The Link Directory: Just Another Form of Link Farm?
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Directories are everywhere, on any topic imaginable. As SEOs, we even promote submissions to link directories as a good method of getting backlinks. But with more and more link directories popping up all over the web, are we somehow helping to promote a new type of link farm? A few years ago, link farms were easy to find. Today, you rarely ever see them. One could assume that the link farm syndrome has been cured. Or has it?
In a time when it seems you cannot escape web spam, spammers are finding more and better ways at creating the unwanted junk. Search engine engineers work hard to filter out such garbage, so that the search engine results are relevant to a user’s query. And while spammers seem to always be either one step ahead of the search engines, or able to exploit holes in algorithms, search engines work hard at fixing these things so that we have a better search experience. However, we are still bombarded on every side with it. We get it in our email, in our blogs, in our forums, and even in our link exchanges. I want to examine a particular aspect of linking strategies that seems to be the target of spam filters lately: the link directory.
A link farm is a large group of web pages created that contain hyperlinks to one another or a specific other page. Link farms are normally created by programs, rather than by human beings. They can also be defined as sites created solely for search engine ranking purposes that consist almost entirely of a long list of unrelated links. These types of pages are penalized by almost all search engines.
While “link farm” is an older term used to describe those types of sites; the term can certainly apply to link directories. Some of these programs are nothing more than random links on a page and really do not help one’s popularity or backlink value. These most definitely can be considered spamming.
Many webmasters understand the importance of having backlinks. Yet some do not understand the difference between high quality links and poor quality links. I have to caution many clients about the importance of being able to decline a link exchange request. Why? There are several reasons for my caution.
Web Directories 
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