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Here's a post about how Bing views keywords:
The Meta Keywords Tag Lives At Bing & Why Only Spammers Should Use It
So, over-stuffing your keywords isn't totally ignored and can cause a penalty on Bing.
Meta keywords were so abused in the past that they could no longer be used to accurately tell what the page was about. As a relevance/ranking signal it became worthless.
If you buy the domain and re-direct then remember to think of your competitors customers - not just the potential ranking boost!
Ideally you want their customers to become your customers, so think about how you might redirect specific pages from their domain to landing pages designed to reassure people looking for you competitors products/services and position yourself as a viable alternative.
The last thing you want if for them to think they're in the wrong place and bounce straight away, never to return!
Before buying the domain, can you get any supporting stats / analytics? How many direct visitors, how many via search etc.You're likely to have a small window of opportunity, but it's definitely worth thinking about how you can get some of those customers that you might not be able to replace just from search.
Assuming that everything else is equal (position on the page etc etc): The available "link-juice" will be split across all links. Both destination pages will benefit, but beware that the more links on the page, the smaller the individual share will be.
There's a few things I'd do.
First of all, recognise that many of these keywords are going to be seen as synonyms as far as google is concerned and even if not exactly synonyms, they'll be regarded as heaviy related. Optimising pages for a number of these keywords/phrases really will help the way your entire site is perceived.
While exact match numbers seem to be pretty low, I wouldn't mid putting a bed down on some good long-tail traffic out there.
I would:
Take a look at what my competition are doing. I'd do a search for each of my target keywords and grab the top 10 ranking sites and take a look at them in Open Site Explorer. Take a note of the number of links to the domain and then have a look at the anchor text. (Select links to all pages on this domain).
This will show you how strongly these site are optimising their link building and what target phrases they are using. Get a list of all these terms and check out the traffic and the difficulty.
You can see that the stronger ranking sites will have lots of keywords in their anchor text. Can you also do this when building links?
Also take a look at the top pages report. This will show you how they are building optimised pages and the titles can reveal the kind of keywords they're targeting.
Think also about your audience and what their needs might be. How can you make you offerings more specific to them. "Copywriting for students" or "copywriting for medical students" etc for example. Or how about "lastminute copywriting" or "fast copywriting"..
Having an offering that talks directly to each audience and highlights the particular problems/needs in that niche can help with your conversions.
Think also about how you can stand out from the crowd. What is it about your service in particular that makes you different, makes you unique. Why should people come to you and not the next guy. There's no benefit sticking with the herd here.
The number of linking root domains is normally more important.
(From the Open Site Explorer about): "Engineers at SEOmoz have found that "# of linking root domains" is much more highly correlated to real rankings than "# of links"."
Think about the extremes, you could have a page that has hundreds of links from one other website vs. a page that has 1 links for hundreds of websites. Which one do you think is more likely to be more valuable?
Think of it like 20 votes from one person vs. 1 vote from 20 people!
Of course this is taking a very simplistic view. Remember also that not every other site has the same authority, So you need to look at the domain authority of the linking root domains too!
Would you trust a page that a bunch of sites you've not heard of link to vs a page that the likes of wikipedia, cnn, BBC News all link to?
Hope this helps!
I'd agree with James.
I'd use the description and title of the news page to clearly communicate the kind of news that's going to be presented so that visitors are going to have a good understanding of what to expect when they land on your news page.
I would leave the news articles to speak for themselves instead of having to compete with the news page.
If it's local news then I'd make sure that the area covered was also clear.
You've got to think about this from the users perspective. There will be people looking out for particular news stories that interest them, so they'll be attracted by the individual article that engages them. Others, will be looking a little more broadly for news in their area, or around their topic and it's these searches that your news index page can target.
I'd also make sure that the content on my main news index had clear calls to action to help people subscribe to my news feed -RSS, mailing lists etc . (and on all the article pages too).
You can get a lot of one-touch traffic to news pages. You need to make an effort to find ways to get them coming back.
Without knowing more about your business, what your offering are and the keywords that don't seem to have much traffic, it's hard to be specific.
First, have you chosen the right keywords?
One common problem when looking for keywords is to look for terms that describe your product/service and ignore those words/phases that your prospects may be using. What are the needs/goals of your prospects? Can you find keywords that can target those needs?
For instance - Perhaps there are potential customers out there that don't know what the solution is to their problem - they won't be using the same keywords as someone who know what solution they need and is just looking for a provider.
