When is something seen as link farm?

[Admiral_Burrows]

Hi,

I've got a set of sites that all deal with a particular related topic.

I'm looking to link them together to connect related information but am concerned that interlinking them all might look like suspicious to google.

So my question really is when does something start to look like a link farm? Is it at 10 sites interlinked, 100? 1000?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

[kgun]

Originally Posted by Admiral_Burrows

So my question really is when does something start to look like a link farm? Is it at 10 sites interlinked, 100? 1000?

When the link structure

1. is not made for people
2. is not semantic
3. is not natural
4. is not contextual

[keyon]

Originally Posted by kgun

When the link structure

1. is not made for people

I'm curious - since spider bots are not human, how can search engines determine if a link is "made for people"?

[james113]

As long as there is relevant content that will benefit users on each site you should be ok.

[chrisJumbo]

Originally Posted by keyon

I'm curious - since spider bots are not human, how can search engines determine if a link is "made for people"?

The spider bots can't necessarily, although "they" could probably find enough clues and make a decision. More importantly though, if a competitor senses you are making poor linking choices and reports a human will be reviewing the sites.

I think James and Kgun hit the nail on the head. If the purpose of the links is for the people, then you'll be fine. If the purpose is to increase rankings, you might escape notice when the linking is small, but then again, maybe you won't.

cd :O)

[claybutler]

As long as it's organic and free range your link farm should be fine. All kidding aside, yes, interlink related sites. Just makes sense. Make them useful links as well, both for search engines and for people.

So instead of a link that says "www.mybluewidgets.com"

Have it say "Visit Our Discount Blue Widget Store"

Mix up the descriptions to keep it interesting and to entice a user to click on it.

[SnerdeyWebs]

Search engines bots don't really know anything.. lol .. they are programmed to get so many bytes of information from a site, links and content. But, what happens in the storage database is all the cross ref they do and on multiple levels.

Best to design your site with human visitors in mind and have it all make sense or you just might miss the boat

[kgun]

Originally Posted by sherone

One question
link farm and link juice both are the same??????

No, link juice is related to the Google algorithm. Search Google for:

define: link juice

Related:

define: link love