I’m a bit new to SEO and have a basic understanding of backlinks. I was reviewing my backlinks and came across this spammy website with a page filled with hundreds of links.
https://cdn.riverside.rocks/a/trapezoid-field-flame.mp4
(The site is hxxps://bestsitesdirectory.com/website-list-1231/ if anyone wants to further look)
I’ve heard of services that claim to “boost” your SEO by giving additional backlinks, but I have always known that they likley will just hurt your SEO and have your site classified as spam. Thus, I have never signed up for one of these services in my life. Why is my domain appearing on this list? Is someone out to get me and is trying to ruin my sites ranking?
Well backlinks in themselves are not bad if they are made on sites with a high ranking and seen as an authority. The idea goes that top quality sites link to other top quality sites. So unless this spammy site has a good rep, it will do little to help your site.
Now I wouldn’t say that they ever hurt, at least they shouldn’t, but they can do little for you. I say they shouldn’t hurt because often times you can’t control other sites linking to you. However, if you get a bad rep by numerous other bad rep sites linking to you, it might hurt a little. I mean if everyone is a crook and they link to you as someone they know, you may be seen as a crook yourself eventually. 
As for your site being on this list, it was probably just harvested. Automated bots follow random links and build these types of index sites. Again, I wouldn’t worry too much about it. Not much you can do to prevent other sites linking to you. Perhaps you can ask the site admin to remove you. But I wouldn’t expect anything to really happen.
But again, I don’t think it would ruin your sites ranking. It may actually help it a little or not at all. Do you know how many crazy spammy sites link to google.com? Do you think they would down rank that site just because of it? Probably not. 
Sites end up on these lists. It basically means nothing. Sitepoint’s been on every “post on these forums for link juice” list out there for decades despite being a nofollow forum that doesnt allow spam links. The spammers don’t care, they just want to make their “top 100 sites for dofollow links clickmenowplz” page scrape in a few more e-p… e-ego points.
Anyone can link to your site; you have no control over it, and the search engines recognize that fact. If your site appears on one of those spam lists, it will get ignored (in fact, you’d probably find that search engines are scripted to ignore the big players in those sites routinely, because they are known link farms).
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There are many people that actually pay good money to get backlinks from reputable sites with good SEO positioning. You can see it as piggybacking on that site’s Page Ranking, to make it very simple.
The point is that you’ll get a lot more traffic to your site.
Except that any site selling backlinks is breaking the TOS of Google and other search engines, so can hardly be considered reputable.
Both the above state clearly that buying links will have a negative impact on your ranking. Bing is more ambiguous.
https://www.bing.com/webmaster/help/webmaster-guidelines-30fba23a
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Reality and google’s TOS don’t always go hand in hand. Would I sell backlinks? No. Is it done in the industry? Yes.
Is it something we condone or endorse on this site because it breaks TOS? No.
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Are you insinuating that I do? I am merely relaying my observations from decades in the field, not expressing my agreement with these practices. Backlinks can definitely help you as long as it’s from a reputable site.
Hi, I see the website that is providing you a backlink has a domain authority of 36. Irrespective of how much ever spammy it looks from a user perspsctive, just look at it from a search engine’s perspective, it has got a good DA and decent no of backlinks. SO for sure, a backlinks from such a website will not hurt your seo efforts, infact will enhance your seo efforts. So do not think much about this and start building backlinks for your website naturally and consistently.