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A directory is just that. A directory; if someone has used your directory to find a site they are looking for then great! Google won't see it as a bounce, because they'll be coming to your directory and following one of your links, which isn't a bad thing.

If you wanted to make more of  a resource for your users, you could provide rich descriptions on the sites in your directory (this may also help reduce spam submissions). You could even create your own rating system for the sites. This may create a better experience for your users as they would be able to search your directory and get some useful and insightful information about the sites they are visiting... This increases the amount of text and information on your site, meaning you have a better chance of ranking and may set your directory apart from others in your arena that just provide links to other sites.

Gregory - Check out this new blog post, might contain just what you're looking for;

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/link-profile-tool-to-discover-linking-activity

Santosh - Check out this blog post regarding a link profile tool - It may help you track down your 'bad' links

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/link-profile-tool-to-discover-linking-activity

Spammy links include things such as link directories, link farms and generally any domain that appears to be a directory. There are other forms of spam link, but you generally have to look at your links and make a judgement call on whether a site linking to you looks spammy or not (not all directories are spammy, so you need to make a judgement call on this as well).

One measure I use is how many links a domain has going into it vs. the amount of domains these come from. If the number of links is many, many times higher then it could be a dubious site.

Regarding your cardiffhyno site, Vitalscom is correct in his advice, it wouldn't surprise me if a google algorithm has picked up on things like your footer and devalued the site.

Nice keyword drop there

Are you looking to completely re launch the site or will there be a lot of similarities between the two? If the new one has a lot of existing content, then google will probably notice that you have just updated your site.

If you have been subjected to malicious link building towards your site, then most of the time it shouldn't make any difference. As long as you have a good link profile to start with (from reputable trustworthy sources) then adding a load of spammy links shouldn't hurt you. Google recognise that this sort of thing can happen and therefore only normally penalise people who have a 100% spammy link profile.

However, if you feel that your site is affected by this and you have ruled out other things, including any low quality pages you may have on your own site which are bringing it down, I would do the following;

1. Try and get these links removed. Contact the site owners involved and ask for removal

2. File a reconsideration request to google explaining what has happened. Make sure you try and get rid of thse links first and tell google you've done your best to get them removed from linking to your site.

Make sure everything is as legitimate as you can before doing this and all being well, you'll be back on top.

Regardless of what google may say, having a nofollow link to your site does pass credibility to you. So having a link from a national newspaper is a big win.

I wouldn't worry too much that it's a no-follow. In my experience, if it's from a great source, it makes little difference. You should still get value from it

Activitysuper,

I see you're using the rel=canonical on the non www version, but really you need to use a 301 re-direct on the domain with the non www to direct it to the www version (if that's which one you want to use), you can then set the www one as your preference in webmaster tools and remove the non www version from your account. You can do this quite easily in IIS on your server, by setting up a separate site for the non www version and simply using the re-direct feature to 301 it to your www site.

The site has the potential (to a googlebot) to look slightly spammy in the fact that it's a single page with no external links coming into it. I would try and get some quality links going to your domain to give it some link juice and trust.

It's also an easy site to copy from a content perspective. Someone can just come along, rip your content and setup their own page on a more established domain, so make sure this isn't happening. Google could give credit to the other site in this instance.

Why wouldn't you want to include a link to your help desk? If it's a resource that visitors will use then you should include it.

As for a nofollow link, this is just going to stop link juice being passed to your hepdesk page, but other links on your page will pass less link juice as a consequence, so without more information, it doesn't seem to make sense to do this.

If there's a reason why you don't want visitors to access the help desk then don't include the link at all.

Check out the content links in the Moz beginners guide;

http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo

The only tool that does that successfully is Google I'm afraid, otherwise it's a process of using Open Site Explorer to look through the links and make a judgement based on what the profile looks like;

1. Look at the domain list and see what sort of domains are linking. If you see lots of directory links then that's a tell tale sign of spammy

2. Look at a few links and see what sort of links they are. Lots of blog comments doesn't bode well whereas some links in a news story on the BBC site would bode very well indeed

3. Have a look at the MozRank and MozTrust metrics. Although these are only a rough guide, MozTrust will give you a good idea of the quality of the site. A MozTrust higher than the MozRank is a good sign because it tells you that good sites are linking to the domian

There's a tool in the Moz toolbox that checks the spammyness of the domain itself, but otherwise it's gut instinct really.

I think you've tapped into a nice new form of business there

That's probably a good thing, making a strong plea for articles can give off the wrong impression and potentially put people off making them. People may question why you are so keen for articles.

I'll write something up and get it over to you

haha, always worth a go!

Felicity, I wouldn't necessarily bunk it in the black-hat category, but it's certainly grey.

Clearly you're not just offering a paid link, you're also creating some content, which is good.. But your site is making it clear that the user is paying for a link within a blog article.

Your site clearly isn't spammy and it's got a good general feel to it. As to whether google would penalise your outbound links (if they happened to come across your site), not sure. It's not like your putting links up for who-ever wants them, as you're also seeking a degree of relevancy. Tough one to call

I'm surprised that people ask you for a link and then can't be bothered to write the content. That's like catching a fish, but then throwing it back in because you couldn't be bothered to pull it all the way up.

I like your logic on setting this up, but I would definitely be a little wary. You don't want your links being devalued.

Aside from that, do you fancy an article on how a loan can help with garden improvements or is that too far off niche for you?

Don't you have browser history?

Or alternatively, have you checked your google search history?

Google are against paid links, they've said so on many occasion, and it could appear that this is what you are openly offering, so you may want to bit a little wary of this.

Obviously you're not just accepting a paid link however; you're writing the content for people who want a link as well and this may well appeal to lazy SEOs, but surely by doing it yourself you may be missing out the diversity that you achieve by other people writing for you.

Do you still accept free guest posts for people who bother to write content?

I'm sure they will in due course