DO YOU BELONG TO A LINK FARM?

By David Bell
Posted Friday, July 2, 2004

Have you bought into the whole "link farm" scam in an effort to increase your inbound links so that you can get higher placement in Google and other engines that give you credit for the number of links to your site?
linkstoyou.com is the one that first comes to mind, but like all good scams it has many imitators.
The theory is that everyone posts links from their "link swapping page" with every other member and that way everyone gets to be #1 in their category at Google, AltaVista and others. Sounds pretty clever, doesn't it? Cheating is always easier than doing the work. Besides, there are so many "search engine gurus and experts" telling everyone how much money they are making by cheating.
If you got suckered into the Link Popularity scam, try to get out as soon as you can. It may not be soon enough since your link is spread around on pages you can't access to remove your link, but it can't hurt to try.
If you manage to avoid getting banned by the engines, next time contemplate a bit longer before falling for the "Guru Scam Of The Day." If you find yourself hanging out at a Webmaster community that endorses scams and cheating, run away as fast as you can.
Remember, the engines don't react to these scams until they grow into a big enough problem. Then they act and everyone is left dead in the water. The time to react is variable but the result is always the same. "What can I do now? This is so unfair! I didn't mean to cheat. They're unfairly putting me out of business!"
Yes you did and now you got caught.
I hope this helps in your future marketing decisions.

About the Author
David Bell is Manager, Online Marketing, at
(http://www.wspromotion.com/) , a leading Search Engine Optimization services firm and Advertising Agency.