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Depends. Typically not, but depending on what you are doing you may have to rely on some of these to meet mkt objectives. Here is an example, for industrial b2b, ThomasNet, Globalspec & MacRae's are paid directories that are typically used because of the amount of prospects using them. So in a way it is a paid link to your website that Google frowns upon even though a firm may not be using it for that purpose. In a grand scheme of things, Google is a paid directory via adwords.

In case you haven't seen, most private blog networks like Build My Rank are conceding defeat themselves: http://www.buildmyrank.com/news/its-been-a-great-run There are several others that have since bit the dust, and I'm sure Google will keep deindexing anything along those lines. If you're talking about posting to any kind of a network that's used on a mass scale, I wouldn't waste your money.

Hi! From what I many have understood, the duplication content problem is probably affecting your site because the main shop is in English (www.store.com) and the /au/, /uk/ and /nz/ too are in English and with exact content you use for the main shop. When you are targeting different countries where is spoken the same language, as it is in this case, it is really suggested to follow these practices: try to "localize" the most you can the different countries shops, using local currencies, addresses, timezones; try to use the local variation of the language, as - for instance - the English spoken in UK is quite different from the one spoken in the USA. I know that this not really an option right now, because of the costs and time needed, but I urge to plan it in long term; use the tag rel="alternate" hreflang. This tag has been especially created for these situations, in order to tell to Google that a page - i.e.: www.store.com/uk/ - should be shown to the users from Uk. More and very easy to follow instructions about how to implement it can be found here New markup for multilingual content rel=alternate" hreflang="x" Remember that you can use this rel also at a level page, so you can maintain the subcarpet organization of your store. This especially useful in order to have just one site to think when it comes to link building. And the different link building campaigns you may start for any targeted country will benefit the site as a whole.

This made me smile! HA