How do you keep a link site from being labeled a bad neighborhood?

[Katie]

I am helping a friend build a website. She wants to create a page that all showcase the local businesses in her area. I am worried that having so many links with so little other content (probably 30 words for every one link) might make the search engines think she is a bad neighborhood. Is this a concern and is there anything she can do?

[Jake]

Be sure the links are marked noFollow to reduce chance of being identified as an SEO boost service. Keep the number of links down to a reasonable number, maybe 20, certainly under 50. Be sure the theme (the city, county) is referenced in several places, should help justify the local links. Other content like full size articles would be a good search rank booster, the links alone might be a rank negative.