Bad Neighborhood

What is a bad neighborhood? A bad neighborhood generally includes Link Farms, FFA s (Free For All Links pages) or so-called directories that are often useless and penalyzed by Google. Bad neighborhoods are specifically designed to create an illusion of a website that is themed.
Every web master desires to have his or her link placed on pages with a reasonable page rank; however, when the choice is made to link to a proverbial bad neighborhood, chances are that not only will the website linked on that page decrease in rank, but it may also be penalized (getting blocked) for reciprocating with this sort of link farm.
What signs do I look for in a bad neighborhood? To get the overall picture of a website's intentions, first pay clear attention to the theme of the site. Is it themed at all? Does it have any meaningful purpose other than the exchange of links? If its only function is to exchange links for search engine rankings, nine times out of ten -- it's a bad neighborhood.
Next on your list of priorities is to check whether or not the website has relevant links to their content. Hypothetically speaking, if they're 'theme' is about holistic medicine, and their content pages include links about car racing -- chances are, with unrelated links of this sort, it's a bad neighborhood.
Okay, so now we've cleared two main red lights out of the way. Now on the list is whether or not there are descriptions or titles for links. If these are missing, you've guessed it -- it's probably a bad neighborhood.
Since we have a basic guideline for what is and what is not a bad neighborhood, we can summarize that good neighborhoods are themed websites and web pages, which list relevant links, and include links and descriptions for links. Overall, links in a good neighborhood will inevitably compliment the web page or website's theme.
Though it may take a little more time and effort, finding appropriately themed websites and web pages to compliment your website is the best route to take when attempting to increase your PR. Rule of thumb is -- if it looks like a bad neighborhood, comes across as a bad neighborhood, it probably is a bad neighborhood.
Have you moved your site into a bad neighborhood? Looking for a way to get back on the right track to a good PR? Contact SEOAdept -- we can help!