Link Scheme

What is a Link Scheme?

Link schemes (also referred to as “link spam”) are attempts to manipulate rankings in Google Search results with unnatural links. Links schemes include links to your website as well as outgoing links from your site.

Types of link schemes

Google’s Spam Policies for Web Search provide the following examples of link schemes:

• Buying or selling links - exchanging links for money, goods, products or services.
• Excessive link exchanges - in our opinion, the key word here is “excessive.”
• Automated link placements.
• Requiring links as part of a Terms of Service or other agreement.
• Widely distributed links in the footers or templates. For example, hard-coding a link to your website into the WP Theme that you sell or give away for free.
• “Followed” links on ads. The advertisement links must not pass “ranking credit.”
• Overoptimized, keyword-rich links in guest posts, and comments.

Link schemes are an essential part of black-hat SEO, where PBNs and paid links are being used to build link profiles.

Don’t participate in link schemes!

Here at Ahrefs, we strongly discourage link schemes. Not only because they violate Google’s guidelines but also because Google can detect a link scheme at any time, and all the efforts and money invested into link schemes will be wasted.

A website participating in link schemes can get a penalty (manual action) from Google.

Besides, Google is constantly fighting link spam and is constantly improving the algorithms that identify unnatural links and prevent them from affecting search quality.