Link farms were developed by SEOs back in the late 90s. In its most simplest form, a link farm is a group of web pages that are linked to one another. The goal of a link farm is to increase the site’s rankings because there are a lot of links on the site. This used to work fairly well in the old days. Today, link farms and the companies that operate them are considered spammers and being part of a link farm is a good way to get yourself blacklisted.

While many link farm firms claim they are providing users with an alternative to search engines, this is simply not the case. They are just another way to get an owner of a website to part with their money in the hope of increasing their rankings. According to Google, they actually penalize sites that are participating in link farms, lowering their rankings as the punishment.