I have a good example today of “just because you can, doesn’t mean you should”.

A lot of website developers and owners understand enough about search optimization to know incoming links to your site can be a very important part of your overall strategy.  What many don’t understand though is it does matter where those links come from.

Here’s a great example of search engine link spam-http://www.hookah-smoking.com/dir/directory.html.

If you visit this website, you’ll see it has everything to do with smoking the hookah.  If you scroll down the page, what you’ll find is a spammy list of “link trades” from sites like LiveSouth.com.  The aforementioned website advertises luxury real estate…to quote a co-worker, “…there’s quality traffic for you, nothing pre-qualifies a luxury home buyer like a little hookah smoking addiction.”

Folks, when you’re out there trading links, buying links or whatever techniques you use in acquiring links to your site, for goodness sake keep it relevant.  The search engines aren’t going to award you for spamminess and it’s no service to your own visitors either.