I really love to read the load of bull from self proclaimed SEO experts regarding Google banning sites with link directories. Not long ago, a world super power went to war with misinformation that a certain country had a stockpile of weapons of mass destruction ready to wipe out humanity. The same is happening here with YOUR websites.

Most of these “experts” would not know a “link farm” from the ingredients in mincemeat pie. They WANT you to believe this load of (bleeped out for family audiences.) Why? Because either they have exclusive rights to extremely hot properties or they use linking techniques and don’t want their competition using them to surpass them in the SERPs.

Before I comment anymore about this, let me give you a clear example for you to judge for yourself. We are a couple weeks past the Google Jagger update now and if the Big G was banning link directories, you would see it. What Google IS banning is sites created by those popular billion-pages-in-two-minutes “content” programs that either scrape search engine results or put a bunch of feeds in in order to generate Adsense and affiliate income. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, PM me since it is really a newbie fantasy that these things will actually work. I used one such program TWO YEARS AGO on a site that was a PR6 making me over 3k a month. Result…. the site is no longer available.

Let’s look at two sites here. The commonality is that both sites use identical content from a monthly membership site (yes, sadly, the worse one is mine. ) BOTH sites also were created using a terrific program called XSitePro. If you don’t have that yet, you better get it before Paul comes to his senses and starts charging $497 for it. Both sites were created at approximately the same time. The only difference that you will see is that one site has a link directory and the other (mine…whaaaa!) does not. Now you tell me if Gaagle is banning sites with even “unrelated” links or not.

Site A is this: http://www.a1-yoga.com/ (PR4)

A) Site created with material from a quality monthly membership site
B) Site built with XSP
C) Site optimized for on page factors
D) Site uses LinkMetro link directory link exchanges

Site B is this: http://www.yogaposes.net/ (My site) (PR0)

A) Site created with material from a quality monthly membership site
B) Site built with XSP
C) Site optimized for on page factors
D) Site owner is stupid and has not exchanged links yet

Now you tell me what differences you see. I know that my site was only the second of such loaded by using copyscape when I loaded it. So times of coming “online” were not a factor. Thus you tell me if linking and link pages, even to non-relevant sites, are a problem with Google. I don’t think so. Ask Brad Callen. If linking was an evil threat Google would not list SEOElite anywhere in SEO search terms. Folks, the falacy that link pages get you “banned” is just that. An attempt to get you NOT to do it. I will admit that I have been far too busy to crank up Linkmachine on this site but that time will arrive soon. (No, I don’t use LinkMetro “Advanced” so no one can accuse me of being a Brad Callen croney.)

You need to get out of the “holier-than-thou” forums who spread this misinformation and investigate for yourself. I have found that, by itself, even XSP will NOT get me to the top of the SERPs for most terms that I am attacking. It is great for the on page optimization but needs help for the off page type.

Now let’s look at another example. Many of the aforementioned wannabee guru’s continue to proclaim that “content is king.” This has a substantial element of truth to it when comparing content sites to “junk content” sites that I mentioned above. However, most of us do not have the thousands of hours of extra time it takes to research and write original articles to submit to article submission sites. So many people either “scrape” article content or use the above bogus programs (prior to being banned or reduced to PR0 sites) mentioned above.

How would you feel if your site got a PR5 from Google? Pretty good maybe? Well I came across this site while cruising through LinkMetro. Take a look at it and tell me what you think.

http://www.treatment-for.com/

This is a PR5 site that has 5, count em 5, articles and then a Google search bar. Also happens to have a link directory with over 100 links pointing to the site. (Yes, I know that Google does not PUBLICALLY recognize all links in their linkbacks.) You can’t even get to the “news” or sitemap portion of this site. So please tell me how a site with 5 whole articles ranks right up there with many of the article directory sites as far as content? Why hasn’t it been banned from Gaagle as a linkfarm? Don’t you wish that YOUR site could attain a PR5 with so little? Don’t you think that they might be monetizing ONLY on Google search results? “Content is King!” Puuuleeeeze!

Do your own thinking here. If you WANT to believe that linking is a strategy that will get you banned, please don’t do it. I know in the niches that are important to me that you will never, ever exceed me in the SERPs. I can give you 50 more examples like I gave above. It is NOT a freak, one-time thing.

Finally, even if the Big G decides not to include linking in it’s algorithym, I think that you might want as many possible ways of getting eyes on your site as you can. 95 percent of people viewing a site might never view a “resources” or “links” directory. But what about the other 5% who didn’t find something that interests them on that site? Do you really want to toss away ANY free targeted traffic that might be interested in what you have to say? If you don’t, God Bless, and thanks for the traffic to my sites in advance.