Can you be banned from an index for exchanging links?
Search Engine Journal recently published an article directly related to MSN working to exclude sites that are building links using this practice.
Your site is acquiring links through posting to or exchanging links with sites unrelated to your site content. Techniques which attempt to acquire unrelated spam links in order to increase ranking are considered spam and your site has been excluded from our index as results. Please contact us once you’ve removed these links and we will reevaluate.
Live Search
I think that the most important thing that is visible in this response is that they are links from sites unrelated to your content.
As much as all of the engines try to say otherwise, links are still a very powerful way to build natural organic placement. It is also an easy way to hurt your site.
What tips do I have?
- 1. Build links naturally
- 2. Give someone a reason to link to you
- 3. Link to sites that would be useful to your visitors
- 4. When in doubt, don’t link
- 5. Get into directories
Other resources:
Eric Ward
Are Links Dead?
Link Laundering
Link Building Myths
What’s your IBLP?
Golden Rules of Linking
Related Posts >>
- Holistic Link Building 101
- What is SEO? part 4 – Search Engine Optimization Defined
- Google Wants YOU to Report Paid Links!
- Fishing for Links
- Link Building Strategies – Eric Ward
