Hi, I am just wondering does directory owner usually do banner/link exchange among directories? Does it help to increase submission etc I have a PR4 directory that only gets 2,3 submissions every 2 days from referral and search engine only. Its a clean and pretty strong directory but the submission rate I think is pretty low. It may because I am forcing submitting sites to place my banner during submission but thats the only way for us dir owners to know if their site is still active or not right? I currently have 100+ sites in the directory. Would love to hear opinions. Cheerio
Sounds like you are doing some kind of reciprocal linking as a condition for listing in the directory. There are plenty of cases where sites were penalized for excessive reciprocal linking so I would recommend you think about your plans to make sure you are in line with google's policies (if that is important to you). Added: I did a little research and I believe google first started penalizing reciprocal links on what was called the Jagger Update. In your case, you mentioned banners. I don't know if you are doing "no follow" on those banners or otherwise obfuscating the url.
I did back in 2004 but haven't since then. I think it's OK to get a few here and there but Google seems to prefer if your links come from different areas and types.