As most online marketers know, link-building is a crucial part of search engine optimization. Typically webmasters focus on getting links on websites with good relevance, high PR, a large number of backlinks, buying links etc. One thing that is often overlooked, however, is the reputation of the site being linked from.
When trying to build backlinks, be sure to check each site and monitor which websites are linking in to each. Make sure that the linking partner’s site isn’t part of an obvious link swapping scheme and hasn’t been flagged as spam or for serving malware. While the search engines have not admitted to penalizing site for links from spam or malware sites, many experienced webmasters strongly believe this occurs.
How can you tell if a website is associated with negative items? There are many online programs that can help identify websites that are associated with suspicious activity, but one that I’ve always found useful is McAfee’s SiteAdvisor. It is a free download that will integrate into your browser and alert you to the reputation of each website you visit. If you find a website with a bad history on SiteAdvisor, I highly recommend staying away from it and not making any effort to receive a link from the site.