Also remember that while setting your sights on a highly competitive keyword can be a great long term goal - you really need to find those low-hanging fruit. Can you find less competitive keywords that you can target. Even if they have much less traffic - a large slice of small pie is still going to be worth more than crumbs (or less) of a large pie.
There's nothing to stop you building content targeted around lots of these less competitive keywords - just make sure that the content provides value to the visitor and helps move them towards the goals of your site.
Don't forget non-search traffic. If you can promote your business in the right places (where do your customers hang-out?) you can position your business as an authority in your niche. Maybe you'll get some direct referrals and more brand related search traffic.
Hope this helps!
Having a website deliver platform optimised pages from the same URL is better than some of the alternatives such as having different URLs or subdomain delivering mobile content. Responsive web design should avoid the problem of having duplicate content all over the place!
This just means that you've got fewer pages receiving traffic for your keywords. Even on a stable website this is likely to fluctuate a bit as it's measuring user behaviour.
If you've been optimising your site, it's quite common to end up with fewer, stronger pages getting a more of the available traffic.
Are the landing pages the ones you'd expect to get inbound traffic? Are the pages that are no longer getting traffic important?
Fewer pages getting your traffic isn't necessarily a bad thing. Getting the right traffic to the right pages is key.
What changes have you been making? How drastically have you been changing the content. Are you getting more traffic for your head terms, but sacrificing long-tail traffic?
Really don't think that having your directory entry in bold is really going going to make much/any difference and it seems like a high price to pay for the privilege.
But, it depends on how much direct traffic the directory might send your site. If it's a respected niche directory that is actually used by real people then there may be some benefit. if putting your entry in bold increases the click-through. How many other entries are in bold?
Personally, I'd be sceptical that there would much value here either. (I'm not an advocate of paid directory listings in general)
Might be fun to ask the directory owners to provide some click-through statistics before you part with your cash!
Also think about what else you can do with the money (the opportunity cost). Could you use the money to create some great unique content? How many links would such a piece of content need to get you before you got a better return on investment than a directory listing?
Hope this helps.
But you'd still want to add a rel=canonical on the products.php page so that all "versions" that get indexed with a referrer parameter are pointing to the vanilla products.php as the canonical version?
It sounds as if the guides are getting search traffic so I wouldn't advise that you remove these pages. The reason your guides are getting this traffic is that they are out ranking your product pages (which are more than likely a lot lighter on content). They're probably out ranking your competitors project pages too.
My advice would be to understand the intent of the searches that are arriving on your guides etc. What are the search queries being used.
Once you understand what people are looking for then think about how you can improve your guides to entice people into your product content. They should form part of your conversion funnel. Make it clear that these are products you offer and are only a click away!
Then you need to track the conversion rate of people landing on your supporting content.
Remember that many of these people won't be interesting in buying (not immediately) but may come return in the future once they've finished their research. By making your content more memorable / helpful you'll stand a better chance of getting some of this longer-term custom.
Don't just strip out these pages - you're likely just to lose traffic...
Hope this helps.
Think you need to find a developer who understand progressive enhancement so that the page degrades gracefully. You'll need to deliver the page using something server-side (php?) and then add the bells and whistles later.
I'm guessing the budget won't cover moving the entire site/content onto a database/cms platform.
How does the page look in Google Webmaster Tools - (Labs, Instant Preview). Might give you a nice visual way to explain the problem to the client.
geeks.com do have the keywords all over the page. Each printer item has the word "refurbished" in it (I counted 11 times). They have both a high domain authority (73) and high page authority (58). They have the keywords in their Title too.
The keyword phrase "refurbished printers" looks pretty competitive to me and I suspect your site/page just doesn't have the authority to compete at the moment.
Looking at the introduction on your Refurbished Printers page - it doesn't read very well and looks/feels rather stuffed with keywords and not a natural way of writing and maybe a little "overcooked".
I'd think of ways you can build more links, offer more genuinely unique/useful content and maybe look at less competitive niches you can target while you do this. Are there any low-hanging fruit out there keyword wise?
As Mozo said, I wouldn't try and sort this out by re-working the homepage.
Your homepage should really cover your overall proposition, who you/the business is and what it means to the world and cover the range of services you offer. As far as inbound traffic goes - your homepage will more than likely be the landing page for "branded" traffic. People searching for your business.
