Your parents probably told you there were certain people that you just didn't want to be "associated" with. That same statement holds true for your web site as well, linking to, or being linked to the wrong site can get your web site booted from the search engines. Even worse, it could substantially reduce your search engine position without you even knowing the cause.

Certain sites, like webrings, link farms, FFA sites, web spammers and other individuals(even some search engine optimization firms) are plain bad news when trying to attain good search engine position in search engines like Google (http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html). So what do you do?

• Be familiar with the requirements of search engines for listing in their indexes
• Insure that you have a reliable ISP that does a good job of keeping spammers from using your domain name
• Insure that your ISP does not host sites which send spam, carry adult content or are banned from search engines
• Don't use automated programs to submit to search engines
• Don't compromise your standards by providing links back to meaningless sites with no valuable content just to get a link, it just de-values your internet property
  

There are many do's and don'ts associated with link building. The most important thing is to use common sense and do some background research to find out what is acceptable in different search engines. Think about who you want to be associated with, is it someone you would refer your customers and clients to? With many linking schemes that is the case, so take care.

About Rank1st

Rank1st provides services to build an organizations Internet presence. We work with web site owners large and small build quality links, optimizing web site code and provide an array of services designed to acheive your search engine marketing goals. If you need help with search engine optimization, give us a call or send us an e-mail.