Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Any input is greatly appreciated.
Is it "natural" for a general directory site to be linked to by a site about growing organic carrots? Do they link back to the homepage, like everyone else in every other clone?
Trust me on this: Questions are often more empowering than answers and almost always less misleading. :)
No way. Why would they?
Do you think they identify all sites that appear be to directories and then disallow all links? That seems rather Draconian. Do they identify them all by hand (no way because they love automation)?
I find directory links to still be quite useful. Of course it has to be a directory that has achieved at least some amount of link popularity. If it gets spidered often, your link will get spidered quickly, and the anchor text counted.
Isn't a common belief that links from the same IP are less effective (well, perhaps past a certain point)? Why can't this be applied based on criteria other than IP?
The model of link growth, the model of interlinking, the subject area of the site, the percentage of reciprocated links, the external link to content ratio, etc. Are all these things completely outwith the realms of possibility for Google?
Hell if we want to pop the tinfoil hat on, they we could theorise that it wouldn't be too difficult for Google to collate a list of pages that appear to be link request submission pages (based on content on the page and the presence of a form / email contact?). Then all they needed to do is to hire a team of admin staff to go through them and mark them as "requires reciprocal link" or not.
From here it would be relatively simple to devalue links to that site simply because they aren't "natural".
No idea if this is even feasible and if it is, whether or not Google could / would do this. It's just a thought. :)
That being said, I don't see how the engines/directories would punish you for a reciprocal link in your directory pages. It just may not mean as much in a positive sense.
A good way we have developed in-bound links (other than natural linking and directory submissions) is online press releases. This can be an affordable and easy way to secure a strong in-bound link immediately, while spreading the news about your product and/or services.
What I am saying if it is required to have a reciprocal link before they can get on my directory. Would search engine red flag that.
Rather, IMO, the issue is this: If your site requires recips in order to link out, then 100% of your site's outbound links will be associated with reciprocal linkage. If you were a search engine, and knew that for a while everyone and their grandmother was building directories to rank well, would you suppress sites that fit the profile of 100% outbound links reciprocated? Especially when each pair of inbound and outbound links is discovered within a short time window? ;-)
The rest is educated guesses.
So check the quality of website you are linking to and do check if they are giving you a link which allows search engine robots to crawl your website as well when they visit that page.
