UK Forums / Business Directories for Irish Backlinks

riveratom

Hey guys,

I am just wondering if anyone has ever come across a concise list of business directories / forums that are UK based, which also let you list for free, i.e. post your profile, business listing, website etc.

To give an example, I am thinking of the UK equivalent of say www.smallbusinesscan.com or www.irishbusinessforums.com - SBC has an 'introduce your business' section in their forum - I am looking for something similar in the UK.

Do you have any go-to websites in this regard?

I am working on a couple of Irish sites, and we are looking to build up our profiles in the UK market and on google.co.uk for terms that we may start to rank for.

mneylon

I'd wonder about the "quality" of links from sites that allow easy linking ..

The Apprentice

Low quality link-building is something that may have worked Post penguin update but google is literally cracking down on these type of links.

RedCardinal

Blacknight wrote: »

I'd wonder about the "quality" of links from sites that allow easy linking ..

Since Penguin some of these actually have a negative impact... Before you didn't have to worry about bad links as they were at worst ignored. Now these same links can kill your rankings

riveratom

Hey guys,

Thanks, but I'm really just looking for websites that are along the lines of www.smallbusinesscan.com, either UK or Ireland based really. I wonder does anyone have a list anywhere.

It's not really for ranking purposes as such, as I know these kind of links don't count for much.

bceltic

Try searching something like this to throw up some relevant results:

inurl:forum site:.co.uk inurl:business

Also searching for relevant terms from www.google.co.uk should throw up some relevant results. Once you get one that is of interest, search

related:www.example.co.uk

You'll get other sites that are closely associated with the site and might also be relevant.

Then lastly once you get 2/3 sites search these URLs and you might get lucky with a list of sites that someone has curated.

TsuDhoNimh

Wshoku wrote: »

You will need to build some buckup/supporting sites to make sure you will not get hit by another update.

So the advice is to build a link farm to avoid an algorithmic penalty from an update that was designed especially to target nefarious activity such as link farms?

That's an interesting approach, but one that isn't correct and shouldn't be followed by anybody reading this thread.

Wshoku wrote: »

And finally in this country any backlinks will give your website boost!

As pointed out by RedCardinal already in this thread, that simply isn't true. Poor quality links can hurt your rankings, in this country or any other.

Wshoku

I didnt say anything about link farms, did I?

Since article advertising is a form of SEO, you do not need to pay for articles, build your own blog or 2 or 3 or 10 if you want.

And about poor links,

True if you submit article, link, post etc to forum, blog or directory that is not relevant to your business profile you can consider this as a poor link.

Penguin update hurt only websites with backlinks only or those that dont have aprox 50% backlinks from articles/posts/blogs etc and 50% backlinks from directories/listings etc.

IRE60

.............and each site is a duplicate version of the other! Classy stuff that SEO business.

Wshoku

So is yelp, qype, gumtree etc

Glad you like

TsuDhoNimh

Wshoku wrote: »

I didnt say anything about link farms, did I?

Since article advertising is a form of SEO, you do not need to pay for articles, build your own blog or 2 or 3 or 10 if you want.

You didn't specifically mention it, I just took the effort of putting what you are suggesting (even in this post) into how the search engine views it.

If you're building blog networks for the purpose of linking back to your own sites... that's one form of a link farm.

Wshoku wrote: »

Penguin update hurt only websites with backlinks only or those that dont have aprox 50% backlinks from articles/posts/blogs etc and 50% backlinks from directories/listings etc.

Absolute nonsense.

Penguin looks at the quality of the backlink profile, not just the breakdown of it. A site could easily have 50% from editorial blog posts/articles and 50% from directories and still have gotten Penguin slapped. It's the quality of those links that matter (e.g. they'd be better off with a lower % of directory links than one from a low quality and non editorially maintained directory such as 'backlinks-ireland' - even the name suggests that the directory is simply there to game backlinks, a huge red flag for any manual review).

Wshoku

I do not agree with you on many things and I do not believe Wikipedia as anyone can submit anything or modify article for own purposes.
We should have constructive conversation on how to gain links and so far you are just negative to every single word I say.
Please feel free to share your ideas on how to get quality irish backlinks.

And no, I did not set up those sites for my personal interest. Personal is not the right word.
And again no, I was hoping help people to source backlinks for their websites. Service is free of charge.
That type of directories got my website up to TOP3 on 5 major keywords and I am there since January.
Survived all Penguin updates so I have different experience from yours.

tricky D

By posting relevance in an organic and natural fashion which promotes good web presence, which is a far cry from your oh so late 90's link farming.

Do I get a prize?

Wshoku

tricky D wrote: »

By posting relevance in an organic and natural fashion which promotes good web presence, which is a far cry from your oh so late 90's link farming.

Do I get a prize?

You could win free entry to directories buy I ASSUME you are not interested

TsuDhoNimh

Wshoku wrote: »

I do not agree with you on many things and I do not believe Wikipedia as anyone can submit anything or modify article for own purposes.

