We all share the same human emotion known as impatience, and it’s fueled by the push-button society in which we live. For some bloggers, impatience has become their worst enemy with their approach to link exchange and link baiting, which has led them to participate in mini link farms for link exchange.

With the Google’s page rank updates just around the corner, there are many who have used damaging link exchange strategies in their attempt to create large quantities of incoming links quickly. Patience is a virtue when it comes to building links to our blogs, but many have given in to impatience. What are these mini link farms for link exchange that I’m referring to?

First off, let’s look at some clarification as to what a link farm is, and how the following examples are indeed link farms. This particular source I found with an article on How Not to Get Banned by Google, described a link farm well:

Link Farms, or Free-for-all links pages exist solely to help listed sites gain higher search engine rankings.

Some are referred to as viral links (not to be confused with the healthy type of viral linking). The format of one type I’ve seen creates links by using a series of asterisks, but unfortunately to begin with those could be viewed by Google as hidden text and links.

Other link strategies I’m referring to, which fall into the link farm category are the ones where you are instructed to copy and paste a massive list of blog urls into a blog post, or as mentioned above, create links from a character such as an asterisk. Most likely you’ve seen them, and hopefully you haven’t participated in any of them. So, how did those mini link farms come about, which have influenced so many bloggers to copy and paste hundreds of links within a blog post, in hopes to exchanging links with the masses?

I have my own theory, and you can call me crazy if you wish, but here goes. The blogosphere has grown immensely, and some webmasters are perhaps not so pleased with all the competition that has risen around them. What if one of those bloggers or webmasters convinced some bloggers to participate in link farms for link exchange to run them out of the index? What if they then were successful at leading thousands of blogs to slaughter by leading them to believe the copy and paste strategy of links within a blog post was good, when instead it is a link farm? Perhaps by doing so they figured it was a good way to eliminate a large amount of competition by knocking them down the Google index - or seeing them removed from the index altogether? Hmm, I may be way off on my theory, but it’s worth the time to type this paragraph.

If you’re reading this, I’m hoping for the sake of your blog that you decide to only participate in building links with a natural approach, and preferably within relevant content. Yes, the natural approach is sloooooower than the copy and paste mini link farms, but the natural approach is good for your site because it’s within content, and you won’t be screaming the link exchange blues in the long run. And, if you’ve participated in those link farms it’s unfortunately impossible to take back all those links from the farms that bred them, so the ill affects could be long term.

Sure, you may have actually seen an improvement in your page rank since participating in the link farms, but Google has filters set up to catch up to that in the long run. If they determine a person has received links by spamming the index, then the page rank gained for a short while will not be worth it! One only has to study the patent Google established for their page ranking system to realize that eventually they will catch up to those who have their blog url’s copy and pasted into the mini link farm blog posts published all over the blogosphere.

In that I choose to build my links from natural methods within relevant content, there are days when I get frustrated with the painfully slow process it seems to be. This is especially true when I look at a blog at say a PR 4 that has participated in what I consider to be mini link farms; with the copy and pasting of massive links within one blog post as mentioned above — yet here I am at a PR 3 utilizing only the natural approach. As they say though, “Slow and steady will win the race!” so my reward will come in due time.

This all boils down to another reason why I look forward to building many more members for Link & Blog Challenge — so we all have a steady and consistent routine to the natural organic link building strategy with a large variety of members who wish to link within relevant content.

If you’ve been looking for links in all the wrong places, and need to change your tune come find out what we’re all about in our blogging community. Although the natural approach is slower, it is better, and at least there you would find that blog link exchange can be as fun as a game!