You then want to have landing pages, for each of your offerings. These are going to be targetted to particular keywords. You want these pages to be the most relevant pages for the search engines to return for searches about your chosen keywords. As a result, these pages are going to need to be very specifically about the topic. (Homepages tend to be more general)
Have you established why your keyword-z page is not ranking so highly? Is it a more competitive keyword or are there weaknesses about the page/content/link profile etc that you can address?
What's the reason it was implemented this way in the first place? Is the data being exported from another system in a particular way?
What's the site running on - is there a CMS platform?
Is it javascript because it's doing some funky ajax driven "experience" or are they just using javascript and the xml file to enable you to filter/sort based on different facets?
Final silly question - how's the visitor expected to interact with them?
It's not there yet. This was the latest update I could find in the Google Analytics Blog:
An update on the new version of Google Analytics (Jan 18th)
"We’re working hard on some priority features - email scheduling and PDF export as a top priority"
The comments you highlighted are actually Internet Explorer conditionals used to give different versions of IE different style sheets. I don't think there's any SEO problem here. (Although I recognise this isn't your site)
Removing them may cause you problems with the layout/style of your site.
Some of your traffic is converting though. Be a shame to lose that. 
I'm thinking content along the lines of "making smart buying choices today, can save you $$$ in the future" or "Understanding the hidden costs of..."
Any buying guides you can offer that they can take-away (with your branding/link on?)
It's easy to overlook the long game. Good luck!
Hi David, Just some thoughts...
What are the visitors that do arrive this way, and convert worth to you? Are you happy to throw these away?
If you don't offer such things for sale (you can't satisfy the visitors needs) can you refer them to a partner site that does? Perhaps you can use this traffic as a way of establishing a mutually beneficial relationship with a supplier?
If these visitors are looking to buy stuff that others are requesting to be serviced on/by your site can you use this as an opportunity to build a service relationship with that prospect later. (Can you get any propositions/benefits in front of them so that they bookmark your site as they know it'll be useful if they buy one of these things?)
You'll need to wait until the link has been indexed. SEOmoz have a roughly monthly index cycle for updating the linkscape index. The next index is due at the end of the month. (There was a slight delay and a slip of the schedule)
Even then, your link might not show up if it wasn't caught by the index process this time. You may have to wait until the March update before you link shows up.
This doesn't mean that you're not getting the benefits of the link though.
I know SEOmoz are working on a more dynamic update, but I don't know any timescales for that.
My advice? Play the long game, keep link building / promote you site and you'll see the benefits over time.
My first piece of advice - DON'T PANIC!
Reactionary changes made in haste will more than often make the situation worse.
I'm in a similar situation, ranking near the top for web design and my location. While my ranking seemed to be relatively stable in November, I've noticed that it's been bouncing around +/- 1 or 2 positions. Looking at the Looking at the slightly longer picture though, I can see that I'm flipping places back and forth with higher ranking competition who appears to be dropping. (I'm ranking higher increasingly often). I'm hoping that my next push to build some more links and post some additional high-value content is going to help.
The point here, is that it's the overall trend that matters. If you disappear from the search results completely then I'd worry. If you're just experiencing a bit of a wobble then I'd watch for a trend.
That doesn't stop you building links and promoting you business/site which would help anyway.
Don't let yourself get overly fixated on the ranking position either. While generally the higher the position the more traffic you can get, you can actually find it's possible to get more traffic than a higher ranking result just by having a good, compelling snippet (title/description).
So, don't panic. Get the evidence, look for the trend and then make strategic rather than reactionary decisions and continue with good quality promotion of your site/business.
Hope this helps and good luck.
Hi Marisa,
I'd start by looking at how your human beings are navigating your site and see how much cross-category jumping there is, but I suspect that your suggestion would be a good idea.
As you say, Instead of having the drop-down navigation with all the categories, you could replace this with just the top-level (FIRE, POLICE, MILITARY,SPORTS etc,).
I notice that these top level categories don't have a page themselves, so you would then need to create a page for each with navigation to the sub-categories.
These top-level pages can be optimized for phases like "police patches" etc, perhaps put the most popular patches on this page.
Can you add more text to the individual items too. A shortish description for each patch would help.
Could you add a "vote for this patch" thumbs up widget? Can you contact the organisations who's patches they are and run a competition to get them to come a vote (get a link?). Depends on how happy they are to have their patches featured in the gallery.
While helpfully not answering the question, could you generate a xml sitemap (I take it the portfolio data is being generated from something?) to help Google find and index the pages?
