It is common knowledge in SEO promotion (search engine optimization promotion), that the best way to get noticed in the search engine rankings is to have other high-ranking websites link to your website. These SEO links are called one way links or backlinks, and they not only get you a better ranking in the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN, but they will also generate a large amount of traffic. In most cases, the traffic that will visit your site will be highly targeted visitors who are interested in your products and services.

Often, website owners who are just starting their online business, and are learning the SEO basics are aware that to get a good page ranking, and generate traffic to their sites, they must get those SEO links up and running quickly. Once links have been added, they will start being indexed by the search engines, and it is here that many website owners make their first fatal search optimization mistake:

In their search for a quick fix that will increase their website rankings instantly, website owners may be tempted to use link farms to get their one-way links. Often, these link farms will advertise that they can provide hundreds of organic, relevant links that will quickly boost search engine rankings.  The idea of a link farm is to provide one-way links to website owners, which they usually charge a fee for. A link farm is nothing more than a website that is created to store hundreds of links to other websites, but has no real value other than that.

Search engines were designed to store, and quickly provide useful, and relevant information to visitors. The major search engines, such as Google, soon began to notice that these link farms were popping up everywhere, taking up a great deal of indexing space without being of any benefit or no value to the visitor, or person's search for information.

At one time, the major search engines changed their criterion to favor established websites, and websites that over time had earned the attention from other related, and established websites, when their products, or services were similar, but not necessarily the same. It was a way of rewarding valuable websites with an edge over their competitors, which was the reason that link farms were generated in the first place, to provide one-way links to other websites.

When link farms started to become a nuisance to the search engines, they had to change their approach to one way linking strategies. This is when the search engines got tough on link farming, which they consider to be much like spamming, to fix this problem, banning, and the 'sandbox' come in, which is designed to stop the practices of link farms, and website owners linking to them.

If you are at all tempted to use a link farm to generate one way links to your website, think again. You are more than likely going to get caught by the major search engines multi-million dollar sophisticated software, and end up either being sand boxed, or worse still, being banned from the search engines all together. Once banned, a website owner is given little choice but to start all over again, or rely on paid advertising to generate traffic to their websites.

The number of links that a website has is important, but not the olny important factor.  The real importance is the quality of the links, and where they are placed on other websites. The only ethical way to get proper SEO one-way links that will be favored by the major search engines is to email other websites who have complimenting products and services, and ask them if they would be interested in swapping links, campaigning, and writing articles with useful content for readers, and placing them in article directories. These practices take time, but they are the only proven ethical SEO practices, and will provide you with the right types of links. You can also outsource and have someone else do the link building for you. 

Another good SEO practice is to regularly check on your links, and who is linking to you. In some cases, competitors, or other website owners have been known to sabotage each other by placing competitors in FFA, free for all sites, or link farms to purposely get them 'sand boxed', or banned from the search engines. A simple search of your domain name on Google, or Alexa can tell you who is linked to you, if you find a site that you feel is unsuitable, or attached to a link farm or FFA site, immediately request that they remove your link from their site.