In search engine optimisation, link farms are a black hat SEO technique which involves having many different websites, usually on different IP addresses (in order to avoid detection), which all link to each other. The idea of link farms is that there are many different websites who all link to one another, by having x amount of outgoing links to all the other websites found on the link farm, your site, in return will get x amount of incoming links from all of the other sites too. This is how they work, kind of a tit for tat in terms of links.

Link farms are a black hat SEO method and are frowned upon by Google and many other search engines. Incoming links to a website are fantastic, in terms of SEO it is a brilliant way of improving a websites credibility within the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages), however, link farms are not the best way to go about this. The outgoing links to the other link farm websites are fine, however, when you get the links back from these websites, you may be tainted by an unethical website. Perhaps one website contains adult content, or has black hat methods, the search engines will spot this and your website will suffer. So much for that easy link.

The best way of gaining incoming links to your website, is the long hard, ethical white hat SEO way. Something that we here at Position Gold Ltd understand and practice. Link farms may sound a brilliant way of quickly generating inbound links for your website, but unfortunately, as with most black hat SEO methods, it is just too good to be true.

In Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), there are two main types of optimisation techniques:

• White Hat techniques
• Black Hat techniques

There are also Grey Hat techniques, but this blog is about is about black hat methods so I will not go into it! In this article of the ‘How to SEO’ Manual Position Gold will be talking about Black Hat search engine optimisation techniques, explaining what they are, how unethical companies use them and just what problems such methods can cause your website.

What are they?

Black Hat SEO techniques are unethical ways of optimising a website. They can involve many different types of methods and techniques, which can quickly influence your website within the SERPs. It is because of this short term success that websites use these unethical techniques, however, in the long term they are very derogatory to your website, with punishments being severe.

How they are used

Black hat SEO methods involve many different ways of manipulating a website and the search engines, the following are some of the most common black hat techniques:

• Hidden text
• Hidden divisions
• Keyword Spamming
• META tag spamming
• Hidden META tags

These are just some of the unethical techniques that black hat SEOs use in order to optimise a website in the short term. There are many more different techniques which are used, however, they are much less common and we don’t want to appear to be too much of experts regarding black hat SEO methods!!

Problems they can cause

Websites found to be containing any black hat techniques will be punished by the search engines. The severity of the punishment can range from penalising the websites PageRank and rank within the SERPs to a complete ban from the entire search engine.

To conclude, Black Hat SEO techniques are bad news. Avoid them at all costs, if you are offered Search Engine Optimisation that sounds too good to be true, the chances are, it will be. If you feel you have been the victim of Black Hat SEO and need a knight in shining armor to save the day, contact Position Gold Ltd now!