Linkfarm yes or no

Hi Pro´s

Our start page was optimized by a SEO-people. The contract prescribes that we have to accept one backlink from our site to its. Its site contains meanwhile approx. 100 Links to our site. It means 100 Links from him to us and one backlink from us to him. Could that be dangerous for us? Is it better, if we remove the link on our site? (from Googles view)

thanks in advance

Mario

NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER sign a contract with ANY SEO that requires you to put a link on your site to his.

I'm a fairly renowned SEO and I can tell you that this is a scam. All they are really interested in is building a PR for themselves.

As you mentioned it, it's not a farm BUT.. If on his site there are loads of links to other sites he/she has optimized AND on each of those sites there are links back to his sites, then this is getting very very dodgy..

GET RID OF THAT LINK NOW

ok. Darrin I undertand yr answer as follows:

advantage for him
no disadvantage for me
correct?

What you mean with very very dodgy. Where is the risk for me, if it´s not a farm, as you said?

thank you for all your explanations

Mario

By saying dodgy I mean that it is turning into a farm - there there are so many sites linking to him and he's linking back.. But he is making himself the center of the link in an attempt to get a higher PR.

Darrin
we only have one link to him. But we can´t stop his links to us. Who goes into a farm the SEO or we? Could you explain me a little more exactly.
Mario

The person who can be considered part of the farm is the person / site who actively exchanges links. By taking his link off of your site, you will be taking yourself out of the loop, and you shouldn't have any problems whatsoever - even though he is still linking to you..

It's the fact that you are linking to him that is going to cause a problem, but only if there are also other clients of his that link to his website, and then he also links back to all of his clients websites...

Also, it depends on the volume of clients that he has and how many engage in this activity.

Darrin
ok. I understand your remarks. It´s a main company in the SEO-market. So they are not interested to be banned by Google. The links to our site comes from its main-site, a very well-known site.

thank you

Mario

not bad, although my site came up as '0' page rank.

try my little tool if you want to know where you rank based on keywords!

(see signature)

SEO's doing this run a very high risk of being flagged as a "bad neighbourhood". Sites linking to them run a high risk of being penalised.

Hi Darrin,
I've just read this thread and I do have a question to you. Let's say I've just exchanged by links with a very good programmer's resources site. Does their site maybe considered as a farm link? Is there any typical signs?

motiv, I tried your tool and it was right on for most terms but for one term I typed in it told me that pages from my site took up the #3,4,5 and 6 positions, but when I searched it in google it only came up once in position #3. What could be the reason for this? thanks, Alex

Google has several different datacenters, as you probably know (since you're at google-dance.com).

I've noticed this effect too, my guess is the server that is serving the Google SOAP API requests is not always insync with google.com.

Plus, the "dance" is in full swing right now. So you may get a different results everytime you search even on google.com

google dance "in full swing"? are you sure about this? not according to the yahoo quick check on www.google-dance.com ? any one has any comments on this? Thanks

I don't think the dance is on yet. I have not seen any signs of it.

Jennifer

...my results seem to vary day to day, and google bot comes out every couple of days..