Are links pages much good?

Well, if a natural link is from a content page to a content page, using different link texts then what do we do to get more links?

In reality, a link building program will go for links on pages of mass links and not look at all natural. There are ways around this, but they take far more effort and are less likely to actually get links. For the extra effort and less guarantee of people responding, it is usually seen to be the 'done thing' to join in with link exchanges.

Now as long as these aren't free-for-all, then the search engines will still put a bit of weight into what they find, just not as much as weight as natural links.

Avoid running a free-for-all links exchange at all costs - don't allow whatever scheme you use to accept every request. It's always best to check the requests and only accept the best. How the search engines detect the difference I don't know. But I suppose if there are a lot of spammy link swaps in your directory then they will harm you.

Do directories work? Well, they aren't usually one-way but they do help a little. The time that the links directory on CompareMortgageRates.co.uk jammed and wasn't showing any links (and I wondered why people were saying they couldn't find their links on the pages when I could see them on the database) the page rank of the site did increase.

So links from directories do help, just not as much as 'natural links'. But it's probably proportionally far easier to get directory links than natural links...