What is a Link Farm?
A link farm is a group of sites that link to one another with the intent of manipulating search engine algorithms and increasing their rankings on search results pages.
The sites in a link farm are often low-quality, with little to no helpful content. They are solely created to build backlinks pointing to the other sites in the link farm.
Link farms are a form of link scheme. Like all other link schemes, they are considered a black hat SEO technique and should be avoided. They violate Google Search Essentials guidelines and are set up to trick search engines into thinking a site is more valuable than it is.
Google may demote the rankings of sites that engage in link schemes or deindex them completely from search results pages.
That said, link farms should not be confused with link exchanges or reciprocal linking, which are considered white hat SEO techniques and are intended to provide quality backlinks to participating sites.
Link farms should not be confused with private blog networks either. While both are black hat link-building techniques, link farms only link to other sites that are part of the farm, while private blog networks link to a site outside the network.
How to Identify a Link Farm
You can identify a link farm by reviewing the site, content, and links, as we discussed below
1 Evaluate the Link Diversity
Link farms often have links from a limited number of domains. For example, if a technology blog has backlinks primarily from a small group of unrelated, low-quality sites, it suggests a lack of domain diversity, which is a major indicator of a link farm.
2 Inspect the Anchor Text
Link farms often use repetitive, keyword-stuffed anchor texts that don’t naturally fit into the content. For example, if a blog about fashion repeatedly uses the exact phrase “cheap car insurance” as anchor text, it may be part of a link farm.
3 Analyze the Outbound Links
Link farms typically have an unusually high number of outbound links pointing to low-quality and unhelpful pages. In many instances, the content on both pages are not even related in any way. For example, a webpage about gardening that contains hundreds of outbound links to car dealerships and clothing stores is likely part of a link farm.
4 Look Out for Excessive Reciprocal Linking
Excessive reciprocal linking occurs when two sites link back to one another in ways that appear unnatural. The sites will usually link to one another on multiple pages, even when their content is not relevant. For example, a travel blog and a pet grooming site linking to each other on nearly every page are likely part of a link farm.
5 Review the Website and Page Authority
Link farms often have low website authority (DA) and page authority (PA) scores. A low score typically indicates a new site or one that has a spam backlink profile.