Forgive me for raising such a fundamental question but I have been out of play for sometime and now am trying to improve the ranking of a site which is www.mermaidparkview.com.au What I am discovering is that sites I find to invite a reciprocal link carry long pages of links, one after the other as if the mere gathering of links is enough. I suspect this is a rather dated point of view but after searching about cannot find any answers. Some say 3rd party is now the way to go. What is your latest understanding of long lists of links? (ps it is clear that unrelated links will soon be punished so let's leave the discussion to related links).
I would be interested in knowing the answer to this myself. Is all link exchange perceived as bad or is it just non-related link exchanges that a considered bad? I have a small links page on my site, but I only include links on this page from sites with related content and sites that I find would be useful to visitors of my site. I also check the PR, backlinks, see if they are indexed on google and not banned. I don't link to sites with annoyng advertising either. I don't particularly care for links pages that are very long and take that into consideration as well. That is my procedure.
Yes, it's those pages which seem to go on forever with lists of links which I am questioning. It makes no sense as far as I can see although I'm not totally sure what the crawlers (bots etc) see on these pages. I must say for such a fundamental matter there appears to be no coherent answer out there (I've been reading article after article) and I am no closer to the truth.
Welcome to the DP forums. Those pages may be FFA. Try free directory submission as I do..(see my sign)