Link Schemes

In our last post we introduced Frowned Upon and listed some ways that your site can be frowned upon. In this post we are going to look a little deeper into an aspect of frowned upon. Link Schemes are just one of the many ways your site can be frowned upon. However, linked schemes is a very broad term with endless ways in which it can be done.

Link schemes are any links intended to manipulate your page ranking in a Google search, this is a violation of Google’s guidelines. Any form of exchange in order for a link is frowned upon. Exchanging money, products or services also the “I’ll link to you if you link to me”-exchange, it is all ways of link schemes.

Additionally, unnatural links are also a violation of Google’s guidelines. Here are some examples of unnatural links:

•  Low-quality directory or bookmark site links
• Links inserted into a webpage and blog article without any context
• Links that are embedded in widgets that are distributed across various sites
• Distributed links in footers of sites – this is mostly used by developers to put their name on a clients’ website
• Forum and blog comments with keyword-rich links within the signature or post it self

Bad neighbourhood links are also a no go. Links to and from bad neighbourhood sites that include adult, gambling and other unlawful industries, paint a negative light to your site. The same with links from foreign language sites. Relevance matters when it comes to links, Google may issue penalties to sites that receive a large number of inbound foreign language links. If the readers of your website can’t actually benefit from the content, rather avoid this link type.

The best thing for you to get other sites to link to yours is to create unique and relevant content. By naturally gaining popularity on the internet other sites will create high-quality, relevant links to your site. Links are editorial votes, these votes are given by choice if your content is useful to them. The better content you have the greater chance of someone linking to your site. Creating great content really pays off.