[Useless]

I think it would be in our best interest to have an open discussion about the SEO, or lack thereof, of link lists. Putting the "bad neighborhood" factor aside, since there's nothing that can be done about that, it would be beneficial to have a conversation about the other key components of SEO for any site.

Link lists have obvious inherent flaws: too many links out, 99.9% of links are reciprocal, majority of inbound links are from valueless free site index pages, horrible text to link ratio, and often there are far too many ad spots per page.

Let's attempt to address these issues.

Too Many Links Out
In the grand old days of link listing, links expired after a set period and would be deleted from the list. This created a situation in which free sites continued to link to the link list because very few submitters would dare to remove the old recips. So, the link list would have all of these non-reciprocal inbound links, from crap pages or not, for free. The more inbound links, the better because, as we know, Google places value on pages that other web sites link to. My suggestion would be to return to the days of expiring links.

Also, pagination would be an excellent move. Some lists have been limiting the amount of links per category page through the use of pagination for years and years. It works - and it should be done. I know, submitters hate it when their sites get pushed over to category-page-2, but in the end, it's best for both parties. There is no way of knowing how many links we should publish per page. People used to say 100, but all of this is speculation. To me, 100 is far to many, especially if you consider the bad text-to-link ratio.

The Majority of Inbound Links are from Valueless Pages
Free sites are most often buried in the ass of a submitter's domain, multiple directories deep. What can be done about this? Not much. Content placed closer to the domain's root naturally has more value. The deeper into sub-directories we travel, the less value.

Free sites themselves tend to be quickly thrown together with perhaps some quick SEO performed. Quality-minded submitters already do what they can SEO-wise, but many still toss their shit together for their daily round of submissions.

Also, the historic demand of list owners to be linked from the index.html of a free site was bad SEO. Free site submitters should have been told to name their pages with keyword phrases. A free site entitled "Wife Takes Two Black Cocks" should have the index named wife-two-black-cocks.html, or something similar.

So, what can be done. Well, not much can be done to increase the value of a free site. Allowing free site builders to name their pages appropriately would be a great start. Having them keep their free sites no more than two directories deep would be good too. Have those directories named well, but not spammy, would also be a good move.

Horrible Text-to-Link Ratio
The primary and (perhaps) best way to address this is for list owners to create content for their pages. In this industry, we think of content as photos and movies. In the rest of the world, content is text. More well-written text is what we need. Link list category pages may be served well by having one side of the page publish the listings, while the other side publishes text-rich blog posts. Or, if you can rotate a couple of niche blog posts on the top of the category page, that would be an improvement too.

Too Many Ad Spots
This is a sore point, and I'm just as guilty. As traffic decreases in volume and quality, we all begin stuffing in as many banners as we can in an effort to further monetize our pages. By doing this, we screw our attempts at SEO. There is no magic number, but we desperately need to limit the amount of ad placements, whether we 'nofollow' them or not. Of course, the more content you have, the more ads you can probably get away with. Google doesn't mind you making money, but you have to be smart about it. The best way to advertise and please the big G at the same time is promote within text; blog posts, site and product reviews, etc. Banners are easy and pretty, but there isn't any content there. It's a linked image to a sponsor's site. We need to be creative.

Social Media / Community
In mainstream marketing, the use of social media is GINORMOUS! Of course, most social media sites aren't very fond of us. Even if you do create a Twitter account or Facebook fan page for your site, it's difficult to get followers. Sure, they'd love to follow you, they WANT to 'like' you, but they don't want their friends, family, coworkers, and potential employers seeing that they have 'friend-ed' a porn site. Still, though, it's worth trying. You have to see if you can grab a chunk of that traffic. It might be a good idea to create a softened or mainstream-ish page to your site that your FB fan page can link to. That may garner more likes than your Barely Legal Daughter Bukkake page.

If you can install some type of community within your site, that would be great. A comment script or message board can do great things. For one, as the site owner, it gives you the opportunity to promote the living hell out of your stuff and it's a venue to post all of that dusty old content you have. Create a thread, post some photos, link to a sponsor or a page within your site. Either way, it works. I have a couple of pages from my forum that do pretty well at bringing in SE traffic. Plus, your members are a built-in mailing list.

This is an open discussion. Let's all have a conversation and offer ideas on what can be done to improve the earnings in this little corner of the industry. We don't belong in the ghetto.