SEO Advice from Microsoft Office Live

Here’s a slightly "Black Hat" SEO advice from Microsoft that you must avoid else there’s a risk that your site may get penalized in Google search results.

Google clearly states that link exchange schemes ("Link to me and I’ll link to you.") violate their webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact a site’s ranking in search results. This includes reciprocal links as well as paid text links.

On the other hand, Microsoft, in their Office Live Small Business blog, openly suggests that website owners may participate in Link Exchange programs in order to "boost [site] rankings in search engines."

The article lists several options for building incoming links to your site including link swaps via email requests or outsourcing the process to an external link building firm.

Is this good SEO advice or bad? In fact, what you read on the the Office Live blog may risk your site’s position even in Microsoft’s own Live Search as their guidelines say – "Using techniques, such as link farms, to artificially increase the number of links to your webpage might affect how your website is ranked within Live Search, and might cause your website to be removed from the index."

What is Spam – Session by Nathan Buggia of Live Search: Credit: SEL

Matt Cutts says – "The best links are not paid, or exchanged after out-of-the-blue emails – the best links are earned and given by choice." SEO expert Rand Fishkin shares some useful tips on building links naturally without taking the "paid" approach.