Try to get your site off link farms

You should never link to a link farm. And while search engines state that they don't discriminate against sites that are linked to from link farms, it's a good idea to try to keep your site off of them, if only to avoid contamination by association.

but how do you do that in practice?

Sure, we want to avoid being linked to from link farms.. but how do we do that in practice?Also, what can we do, if, for example, a competitor arranges for links to our sites from link farms?

Good Question!

Fortunately, any risk from having your site included in a link farm is minimal at this time, so there's not much of a threat from competitors. And it's unlikely to ever be a serious issue simply because of that reason. However, it's still a good idea to avoid linking within link farms if for no other reason than it's a waste of time. The backlinks won't be counted and you're surely not going to get any legitimate traffic from the sites.However, what if you're already listed, as you suggested? First, you'll want to make sure you know how you were listed in the first place and avoid that scenario. Many search engine submission programs, for instance, include Link Farms, so if you're using any kind of submission service, you'll need to eliminate the link farms or stop. Next, you'd have to visit each link farm individually and look for a removal tool. Some link farms do provide the option to remove your link. Unfortunately, there's no automated tool that will check for and remove your links from all link farms, nor is there an easy way to search for where you may linked, which is another reason why it's so important to identify how you got linked in the first place. If you know it was due to a submission tool, then you should be able to use the tool to find exactly which link farms you were submitted to.

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