In terms of search engine marketing, the terms 'link farm' and 'link campaign' may not seem so different. However, from the view of a search engine, the two terms are drastically different not only in the motives behind each, but also in the impact on their quality-focused goals.
For a search engine marketing campaign to be successful, one most definitely needs to know the key differences between a link campaign and a link farm.
What is a Link Farm?
Similar to how a real farm is comprised of many fields connected together, a link farm is literally many websites and pages that are connected through shared links. Let's assume that a small link farm supports 15 websites (each consisting of 5 pages). Typically, the search engine marketing approach will be that each website will link to each of the other 14 websites in the group, which then results in a minimum of 225 shared links. Actual link farms however can consist of hundreds of websites with hundreds of thousands of links between the sites.
It doesn't matter if the sites or the information on them is related, relevant or even useful to the visitor. The objective is to artificially boost the page rank of the sites (through the use of links) so that they achieve top ranking within the search pages. And therein lies the problem; most link farms do not contain useful information and are simply spamdexing.
Search Engine Marketing - The Origin of Link Farms
Believe it or not, link farms were first created by search engines. Back in 1999, while search engine development was still in its infancy, link farms were an effective method of assisting the web crawlers as they indexed pages. Essentially, links farms were established in an attempt to keep indexes fresh and up-to-date.
Once others realized how the indexing was performed, however, it didn't take long before search engine marketing designers began setting up their own link farms in an attempt to influence rankings. Some even offered link farm creation as a service to many businesses. This, in turn, prompted the search engines to abandon link farms, as they were no longer an effective means of measuring site popularity.
What is a Link Campaign?
As opposed to link farms, link campaigns refer to a method of search engine marketing that provides links to credible and solidly related information. These links are for the benefit of the reader and provide additional useful resources that are directly related to the topic.
This article is one example; the search engine marketing in place on this web page provides links, that, if followed, will provide more additional useful information to the reader about link farms, link campaigns and other web-related topics.
In this instance, the links are monitored for relevancy. As such, a web page that uses these methods should achieve a good rank placement for quite some time because the focus on quality content with quality links.
Search Engine Marketing - Quality Link Campaigns
Search engines such as Bing, Google and Yahoo are quite clear in what they are looking for in order for one's search engine marketing to be successful; quality, quality, quality. Web pages and sites that contain useful information for the visitor and links that are relevant to what's being seen or read.
Websites that engage in link farms risk being identified as spamdexing. If identified as such, a site could find itself pushed to the last pages of the search engine, or removed from it entirely.
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