Hi I have been a lurker for a long time, so I finally took the step to make my 1st post, and will hopefully start giving back more in the future since I have gained invaluable info from this great site
Background
I hired a new freelancer on our team of SEO consultants ("specialists") During the course a month he (the new consultant) submitted our website to numerous link directories (he assured me this is good), today I received the report of the work he had been doing for the past 4-weeks. I opened the report and I was furious and wanted to sack him there and then
The Problem / My Question
He had submitted our website to 150 directories with various levels of page rank, ranging from 7-1. Most of the directories are totally irrelevant to our niche (we are in the catering business) and he had gone and submitted the site to directories such as "finance busters", "questfinder" etc
For all 150 submissions he used:
- exactly the same url
- exactly the same title
- exactly the same description
- exactly the same keywords
My Concern
Am I right to be worried about this? Or am I completely wrong and may this actually have an effect (even if none)?
The way I see it is that Google is seeing 150 duplicate links coming from irrelevant directories all within a months time, which will trigger a red flag and possibly do major damage to my site, which has always been strictly white hat and been doing pretty well.
p.s does link directory submissions even count these days anyway?
Thanks for reading and advice very much welcome