
-
I notice one of my competitors who ranks prominantly has very odd looking backlinks. They come from MANY sites which all contain directories that look identical. Each site contains the exact same directory - only the design of the page is different. There is no theme or focus to the directories - they list everything from pencils to fencing. This competitor has very few links from outside of this directory but again it has MANY links from this directory. So my question is, does this qualify as a "link farm". And then, how do search engines treat "link farms?
-
Thanks, Barry! That last paragraph is rich and very helpful. Google won't likely look at an individual case like this because they are trying to fix this kind of problem by tweaking algorithms... Makes perfect sense. I'll likely make the report but set my expectation levels low.
Thanks to everyone for the great, quick feedback on my question!
-
If it is those sites that are being used to rank then you either level the playing field by getting on them, remove him from the sites or remove the sites!
Sticking in a spam report can't hurt.
And Blekko's probably discounted those sites as spam, they're quite good that way
When dealing with spammy competitors your options are limited, spam report or if you have a following you could blog about it and hope it gets in front of somebody in a position to make changes.
Realistically this sort of linking is the kind of thing Google wants to sort algorithmically, so won't see an immediate beat down on your competitor by reporting it; not sure what other options you have though
-
Thanks, Barry. Exactly the kind of advice I was looking for. : )
But seriously, is my only option submitting a spam report or are there other options? How do you all deal with competitors who use spammy tactics?
I notice Blekko doesn't rank this competitors site well at all. Actually, Blekko serps look like I'd expect them to if spammy tactics were treated as spammy tactics should be treated. Super clean serps (at least in my niche).
Anyway, any additional advice would be appreciated!
Thanks!
-
Or get on there too...
-
I first noticed these links about 6 months ago but I've watched this competitors site climb quickly over the last 12 months and I'm assuming they've had these links over 6 months. I had been advised that if these links were spammy Google would catch on and any benefit they had been getting would diminish. But as I said, it's been quite some time and they continue to hold their strong organic positions which is obviously a concern. So... what do you all suggest I do? Is it time to submit a spam report?
-
That's not a link farm
You just described a free directory
-
Technically a link farm is a group of sites that link to all the other sites in the farm. So A links to B & C, B links to A & C and C links to A & B.
Scale that up to 100 sites and you can kind of see what's going on.
Here's the Whiteboard Friday on it - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-friday-link-farming
What you're describing may be a form of link farming, if your competitor has a link back to each of those directories. If not then it's just a ****ty directory and probably not doing a lot for him or won't be doing a lot in the very near future
You could submit a spam report to Google, but probably not going to get dealt with straight away.
-
A link farm is one that gives any website a link for free. Its also called a FFA or free for all. No creteris is needed to list a website in such websites.
Link farms are considered a black hat technique in terms of Google.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Link Exchange
Is link exchange always bad? What if I want to add a link for other related products on my site which I do not offer, and the other site does the same for me? Will it be better to rather an article for each other product and link to somebody, than have one page with a list of other products to other sites. For example. We do training. Lets say we offer computer training. We search companies that does health and safety training offer to put their course on our site with a link to them, if they do the same.
Link Building | | Heinwest0 -
I've watched a few backlinks disappear from our inbound link search.
After inquiring to Moz.org about this, they suggested this might be due to a new feature that was rolled out, however, this 2 year old backlink still hasn't shown up and I'm a little concerned. Has anyone else experienced this?
Link Building | | Deacyde0 -
Indirect Link Earning via dofollow Links In News Articles
Hello, MOZ SEO Gurus. I've been trying to think some deep thoughts on safe, effective link earning for news publishing sites, and wanted to run this up the flagpole and see if you salute. Our site is a biotech news service -- we pump out copious amounts of news content each day, which works well for driving traffic. That being said, we also want to rank some optimized landing pages as well. Take, for example, this page, which we'd like to rank for "secondary progressive MS" and related keywords: http://bionews-tx.com/secondary-progressive-ms/ Now, as far as I'm concerned, shopping this page around to MS influencers isn't easy. I can go to Foundational websites, blogs, etc., and say, "hey, we have this info page on SPMS, and I thought that you might find it helpful/want to link to it." But chances are, the MS influencers already have their own proprietary content on SPMS, and there isn't much value to linking to it. Therefore, I think that we'll get few link earning conversions on the effort. However, what if I take our Secondary Progressive MS landing page, and I link to it in a corresponding article about SPMS research, as I did here: http://bionews-tx.com/news/2014/01/30/secondary-progressive-ms-natalizumab-clinical-trial/ Then, I go to the drug developer who is at the center of this story and say to them, "hey, we recently covered your drug in the news, and I thought you might want to link to it." Then, we get a link from an MS drug developer to the news article, which in turn has a prominent anchor text, dofollow internal link to the landing page for SPMS. If the link from the drug developer is dofollow, then we flow page rank juice from the drug developer page to our news page to our landing page. To me, it's much easier to earn safe links this way than to try and shop the landing page itself. That being said, if we get a dofollow link on the news piece, we only get a diminished portion of page rank going to the landing page. Is this strategy viable? Is the indirect flow of page rank from a linking site to a news article to a landing page even worth it? I'd love to hear your thoughts. Thanks!
Link Building | | bionewstx2 -
How much time does it take for the links to be forwarded to redirected link?
Hi there,
Link Building | | MoeezLodhi
Thank you for taking out some time for this question; I have changed the permalinks last week for a website.. I forgot to redirect old permalinks to the new one.. So I did 301 redirection, it has been 4-5 days since I did that but the links are not forwarded to the new Permalink so far.
How much time should I wait for the links to be forwarded to the new permalinks? Secondly, I am sure I have done the 301 redirect correctly, as when I go to the old url / permalink it directs me to the new permalink. So I am sure 301 is done correctly. Do I need to submit the sitemap again?0 -
Why my twitter handle link is not getting counted in links, though for other sites it is counting!
My twitter handle page link is not getting counted, though it is getting counted for other sites
Link Building | | EG0CENTRIX0 -
Back Link: Is LinkedIn keywords in profile good Link building strategy?
I distribute industrial products B2B with e commerce. I have a personal profile on LinkedIn. I listed the products I sell and I could have all my partners and associates list my web site on their profiles. Do search engines review LinkedIn personal profiles or company profiles and is it a good marketing strategy to have my web site, keywords, and my two largest selling products on LinkedIn?
Link Building | | Wales0 -
Outsourcing Link Building - What Low LEvel Links Should One Start With 1st
Outsourcing Link Building - What Low Level Links Should I start with if my interest is get free immediate traffic as a direct result from placing links or what ever out there and what should I outsource 1st and why ? What questions should I ask my self that will help me determine where I should start with low level links ?
Link Building | | helpwanted0 -
Root domain registered in search engines, inbound links to www sub-domain. A problem?
I just discovered that our site is registered with the major search engines without the "www" sub domain. Both domains resolve directly to our site, which I need to get corrected. I had planned to have the root (honestabe.com) forwarded to the sub (www.honestabe.com). However, I then found that the sub-domain is not listed with the search engines. Of course, naturally almost all of our inbound links include www. Does Google differentiate between links with and without the sub-domain? In other words, if I forward the www address to the root, will I still get the SEO benefit of those inbound links using www? I'm trying to figure out how to approach this. I'm hoping someone is going to make me feel really stupid for asking this and say it's no big deal. However, I have a feeling this could be a mess.
Link Building | | honestabejosh0