No one likes spam. It's like those annoying telemarketers that always call just when you've sat down to eat dinner. Avoiding spam on the Internet has become an expensive industry, with all kinds of products available to help stop people from receiving spam, and to help shut down people that are involved with the production of it.

How to Avoid Getting Branded a Google Spammer for Using Too Many Links

No one likes spam. Unfortunately, a great deal of it is still out there...

...and it seems like there are more ways to get around the rules every day. However, sometimes even innocent individuals can get branded as spammers because they do something wrong without realizing it. Links can fall into this category. Too many links, and you're a Google spammer without even trying to be. A lot of people think, when they first start up a Web site, that the more links they have, the better. This is only true to some extent.

New Web sites are not expected to have that many links. Sites that are more established will be expected to have more. However, even the most established sites can run into a problem if they acquire too many links too quickly. A more steady growth is often the best policy for the acquisition of links.

Most people know that Google and other search engines rely pretty heavily on the number of links in a Web site in order to establish a page ranking. It's one of the main issues that search engines normally consider. However, Google also looks at the historical information of the site in order to determine whether the links are actually valid and relevant to the site. It does this by determining how many links a site has received within a certain time period, and what those links actually go to.

The growth rate of various links, as well as how fast links appear and then disappear again on Web sites are all areas that Google uses to determine Web site rankings, as well as what kinds of links are appearing. Link growth, therefore, should remain slow and constant. Steady link growth indicates that a site is expanding properly, getting customers, adding content, etc. Rapid link growth is likely just caused by someone buying links to try to get a higher page ranking and more traffic, and this will be regarded as spam. Links should also be to sites that are relevant. If most of the links are to 'good' sites, faster growth will be tolerated by the search engines.

If Google thinks that you are spamming, you can forget about a high page ranking. This doesn't mean, though, that a new Web site can't start out with a reasonable amount of links. Generally, Google will accept this if at least some of the links are to sites that are considered to be authoritative. The links need to be 'on topic' and relevant to the content of your site for Google to recognize them and view them as something other than spam.

Really, it's not the number of links that you start out with but the quality of them, how fast you acquire new links, and how long those links remain on your site that will affect whether Google will see you as a spammer or not. If you can simply set aside a bit of time each week to add appropriate new links and grow your site, this steady growth will be viewed favorably by Google, and usually by the other prominent search engines as well. Having this continued growth and authoritative links to good quality information will show to the search engines and to potential customers that your Web site is there for a reason and not designed to be a front for a spamming operation.

Michi Beck is a YouCanSubmit writer. Her personal blog can be found at Content Done Better.