Is this a Link Farm?

[waterproof]

My brand new, first and only website! http://howtogamble.net.

I read somewhere that I should link all the pages of my site to every other page so that they can all be found by SEs. So I did this at the bottom of each page. Right now I have 18 pages (and growing), and I'm not sure when and if my internal links will be looked at as a link farm for google. Is this possible? Does google look at internal page links as a link farm? If so, how many pages can I link to before I get a penalty?

Any other suggestions for a newbie would be appreciated as well.

[chalkoutline]

I believe that the current indication is that you shouldn't have any more than 100 links on a page as a guideline. Link farms usually tend to refer to sites with vast lists of links to other web sites, rather than links from page to page on your own site.

I had a quick peek at your new site. The Flash links are not going to be spidered by the SE's so you do currently need to have the list at the bottom of the page.

If you swapped the Flash links on the left hand side for similar text links using CSS (where you can set a different colour for Hovering over a link), the SEs would be able to view these links and you wouldn't then need the links at the bottom of the page. Just a thought.

If you want the CSS content to do this let me know and I'll post it.

[bangsfun]

I wouldn't consider your site a link farm. Keep in mind though that good site navigation is a must for any visitor and that should be your aim more than linking your site together for google.

Google is quite a mystery lately, but experience here on the board has shown that over 100 links on your index will cause a penalty.

Good Luck!

[bigbcasinos]

Hi

Great name for a website! You should know that the URL indeed helps with especially Yahoo and Msn SERP rankings.

Now, navigation wise, I would suggest that you make it a little more columnar, or neater if you will. This is NOT for the search engine but for your visitors benefit. I would also suggest that you add the link to the home page in text as well. That will give you links from the internal pages TO the home page. As far as I can see, the internal pages are using a flash link to point to home? (I did rush so I may have missed this).

In addition, there is a strong feeling that having links pointing to a few variations of one link can be the undoing of a page rank in google. By this we mean:
http://mynewgamblingwebsite.com
http://www.mynewgamblingwebsite.com
http://www.mynewgamblingwebsite.com/index.htm

Apparently the search engine actually assumes there are 3 pages. Now when you consider you have the same content on each, you end up slapped with a duplicate content penalty/filter.

Probably best to go for the http://www.mynewgamblingwebsite.com version as this will likely be the most consistently used

[Ace Fun]

I woulsn't use flash for the links. I always surf new sites with active-x turned off, and as Microsoft were recommending that, as a result of the recent security problems, you set it to prompt at the minimum, you will be losing some surfers. In view of the number of flash games that casinos have available, I'd be interested to know how many surfers do disable active-x. It certainly doesn't seem worth the risk of losing sales just because of a few flash links though.

[waterproof]

Thanks for all the quick replies! I'm glad to see that I'm not a link farm. I'll take your advice and remove the flash.

Chalkoutline, can you please post the CSS content? This is just a change I can make in the code? Thanks!

bigcasinos, I completely missed that I didn't have a text link pointed to my home page. I will also reorganize all my links to be uniformed as you suggested.

One question- If othersites have links to my page of other variations, is my site penalized?

Thanks again for the feedback!
If there is anything else that can be said/recommended, I'm all ears.

[bigbcasinos]

When you swop links, make sure that your URL is uniform (consitant), i.e. as per my previous post, don't have variations to the address.

BUT

When it comes to anchor text, mix it up nicely to represent the various keywords you want to be found for. e.g.

Casino Affiliates
Casino Marketing
Casino Affiliate Forum

That way, the search engines associate the GPWA in this case with the terms.

[universal4]

I agree witht the others, I don't think this will in any way be considered a link farm.

One question though...

Who posed for the top left picture on the home page?

Feel free to answer that one in a pm if you like....



Rick
Universal4

[Pam712]