Bad Neighbour Directory

How to recognise them

[HiHo]

Hi everyone,

are there any guidelines, or perhaps a "black list", with all the bad neighbour directories.

For rule of thumb, I never submit links to directory that ask me a link back... or that they are full of Adsense and affiliate links.

Any more?

[Quadrille]

Look at the category you propose to submit to - if it's full of sites that make you laugh*, don't submit.

Directories that offer 'multiple links' are telling you that they are there primarily for the SEs - which usually means they are pretty useless for SEO - and a risk.

Just the name 'link directory' says "I'm locked into a 2003 mind set", and should make you look more carefully.

Recprocal links, MFA and adsense - I totally agree. Avoid.

Read the text on their 'submit page' - that usually gives a fair idea of the owners intentions.

*humor categories are exempt from this warning; insert instead "if it's full of sites that DON'T make you laugh, don't submit. ;)

[martinibuster]

Any directory that describes itself as SEO Friendly is a bad bet. Run from any directory that bills itself as SEO Friendly.

[HiHo]

so, a bad directory has the following:

- Reciprocal links
- Bad quality of the submitted sites
- Too much advertising
- "Let's get pagerank!" attitude
- SEO dedicated

and check T&C.

ps. Do good directories, such BOTW, act in a totally opposite way?

[Quadrille]

There's a fairly recent thread on the 'good' qualities; worth digging for it.

Very broadly the opposite of the above, but the devil, as they say, is in the detail :)

[seomaestro]

Many directories are banned by Google due to bad neighbourhood links & sitewide links. Submitting to that sites will affest our ranking too. I had seen the list in the best of web directories website about the banned directories and the reason for the penalty.

[Animated]

i recently thought of an idea how to check with directory is worthy, go to the category and page that you want to submit, and besides checking for the PR (i am not a fan of PR but higher PR means google thinks high of that page) and i check if 'there is a cached snapshot' of the page to see if its even indexed at all by google.

[glengara]

I'll add choice of anchor text and empty categories with "premium listings"/AS....