Is there any cross linking between the individual portfolio pages or at least a next/previous?
(My first thought would have been the php route.)
But you can ask yourself if the link needs to be there at all... (Does every page need to link to your privacy policy, terms and conditions etc...)
I seem to remember an update saying there had been a disk problem during processing which had pushed the date back. (I may have imagined it as I can't seem to find it now!)
Maybe I'm missing something, but can't you use Open Site Explorer and select "pages on this subdomain" or "pages on this root domain"?
If you export to a csv file you can filter by the Target URL column.
PA = Page Authority
mR = MozRank
mT = MozTrust
DA = Domain Authority.
If you take a look in the right hand side bar on this page:
http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo
You'll find links to pages all about these metrics.
If you've got inbound link to non-existent pages then set up 301 redirects to the most relevant page. At the moment any link-juice you could be receiving form these links is being wasted.
Broken links won't hurt you - you just won't get the benefits!
I normally try to add one link, high up in the article, if possible, linking to a page you're trying to promote that is relevant to the hosting blog/article.
Putting a link in the article content can help if your content gets scraped.(You may earn another backlink!)
Of course, guest blogging isn't just about earning the backlink. If you need to add additional links to provide better value to the reader then I would do so. A backlink that contributes to your ranking is one thing, a back link that also delivers referral traffic is even better!
I think you're ok then, as far as other sites hosted on your server.
Do you know where you server is physically hosted? UK? US?
From a user perception point of view, your in2town.co.uk site seems ok to me speed wise. (not a scientific test!)
Out of interest what does Google Analytics and/or Google Webmaster Tools say about site speed?
In Google Analytics you can find this under: Content / Site Speed.
In Webmaster tools it's under: Labs / Site Performance.
There's lots of things that can affect the speed of you site including the performance of the server, the end-to-end network connection, the content, number and size of images on the page and any javascript etc. (social buttons can be a prime culprit for this!)
Someone on a mobile device with a poor signal is going to have a dramatically different performance to someone on a high-speed broadband connection.
As there are a things outside of your control that affect site speed, I don't think search engines can use it as an absolute measurement.
From a user experience point of view, you want to make sure the pages aren't loading so slowly people are giving up!
If buycostumes.com was hosted on your server, it isn't' now and of course, none of the sites hosted on the server that buycostimes.com is on will be on the same server as yours.
It looks like the following domains are hosted on server 96.127.151.50:
All these resolve to 96.127.151.50.
Are all these yours?
If any of these aren't yours, then ask your hosting company to check.
While it does look like buycostumes.com is now resolving to a different IP address, (66.45.3.44). It looks like some of the others you detected are sharing the same IP address as your own:
www.in2town.co.uk (96.127.151.50).
NSLOOKUP www.chesterhypnotherapy.com
NSLOOKUP www.cheapflightsgatwick.co.uk
NSLOOKUP www.clairehegarty.co.uk
All resolve to the same IP address (96.127.151.50)
It seems that buycostumes.com is on a different server, but the others aren't. I take it you're only hosting the one site on this dedicated server?
I can't say how these other sites might be affecting the performance of your site, but if you're paying for dedicated hosting then it doesn't appear that you're getting it.
Who's hosting this server and where are they hosting it? It seems slow from here (uk), and more network hops that I'd expect (16).
I'm getting 115ms when pinging your site. For a domain on my (shared) hosting I'm getting approx 20ms and for reference www.google.com gives me 26ms.
I've used 34sp.com for my hosting for a long time - their service/support has been fantastic. I've not used them for dedicated hosting so can't specifically recommend them for this. I don't know how competitive their prices are for dedicated hosting, but note that their starting price is for an unmanaged service. (They do offer a full server/management package though.)
Hope this helps.
Hi Bob, here's some resources to get you started!
This YouMOz article has some ideas:
15 Smart Ways to Find Guest Posting Opportunities
You can search google for blogs that cover the same topics as your site that accept guest posts using queries like:
finance coaching blog "guest post"
There's more about using google to find guest blogging opportunities here: 3 Smart Google Search Tips to Hunt for Guest Post Opportunities
You could try searching twitter. A great way to do this is to use followerwonk to search people's bios. You could do searches like:
nlp coach blog
Take a look at what others are doing, see if they have their own blogs that might accept guest posts or even if they don't you may be able to find out where they are guest posting.
