One of the general goals of any website is to get up the search rankings for relevant search phrases, particularly in popular search engines such as Google or Yahoo.
There are a number of factors which contribute to a pages position on the results, including keyword positioning and content, but one of the most imnportant issues are back links - links from other sites which link back to the page. However, not all links are equal. What are the kind of things that should be avoided in anyones link building strategy? I found the following useful, taken from here.
"The Web is woven out of
links and inbound and outbound links are most natural. Generally, the
more inbound links (i.e. other sites link to you) you have, the
better. On the contrary, if you have many outbound links, this is not
very good. And what is worse – it can be disastrous, if you
link to improper places – i.e. bad neighbors. The concept is
hardly difficult to comprehend – it is so similar to real life:
if you choose outlaws or bad guys for friends, you are considered to
be one of them.
It might look unfair to be penalized for things that you have not
done but linking to sites with bad reputation is equal to a crime for
search engines and by linking to such a site, you can expect to be
penalized as well. And yes, it is fair because search engines do
penalize sites that use different tricks to manipulate search
results. In a way, in order to guarantee the integrity of search
results, search engines cannot afford to tolerate unethical
practices.
However, search engines tend to be fair and do not punish you for
things that are out of your control. If you have many inbound links
from suspicious sites, this will not be regarded as a malpractice on
your side because generally it is their Web master, not you, who has
put all these links. So, inbound links, no matter where they come
from, cannot harm you. But if in addition to inbound links, you have
a considerable amount of outbound links to such sites, in a sense you
vote for them. Search engines consider this as malpractice and you
will get punished."