No, you won’t be penalised for having links to you from link farms.

Let’s say I just added your site to thousands of free-for-all link farms, how do you defend yourself?

I believe article marketing still has great value for link building but you have to do more than write a keyword stuffed article and submit it to article directories.

1. You can put tracking code into your articles. Any serial number you create that produces no search results when you type it into google will work. Add it to the article text at the end. Later when you search you will find the best, not all, but pages that google found with your code in it.

2. When you locate where those articles are, bookmark those pages at social bookmarking websites. If it is in an article directory, vote or rate your article to bring it to the top of that article directory so others can easily find your articles there.

3. Spend more time on the articles you write. Don’t just push them out. Make them really informative and be creative with your topics so they aren’t the same old drivel you see on a thousand blogs or websites. Like Top 10 ways to get better rankings in google. It’s overdone. Find something new to say.

Article marketing can build valuable links but you have to work for it. writing articles and using a mass submitter alone won’t get you the benefits that the followup mentioned above will.