Think about where your potential audience are going to hang-out too. If you can get guest posts infront of them and get some direct qualified referral traffic to you site then this can be even better. You may find that people arriving through this channel convert better.
Remember that guest blogging isn't just about getting those backlinks. It's a great way to build your reputation/authority and position yourself in your chosen niche.
Again, hope this helps.
Hi Bob,
Just some quick thoughts, please don't take anything here as criticism!
My first impression when visiting the site is that it's "a lot about Bob" and not much about "me!" I would suggest that you open with a clear proposition so people instantly get what's in it for them when the hit your site.
Try to take an external perspective and think about your site from your customers perspective. (Have you got a clear understanding of the type of people your customers are?)
What are the problems/needs of your target audience? You need to write content that targets those needs. (They don't need "Bob.")
Can you answer: "Is this for me? Am I going to find what I'm looking for?"
You need to explain the benefits of the service/solutions you offer.
Explain the benefits of what you do - why should someone come to you and not the next guy? What makes what you do unique?
What are the concerns that potential customers might have? How can you address these concerns?
Nice clear call to action, with a reason to take action now.
"Free consultation" is nice, but why should I be interested? Your calls to action are right at the top of the page, before you've given someone a reason to call. I don't go onto the internet to get some "free consultation."
"Call now to find out how YOU can take control of YOUR money today!"
The list of outcomes could be a lot more direct and compelling. They feel a little like "features" and I'm not entirely sure I understand what they mean. Can you flip these into more direct benefits - with what that actually mean to the potential customer. (It's useful to ask "why should I care?")
Once you get someone to call for their free consultation - do they convert to customers?
As for link building, I would have thought there would be lots of opportunities to guest post about these kinds of thing? Not only would this get links, but gets you in front of the right eye-balls and builds authority/credibility?
Hope this helps!
Do you need this service? Do you have a problem getting your site indexed?
As Casey said, as long as you follow the guidelines search engines can quickly index your site. Building some good links from good authority sites can help search engines find you.
Google webmaster tools tells you when you sitemap was last processed and you can see your crawl stats to see how many pages are being crawled/day.
If your site isn't getting indexed, then I'd try to find out the route cause rather than pay for a "search engine nagging" service like this.
I think if you do this you do have to keep the visitor in mind. First of all you have to appreciate that you're potentially creating leaks by creating these links. People will follow these leaks and not return.
That said, if you can link to good supporting content that is going to help the visitor achevie their goals then I can see that it's going to help make their experience better.
Sometimes it's better to have supporting information from a trusted third party to add authority to your content. As Robert said, make sure it's a good reputable source.
Robert, do you no-follow any of these links?
To add to the other responses, I can see reason why you might want to not use your keyword in a sub domain. If you do, it means that everytime you give you web address out to someone you have to use it!
Depending on your keyword, this could be a nightmare! I'm not sure it'll do your "brand" many benefits either.
What happens if you go down this route and decide to change your target keyword, or your keyword is no longer relevant to you business (things change!). Do you build a new site hosted on the subdomain for each keyword? (Things could become silly if you take this too far!)
A simple "www" or nothing has become an easy to remember convention.
Hi Steven, I don't think you're missing anything. I think you'll just need to joining the rest of us waiting with baited breath for the next linkscape update to see how we'll we've been doing with our link building. The good news is that you can always spend the time building more links!
In a recent blog post from Rand, he mentions:
"As part of those efforts, we've been working toward an experimental index that leverages a more search-engine style crawler that crawls fresher pages/sites more often and less fresh stuff less frequently"
So maybe there's hope! The blog post is here:
Interim Linkscape Update for January
It is frustrating when you're working on a new site though!
Totally agree regarding the H1s. They should be used for the main title of an article - not for branding or other "stylistic" reasons. I would definitely recommend making the change.
As for the page naming convention - if the pages have good content (with the broad terms that Vahe suggests) then I don't think it's too much of a problem. After all, I'd expect a page about burlesque hen parties to be called "burlesque hen party"! As long as you're being authentic about it.
I think you'd want to keep your category pages in the index as these are the brand names that people are going to be searching for.
As for the the actual articles themselves - first I notice that you have articles going back to 2009. As these are date specific coupons they're not really of any value any more. I think if it was me I'd cull these and set up redirect to point any links back to the the home page.(I'd be interested to see what other think)
With so many pages, (4000+ in 2009, 6000+ in 2010) I don't think you're going to be able to easily point the articles URLs back to category pages.
