Automated linking campaigns are never a good thing and tend to be a waste of time and money. Any company in the world can run bulk link building campaigns via the use of automated software which defeats the point of natural search and the organic progression of inbound links.

On top of that you get the problem which you have of obtaining many irrelevant links. Will this hurt you? Well its debatable. Chances are these links will not damage your site within search – you just wont see any benefit! You are more likely to be penalised for flooding too many links into your website in one bulk campaign, especially if any of these ‘dime a dozen’ directories are known to search engine for potentially undermining their algorithm.

My advice is stay within the guidelines and do not try to undermine a search engine algorithm, it will do more harm than good. Or better still, employ an SEO agency who can help!

Chris

I have replied to you via email in more detail, however a basic rule to follow is that anything automated will generally be no good for SEO. Organic linking campaigns take time and people are continually looking for short cuts that do not exist. Links have to be from a relevant source and on anchor text related to your site, so in your case you have most links on ‘Spiceworks’ and you should try to push anchor text like ‘IT Management Software’ or another main keyword.

Now I see a lot of the sites I will eventually be listed on (via their “main” search engine, ExactSeek) are pointless sites that have nothing to do with my business or even my industry (example: Golf directories, retail shopping sites, entertainment news, etc.)

Will this hurt me? Other than not renewing the listing next month, is there a way to contact all the poorly matched small directories and request they keep my company off of it? Are there even real people running these dime a dozen directories?

Just trying to get a feel if my effort to improve my time management will hurt my company’s strong search rankings. Thanks.