Links Website But Not Link farm?

[Brokerstar]

Hey guys

I know that link farms are essentially bad but I was at a diner party the other night when a friend was telling me about a specialsed site (non gambling) that had specific link exchanges when you become a member. There are moderators that pick what sites link with what to keep things from becoming link farmy apparently.

Basically you list your site in a relivant category and you offer space for links from only similar businesses on your site and in return this website automatically does the same for you. There are all sorts of rules apparently and your site needs to be approved my a moderator before you start exchanging links and can't be adult themed or gambling related.

Now I can't for the life of me remember the name of the site but wondered if anyone here had any experience promoting non gambling websites and using something like this? If so is there a site that you reccomend?

I'm basically getting a website up and running for my Dads garden and landscaping company (he's old and not computer savy) and wanted to help get him a load more phone calls. I've used Google ad words which is great but want to do all that I can to get ranked organically and quickly.

Any help will be appriciated with regards to this type of link specialist site.

Broker

[Unknown Webmaster]

I would go out of my way to rank for stuff like "local area landscaping" and trade links with your fathers suppliers and other related non-competitor businesses that he has relations with. It is good for SEO, and will be good for business too, since you are basically just extending what is already there.

[Randy Ray]

I'd avoid any plan like this. As soon as I see the words "automated" or "automatically", I get the hell out of there. I'm not that desperate for links.

[Brokerstar]

Fair enough.

I thought I'd get a feeling for what you guys thought before making any choices.

Thanks for the input.

Broker

[Michael Martinez]

As one of the guys who helped invent link farms, I can tell you that the classic definition for a link farm is "a collection of Web sites where every member site links to all the other member sites".

However, through the years people have tried to refine the concept for various reasons. What you describe sounds link farmy to me and it's not something I would want to participate in, but that's just me.

Search engines don't care if sites swap links. They do care if sites engage in egregious link swapping for the sole purpose of influencing search results.

I would evaluate any link swapping service on the basis of how much qualified traffic it will send to a member site. If you stand to get more qualified traffic from the service than from any search engine, then don't worry about whether it's a link farm.

Ultimately, you want the most traffic you can obtain. It doesn't all have to come through search, but any option that brings you no traffic probably won't help your marketing.