Watch out for these all too common link directory scam and spam tactics. You are sure to lose time, effort, and/or link juice because of these bullshit shenanigans.

Warning No. 1:  Link Directory Sucker Method

If you frequent webmaster forums at all, you’re probably well aware of link directory owners recruiting webmasters to register with their PR 5 or (even) PR 6 directories.  Be very careful before you even waste time on these.  Many buy dropped domains with Page Rank.  After some time, due to the difference in niches and other factors, the Page Rank resets to a lower figure.  Sometimes even PR 0.

Why do they do it?

Guys who run this scam trick you into populating their link directory quickly so they can then sell spots later. The more aggressive ones require that you link back.  You would think: Page Rank 5 backlink in exchange for my Page Rank 1 backlink, what’s not to love?  Sounds good at first but later you discover that your page rank is actually higher than theirs.  You end up holding the (empty) bag.

How to avoid this scam

In order to not waste your time on a crappy directory or WORSE, propping up a scummy directly with your hard earned Page Rank link juice, run a whois.sc check on the domain.  See if it’s been dropped.  Run the page rank through several page rank checkers available via google search to see if there’s a discrepancy or anomaly in PR.

Warning No. 2:  Paid Blog Post Scam

It’s a fact of life that many website publishers buy links to get a leg up on the SEO competition.  Scammers are on to this so, in addition to selling links on sites with fake page rank, they have turned to buying expired domains that have Page Rank.  They build a blog and hit Smorty, Pay Per Post, and other “get paid to blog” programs that pay publishers money to post entries with links to advertisers (no no follow tag–this violates Google’s rules on paid links).  They fleece these publishers until the Page Rank drops to zero.  Rinse and repeat.

To add insult to injury, the scammers sometimes use scraped content to include your link.  Not only is their page rank worthless, they raped someone else’s content to do it.  Two victims for the price of one scam.

Warning No. 3:  Fake Directory Flood Spam Scam

This scam involves buying a ton of new domains and installing a generic directory building script on all of them.  Registering the domains with many automated directory submission software companies and publicizing the directory on webmaster forums.  Once the submissions come in, the system automatically sends out an email requiring “confirmation”.  The confirmation is suspect since it doesn’t include the account details–oftentimes it is just a standard .html page.  No PHP generated code.  No tracking code.  Nothing.  Just a flat page.

You go to the ‘confirmation’ page and you are hit with a message thanking you for registering and urging you to come back in a few days to check your listings.  Beneath this is spam for all sorts of link building services and “too good to be true” SEO bullshit.

Here’s a spoiler:  There won’t be any listings.  You just wasted your time.

How to fix the fake directory problem

Don’t submit to sites with less than PR 1.  Most of these shit sites have PR 0 or N/A.
Check the confirmation link and run it through your email client.  Isolate those URLs and delete them from your submission list.

One key variation of this:  Email collection scams.  There’s no real directory–just a way to trick you into signing up “voluntarily” to a garbage newsletter.

Time is money.  Don’t let scammers and spammers steal your time.