I started my first link campaign before I found Digital Point, and one of the things I did was to use the search engines looking for other sites within my niche. I found many sites and got quite a few links. Many by emailing individuals personally asking for linkbacks. A few of the sites I came across seemed to be nothing more then huge lists of related sites, one link after another, on pages that would take several moments to load even on broadband. I skipped most of those, with the mind set of "I don't want to be associated with these site" and I'm glad I was right, however... I'm thinking of kick starting a new linking campaign, and now that I've been around here I've learned some new words. I understand that if I found it in Google, and it's been there for years, it's likely not banned, and likely will not be, so I'd guess that those are pretty easy to spot. But how do you actually tell if it's a bad neighbor? I assume that those massive lists of links I found were link farms, and that it was likely a good idea on my part to have skipped them, but how do I tell the difference between those and a directory? I mean, many directories are little more then huge lists of links, right? How do I actually tell who to stay away from?
I think your argument is semantic. What makes a site a 'bad neighbor,' anyway? If it's not banned, it has to have some value. I'd write more, but I haven't had my coffee yet, and I'm still not quite coherent.
Every link to your website is a good link. You cannot control who links to you. The thing is, beware of linking back if you're not sure if it's good for you.
I can respect that, I wrote the original post with only a partial cup, so I hope I was coming across clear I agree that it's a matter of semantics, which is why I am asking... I can pretty much spot a "quality site" based on my first impressions of that site. I can pretty much judge a site that has NO quality as well. It's within that middle gray area that I'm not sure where to draw the line. Even looking online for something a bit more clear then "don't link to link farms"... there just seems to be no clear lines. Which I guess is to be expected with the ever changing algorithms...I'd just like something a bit more substantial then "bad neighbors".