Avoid Free-For-All or FFA Pages!

Due to link popularity becoming more important for improving search engine positioning, many unethical linking strategies were developed over time. Getting thousands or tens of thousands of links in the shortest time possible by using bad practices had become the goal of many unscrupulous webmasters.

One of the techniques imagined in order to accomplish that goal was the creation of the “free for all pages” and the automated link exchange services. A free-for-all (FFA) page is a place where anyone can add a link to his/her website. Being an automated process, there is no control over it. Thousands and thousands of unrelated websites are listed on the FFA pages, the only purpose being the link popularity increase.

The reaction of the search engines was fast: they stopped indexing web pages with thousands of links and no real content. Worse than that, websites that link to FFA pages were severely penalized or even banned from search listings. Website are not penalized for being listed on FFA pages (it is beyond the control of a webmaster if someone tries to sabotage his site) but linking to FFA pages can dramatically reduce a website’s ranking.

Automated link exchange services are places where anyone can add his website link, and an automatically generated link page will include the listing. Webmasters participating in this kind of program agree to upload these link pages (which include links to all participating sites) on their websites, and link to them from the homepage. By doing so, all the websites involved become hosts for these link exchange pages, which are being penalized by search engines increasingly.

Search engines constantly improve their algorithms, and fighting unethical artificial ranking inflation is one of their main goals. Manipulation of link popularity by “smarter” unethical methods might work in the short term, but in the long run it is a sure loss, and might get your website banned from the search listings!