I never suggested that wikipedia is always the correct source of a definition, but in this case the article is spot on so I was happy to cite it as a reference.

Do you wish to give where you disagree with the wiki definition given? It's very accurate and shows why and how your own skewed definition is incorrect. Spam isn't required to be mass spam in order for it to be spam, it's a simple fact.

Wshoku wrote: »

We should have constructive conversation on how to gain links and so far you are just negative to every single word I say.
Please feel free to share your ideas on how to get quality irish backlinks.

Sure. I'd love to. I discuss many matters pertaining to SEO in detail here on boards, as time permits, and that's a discussion I'd be more than happy to be a part of as it would be of great help to many readers. However, this isn't the topic of the thread we're chatting on so this isn't the place to have that conversation. Feel free to start a new thread on that topic and I'm sure you'll get many of the regular contributors here only too happy to have a detailed discussion on it.

Wshoku wrote: »

And no, I did not set up those sites for my personal interest. Personal is not the right word.

I didn't say you set them up for your personal interest, I said you have a personal interest in them. I'm not sure whether that interest is ownership (would be my guess) or simply some form of advertising role, but I have no doubts if I took the time to do a little research I could find the answer.

Wshoku wrote: »

That type of directories got my website up to TOP3 on 5 major keywords and I am there since January.
Survived all Penguin updates so I have different experience from yours.

Given that I haven't mentioned any specific experience, I'd be interested to know which experiences of mine you're referring to?

I will say, without a moments hesitation, that backlinks from low quality web directories of the type mentioned would not raise a site to the top 3 positions for any genuinely competitive keyword or keyphrase. If it got to the level where there were enough backlinks from the type of sites mentioned to genuinely make a site competitive for truly competitive terms, the site would long since have been hit for the questionable nature of its link profile.

That's a fact, not an opinion.

jmcc

Wshoku wrote: »

And finally in this country any backlinks will give your website boost!

I'm not much of an SEO but my viewpoint is that of a search engine algorithm developer. Search engine developers tend to see things differently to search engine optimisers.

The problem is that those sites are not hosted in Ireland and are not on Irish DNS. Even though there is a .ie domain amongst them, the reality is that this kind of multiple/variant TLD named site on a single IP gets flagged for attention by search engines. As the IP is not Irish, (hosted on OVH/Poland), even the .ie ccTLD might not be enough to save it from being assigned a lower weighting. The domains are hosted on a Polish hoster/DNS (hostdns.pl) and the sites may be considered as being Irish targeted rather than being in-context Irish sites. If they have no significant numbers of inbound links from other Irish sites then this, in search engine development terms rather than SEO terms, is a very important distinction. (The type (shared/dedicated/cloud/vps) and location of hosting can be used as a "signal" in search engine algorithm terms.)

Search engine algorithms have become more sophisticated due to the way that country code TLDs (.ie, .uk, .pl etc) no longer are a guarantee that a site is completely associated with that country. Small sets of very similarly named websites with very similar content are obvious red flags for even the simplest automated review. The one thing that search engine developers and spam teams look for when dealing with a set of similarly named websites across a number of TLDs is proper 301/302 redirection. These sites are serving 200 HTTP results which is a major red flag and an indication of a possible link farm. The fact that some of these sites are interlinked would be apparent to a manual review team. In search engine terms, this kind of interlinking (where the sites are effectively the same core site) is very problematic and often indicates, in the absence of high quality in-context inbound links, that it is a link farm.

The owners of sites linked like this might receive an "Unnatural Links" warning from Google if they are using Google's Webmaster Tools.

The idea of in-context links has been discussed on various SEO forums but basically a website has its own link ecology. A site about cars typically has links to and from other sites about cars and related products and a social media link ecology of suppliers, customers and enthusiasts. The simple link farms of the 1990s are amazingly obvious when viewed with the aid of current spam filtering and website usage classification algorithms.

Regards...jmcc

cormee

Wshoku wrote: »

Didnt see this abusive comment.

No time to argue with you and this is not the place to make such comments.

Spam is flooding the Internet with many copies of the same message, in an attempt to force the message on people who would not otherwise choose to receive it.

I did reply to posts asking for backlinks so which one of my 4 post you would consider as a spam?

You really do espouse the worst of amateur SEO - a very limited knowledge of the subject you're dealing with, while promoting the use of outdated black-hat practices. It saddens me to think that you might actually be dealing with small businesses who are paying good money for your advice.

MarkScully

TsuDhoNimh is 100% correct on this.

Wshoku, the type of advice and websites which you encourage are out-dated, blackhat SEO methods which simply are not beneficial.

I sympathize with anyone who pays for your services.

Sully

Please report posts and posters that you have an issue with. If you get no response in 24hrs, PM me. I didn't get the reports until today and I am only available now to clean things up. Thanks!

Blindside87

Post Penguin updates you need to have varied anchor text with high quality links such as web 2.0, .edu links etc.

Basically just make it look natural.