I read on another board that linking to a link farm can damage Page Rank or cause your site to be blacklisted. I trust this board more. Can one of you experts please clarify this?

Also, does it hurt PR to link to a lesser ranked site? Is that why some sites won't swap links with anyone having less than 4 PR?

I'm just starting out on a traffic-building campaign. I sure don't want to work that hard, only to find out I did more damage than good.

TIA,

Suz

Hi suz,
Have read many, many articles on SEO and their consensus seems to be the following:
1) link farms can hurt PR
2) Google sets your PR partially on the PR number of the sites linked to your site.
3) Some site admins are reluctant to link to your site if you have a low PR.. because they think it will hurt their own PR.
This google system Kind of blows for newer sites trying to get ranked.. kind of a "catch 22" .. if you know what I mean.
Yahoo is much "fairer" because they rely more on Keywords on your pages for their ranking system.
You can check out some articles at www.seochat.com if you have more questions.
Hope this helps
RGPHNX
PS- anyway you go it will take some time & work.. but there are mistakes to avoid.

Thanks for the info and the quick response. I will alert my other newbie webmaster friends.

Suz

Hi suz,
Your welcome. Not a problem
RGPHNX

linking to a lower ranked site can pull your soite down with it, avaid topsite lists and pages FULL of links. search engines see that as link farms and they rank very low.