LOL probably the same firm (if you can call them that) I am competing with for exact same link building tactic.

But mine was something like...

Refinancing corporate credit cards? When you refinance with LINK (KEYWORD) LINK blah blah blah.... Irrelevant content blah blah blah...

and they HAD THOUSANDS!!! And were obviously fooling the algorithm cause they bumped me to #2

I just combated it with High Quality relevant content both on site and guest blogging and Real relevant Social Signals within 5 days.... I had retaken it and seems to be holding, (but they are still #2)

High Quality beats quantity any day with this type of thing as the links fall off quickly cause mostly these are content farms that post many blogs per day. Also it is a hodgepodge of content so there are no relevancy signals.

Just focus on a high quality campaign that gets good relevant info out about your niche and supplement that by integrating social brand building.

Shane

I know this one is good, but very hard to get into as not many sites qualify.

http://www.ipl.org/

Other than that I am not sure how many more out there would classify as Free AND Quality.

Although there are good sites out there that you have to pay for, paying is not a sign of being bad, just like free is not a sign of good.

If money is the issue then this a completely different story,

But if it is just that you do not like paid directories, then in my opinion look at the directories on more factors other than that..

Last Cache data?

Do they rank for their own brand name?

Are they a PR 0? (Bad sign)

Are they laden with Adsense and Affiliate links?  (Bad Sign)

Do they serve a purpose other than another directory in the thousands of directories?

Are the sites all properly categorized?

Do they allow bidding? (Bad sign)

Do they allow all sites? or do they have strict rules on Pharmaceutical, Gambling, Drugs ect....

This is just a few things to look at

hope this helps

There are a few different thought processes here...

If I understand it correctly social signals are not really at the domain level, they are at the page level. Social signals are to signify trending or popular items. So by doing this you are trending a page on your site with little to no content (or purpose) other than a photo to gain likes. This MAY give the overall domain credence, in the Social World, but not sure it actually will affect the process of SEO to much.

Also the photos are smaller and worse quality when they are attached as a web link instead of uploaded to your wall directly so you may get less likes, not to forget that the CTR of links on FB is VERY LOW!

Of course you want positive social signals to your website, but is this really the way to achieve it organically and with overall user experience in mind?

Keep in mind as well that SEO/SEM are more and more everyday becoming online about brand building and Sharing the item that gets alot of likes on your Branded Facebook page can increase your brand power online.

In my opinion this strategy has merit, but employing under the idea of just gaining rankings is not really a strategy it is just another "SEO trick" that will get picked up and devalued as a webpage with little to no content so the Social Gain you made will proabably be devalued in the end, so you might as well retain the power in your Social branding.

w00t!

At one point this was taken as a "suggestion", but I believe almost all search engines automatically ignore this nowadays.

I think even when it was a valid command, it was still more often than not ignored by Googlebot

Shane