As for the individual articles/offers themselves. How do these perform at the moment? How much search traffic do the individual articles get. What about the category pages?
What about inbound links? What are people linking to/sharing?
I'd suggest that they'd probably want to be a little more different than that. The idea is to make sure that search engines/people can easily understand and the correct page to return in the search results.
Can I ask why you've got so many and what the titles currently are?
Do you want all of these pages to appear in the index? Do they have content worth indexing?
From the On-Page Analysis help:
"The On-page summary automatically generates reports for any of your campaign keywords that rank in the top 50 of your primary search engine. The URL that it grades is the same URL that appears in the search results.
For instance, if you have 75 keywords ranking in the Top 50, you should have 75 On-Page Reports. This generation happens automatically within 24 hours of when your rankings are updated."
You can find the help here:
SO, in answer to your first question - are any of your pages ranking in the top 50 for any of your keywords?
You can also run an On-Page Analysis on any page against any keyword by using the tool from the "Research Tools" menu. It's here:
Hope this helps.
Good advice from Simon. I would say that reciprocal linking does occur naturally and helps determine your position in your online neighbourhood.
Imagine a site like SEOMoz, I'm sure many of the sites that get links from SEOMoz (Distilled, SEER etc) link back to SEOMoz...
These links are of course entirely natural and authentic and I don't think there's anything wrong in taking proactive steps to create these relevant, in context, relationships.
Where things start to go wrong is where two parties agree to place links to each other on their "links" page, page footers etc. Especially when the only reason you could give to explain the presence of the link is "SEO!"
Agree with Marek that you can certainly make URLs a lot firendlier for normal human beings. It can also help keep the urls shorter which can help when people are social sharing.
One significant advantage of dropping the extension is that it makes it so much easier if you ever want/need to change the platform on which your site runs.
Don't make changes to your URL structure on a whim though. You need to take a careful look at both your internal and inbound links and plan and redirections you need to put into place.
Remember that any change can be risky, so understand the risks and effort required before you start!
I don't think you didn't mentioned that you were paying for the link!
RISK / REWARD / EFFORT(COST)
Personally I wouldn't pay $200-300 for one such link on the kind of page you're talking about.
Think about how much difference the one link is likely to make. Are you going to see a change in your rankings, or any direct traffic how much additional traffic will it take to make it worthwhile (what's your goal conversion rate, and what's the value of these goals)
You can get higher quality links for much less!
I think that maybe you're worrying too much about it. If there's nothing that triggers any warning bells, then get the link and move on.
Useful link/resource lists wouldn't be at the top of my priority list though.
I'm generally wary about "links" pages. It's probably just me.
I like to take a look at the relevance of the list (both to the hosting site, and to my site/keyword). How naturally will my link sit in the list.
Are the links followed or no-followed? Such link pages tend to be used to provide links back to low quality directories that as you to link back to them. Once the directory has validated the link, links get removed or no-followed.
How will the list be perceived - both by search engines and also by human visitors. Does the list provide any value to humans?
If you take a higher level view and look at the overall link landscape how does the site you're getting a link from fit - is it an authority hub? (Normally this is reflected in the domain authority, but not in all niches).
If you had to explain to your customer why the link is there - can you provide an answer they would be satisfied with?
At the end of the day, you have to make a quick decision based on:
RISK / REWARD / EFFORT
If you can get a link, and it's not going to reflect badly on your site and it's easy to get then there's no reason why you wouldn't just do it and more on to getting the next link.
Obviously you'd want to try and target higher value links (where you're going to get more link juice and/or maybe even some direct traffic!) You don't want to only have low quality links...
The more links you have on a page, the more the value of any link-juice needs to be shared. You may be better off getting a larger slice of a small pie, than a minuscule amount of a large one.
The number of links aren't the only factor though. This article by Rand has a number of nice illustrations showing the value of different links:
All Links are Not Created Equal: 10 Illustrations on Search Engines' Valuation of Links
Hope this helps.
Hi Robert, hope the blood-pressure is under control! Totally understand your frustrations though. It's these kind of tactics that give the respectable/ethical businesses a bad name. I don't know how many times I've had to explain that SEO != SPAM!
What can we do about it? Well, the only thing we can do is educate out clients before it happens, so that they know and expect to get these types of advances once their sites are published in such directories.
Even if there was a directory for use by "ethical seos" it would still be publicly accessible and available to the less reputable end of the industry to scrape and abuse!