Some directories allow deep linking to multiple inner pages of your site. One example I recently came across allows up to 15 links, each link going to a different page of your site, but all of them coming from the same page of the directory. Is there any risk that Google would see this as link spam and de-value the links or even impose a penalty on your site? Thank you
That's an interesting question, given the current popularity of offering multiple deeplinks on paid directories. In so-called natural linking, you might expect someone to link to a handful of pages within a website in reference to a particular topic. For example, a number of articles on the same topic on a news website, or a series of forum posts discussing similar things. But what you wouldn't usually see is a long list of internal links that goes almost like a mini sitemap. There's no evidence of any risk that Google does discount such links. But that doesn't mean that they won't do it in future. If you were a Google engineer, would you discount this sort of linking?