1) If a "link farm" is linking to your website you'll get penalized and/or banned from Google – FALSE

2) If unrelated websites are linking to you, your website will get penalized - FALSE

3) Page Rank 1 websites won't help you because Google does not display PR1 websites in their backlink list - FALSE

None of the above are true statements for the simple fact that:

Anything a competitor could do to harm your website would NEVER be penalized by Google.

Think about it for a minute. If any of those could actually penalize your website, how many people do you think would simply add their competitor's websites from link farm websites, unrelated websites, and low PR websites? Unfortunately, it would be quite a few.

The only way you can get penalized by offpage optimization is if YOU link out to "bad neighborhoods", which would be:

1) Link Farms

2) Penalized websites (websites that are "gray barred" by Google)

Now, you would think this would be a pretty easy thing to stay away from, right? Wrong!

Example:

Take this case for example, Let's say I had a website and exchanged links with your website. At the time that we exchanged links, both of our websites were quality, related websites, with a Google Page Rank of 5. This would be an ideal link trade.

Ok, now several months go by, and in the meantime, I'm doing all kinds of "black-hat SEO"

Note: Black Hat SEO is simply doing all of the things that can get you banned by the search engines.

After doing all of this Black Hat SEO, Google decides to ban my website, which gives me a "gray barred Page Rank" and I'm no longer in Google's index of websites. I'm completely gone from Google. So what, right? I mean, you could care less since it's not your website...

Well, guess what? You are still linking to my website, which is now considered to be a "bad neighbor" and you could actually get penalized MAJORLY for linking to me, without even doing anything differently to your own website!

Think about that for a minute...

You could actually drop hundreds of search positions without even knowing what you've done wrong!

So what can you do? There is a software called SEO Elite (http://vizmon88.bryxen1.hop.clickbank.net) that allows you to see if you are linking out to any bad neighbors! If you are, then delete their link immediately and I can almost guarantee you will see an increase in your ranking.

There are various very useful options in this software. One of which allows you to check each website that you are linking to and tell you whether or not they could be a possible "bad neighbor". In one of the columns, if you notice any websites with a Google Page Rank of 0, this "could" mean they've been banned by Google. Notice I said "could". They could either be banned OR, more likely they're just a new website and their Page Rank hasn't been updated by Google yet.

*** So, you'll want to write down which websites have a Page Rank of 0.

Then you'll need to select another option within SEO Elite. This option will allow you to see if the website is still in Google's index. You'll want to enter all PR0 websites into the textbox, select the Google checkbox, and click "ok".

If Google returns 0 results for the website, that immediately tells you that they've been banned and you should remove their link immediately!

You would be amazed at the number of websites that have no idea why they aren't ranking well, when they've followed ALL of the good SEO practices. If this is you and you're still not ranking well, I would venture to say that you might be linking out to a penalized and/or banned website.