Splogs, otherwise known as spam blogs are blogs created for the sole purpose of increasing a site owners link popularity and in turn their search engine rankings. Beware of this practice as it's nothing more than another black hat spam technique which the search engines are aware of and quickly finding ways to remedy it.

Splogs starting gaining large popularity somewhere around August 2005 and continue to be a huge source of spam today. Although many search engines including Google have been adjusting algorithms and manually deleting splogs to combat the spam.

While vertical linking is important in the realm of SEO/SEM one must remember that it is only 1 piece to the puzzle and there are many more pieces that need to be in place to be successful. Splogs are nothing more than another loophole that spammers have found to manipulate their rankings. While it may work in the short term, once found out and once algorithm changes are in place this tactic will go by the wayside just as other silver bullet tactics have in the past.

Link spam is also a problem. Many website owners post comments to forums with links to their site just for the sake of getting another link. The search engines are on to the link spam game as well. It's best to keep your nose clean and just not do it. Ask yourself if the practice you are implementing is risky? If so, just don't do it or you may find yourself banned and in hot water with the search engines.

How do you go about increasing your link popularity then? Quite simply put, the most important aspect of your marketing campaign should be focused on turning website visitors into conversions, leads and sales.

Proper vertical linking takes time. You must seek out quality sites that are similar in industry but of course not your direct competition. Exchange links with those sites using keyword rich descriptive text and you'll do fine. This method may seem slow and time consuming and the truth of the matter is