Hi –
I am doing my own SEO. I run a small business and no offense – but I can’t afford the prices most companies charge. I’m working on improving my link popularity and I keep reading about bad neighborhoods. Don’t link to a bad neighborhood. Don’t let a bad neighborhood link to you. And I’ve read a lot of different theories about what a bad neighborhood IS… some articles make it sound like you shouldn’t even exchange links! I read a couple of your articles on links, and wonder what exactly YOU think a bad neighborhood is? And how do you tell if a bad neighborhood is linking TO you and how do you make them stop??
Thanks,
Chris Bannon
{website removed for privacy}
Hello Chris, and thank you for your question.
First, I want to start off by saying I checked the backlinks of your website using Yahoo and it looks like you are doing a pretty good job at getting good links that are related to your website. Since you sell something in the automotive industry, I was happy to see plenty of links that were also in the automotive industry – which is good. I did see a couple of websites that you were linking to that linked to a lot of different kinds of websites, not just ones related to the automotive industry; even though these websites are automotive websites and they might appear to be relative, quality links, they were linking to everything – from gambling, pharmaceutical to adult sites. This creates a huge ring of links that does not have a common theme; this ring is called a neighborhood, or ‘free for all’ linking scheme and should be avoided.
I would advise you to keep looking for links to exchange with, but make sure to concentrate on sites that focus on industry-related links only. You can also search for Automotive Directories in Google and try to get more directory links in the automotive industry. This is a very inexpensive way of getting quality, one-way links. Even a budget of $50.00 could get you one directory link a month! Also, do you belong to auto enthusiast forums and clubs? Can you join? Do they allow hyperlinks to member sites? Look into them – but truly participate if you join. This will send you traffic as well as links.
For the future – you can tell if a bad neighborhood is linking to you by checking your backlinks in Yahoo. Simply type in link:http://www.yourwebsiteaddress.com. Can it hurt to have bad neighborhoods linking to you? You really cannot control if a spammy site or a scraper site is linking to you. A search engine algorithm is looking for percentages, so as long as you continuously work on building quality links, they will count much more heavily than a bad neighborhood, which is often out of your control.
