Do Local Listings like Yellow Pages and yelp count for backlinks??
-
I am wondering if adding your company with url on a local listing like yellowpages.com, yelp.com, merchantCircle.com, etc. actually counts as a "backlink"? I'm thinking it is not considered a link because I have never seen one listing in Open site explorer, either that, or it is considered a backlink, just not one important enough for open site explorer to show it.
Does anyone know for sure??
-
Depending on how many total backlinks you have coming to your client sites, you may not see the yellow pages one if it is marked with a nofollow showing up in GWT. You may need to dig a little deeper through MajesticSEO or AHREFs to see it. I doubt whether having a free or a paid option should matter. Isn't the link the same either way? Also, have you verified that your client's yellow pages pages with the link have been recently crawled by Google to note that the link has been captured / viewed?
-
Did you yellowpages link take long to show up in your linking root domains? I have a number of clients registered with a yellowpages free listing but none appear in linking domains. Also is yours a paid listing or the free option?
-
Even if they use a nofollow attribute - They are certainly counted as a citation and verification source for local SEO while additionally. The Nofollow vs follow theory is difficult for large directory sites as they have a double edge sword. If they followed every link - then they become spam, if they follow only paid listings then they become a paid link network, so if they no follow everyone they protect Authority and Google/Bing can utilize them as an authority reference point. That being said your website is likely to be crawled more frequently just being on a local directory.
-
Okay, Thanks
-
I suggest installing a mod for your browser that will easily identify nofollowed links for you. These extensions don't necessarily catch redirected links, so you'll need to hover your mouse to see exactly where that link is pointing. If it doesn't simply say the website it's pointed at, it's probably redirected somehow.
Tools here
-
So if you have a link from Yellow Pages and Urban spoon, do you think some are followed and some are not??
-
they are no follow links but still worth having for local seo. They are also free and take little time to setup. Why wouldn't you do it?
-
Yup, they are counted. Yelp won't show up because it uses a redirect but I see merchantcircle, urbanspoon, manta, etc in my GWT links list. OSE is reporting less but i still have a urbanspoon and yellowpages backlink.
-
Many of those listings do provide a link, but it's usually nofollowed or redirected somehow, so that it doesn't pass any juice.
They're still valuable listings to have for their citation value alone. Local Search is critical for any business with a physical location.
I'd recommend using a Local Search product like Localeze, Axiom, ExpressUpdate, or UBL. It's a lot less time consuming than going out there and manually updating all of your Local listings yourself.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Backlinking and Redirect links
Can anyone properly explain that whats the basic differnce between redirects? and backlinks? my site lottery sambad is getting some 301 redirects, is that good or bad??
Link Building | | Mubashir_Baloch0 -
Spammy no follow backlinks - what should I do?
There is a individual/company that is creating lots of spam sites in my niche. It doesn't seem that they are trying to rank for any keywords, so I'm a little confused as to their purpose, but here's what they're doing. They scrape the top 10 Google results for each keyword and create a page - so if the niche is "widgets", they scrape the top 10 ranked sites for 'widgets', 'blue widgets', 'red widgets', and so on. A 'results' page is created for each keyword, which is linked from a home page. The results page always contains 10 websites - text is the site metadescription or similar. Each website gets a nofollow link back with the page title used as the anchor text. The host sites all have the keyword in the domain name - e.g www.widgetsxyz.com. The sites are thrown together but interestingly have a very crappy but individual logo (like 90's clipart). The host sites all have high DA/PA due to some very extensive link spam pointing to the sites, with very targeted keywords. There is seemingly no purpose to these sites that I can see - no other 'followed' links on the page or site. Whoever is doing this is churning out tens, if not hundreds of these sites. Any ideas what might be going on here, and whether I should be disavowing these sites (even though no follow). The fear is that they could switch the links to do follow, and get all the major players penalised in one fell swoop. ???
Link Building | | johnohara0 -
Will Google penalize for backlinks on non-indexed pages?
Have a client who has a bunch of links from spammy sites that aren't even indexed by Google. Will Google penalize (i.e. Penguin) for backlinks from spammy sites that aren't indexed? I'm guessing "Yes, Google still crawls non-indexed sites and may penalize the sites linked to from the banned site." Anyone have any data or experience with this? Anyone have a non-indexed or banned site? Does Google still crawl it?
Link Building | | AdamThompson0 -
Merging 10 niche pages into 1 large page: how to go about it?
Good day,
Link Building | | rayvensoft
I am new to SEOmoz, so please allow me to take this opportunity to introduce myself before jumping into the questions. I have a small network of sites that focus on language education online. I have been working on them for about 3 years, and they were starting to do well. I am sure I made some mistakes along the way with regards to SEO (I paid for article distribution, and directory submission). I also did link exchanges - mainly with related sites, but some of them were kind of grey . I stayed away from blackhat entirely.
So, like many people I got affected by Google Penguin. Luckily it was not as bad as many of the people I have heard about. 7 out of my 10 sites, stayed on or near the top for the main keywords. They did however drop for some of the secondary keywords. 3 of the sites however got hit hard. Based on this, I have ventured to guess that google is telling me I was doing it about 70% right, and 30% wrong. Well, live and learn.
After April 24th I started to scower the web to find out what happened and to see what to do. In my readings I noticed that a lot of people were affected, but some where not. The one thing I found that most of the people who were affected had in commune was that they were on SEOmoz. So I decided to join. So now I am here to hopefully learn what I did wrong, and what I need to do right. I have no problem at all in starting from scratch and putting in the hard work. Now, as for my question. As I mentioned, not all of my sites were hit by Penguin. More of them survived than got killed. I was hoping to be able to leverage those sites to give the new larger site a kick-start. Just to give you some metric, all 10 sites have a quality rank of between 40-60 according opensiteexplorer. The linking is nothing extreme. The pages have anywhere from 200-1000 links. Nothing more than that. So here are the questions. 1) The SEO I did on all 10 sites were very similar. So I am afraid of just doing a 301 redirect from the 7 other sites in the future google may punish them as well, and as such my main page new page will suffer. What would you guys recommend. Instead of a 301, I could just ad a link to the sub pages on the new site. It would be less effective, but also less risky. What would you all suggest? 2) If I take the 301 option, what is the general recommendation on how to phase it in. I am assuming Google would not like it if all 7 pages got redirected on the same day. That would essentially make the page have 5000 or so links overnight. What is the general recommendation for these kinds of things. one 301 a week? one 301 a month? The 301's would not be to the homepage, they would each go to a relevant sub-section of the site. Sorry for the long first post. My wife tells me I don't know when enough is enough sometimes. 🙂 Thanks in advance for any assistance and I am excited to see what I can learn on SEOmoz.0 -
Facebook Likes
I see major companies now conducting TV advertising advising viewers they will donate money to worthy causes every time they are "liked" on Facebook. If Facebook likes carry some or all the weight of a link, doesn't this amount to buying links, and how will search engines deal with this?
Link Building | | waynekolenchuk1 -
Make a new page or more links to existing page for 2nd keyword?
We have a page optimized for 'blue widgets'. We rank in organic spot #3 or 4 for that (moves around from week to week). Fairly happy with that. We have another derivative term 'blue widgets small' (example, but it's same format: <original phrase="">+ <single word="">) where we currently rank #6 organic in Google when people search on the 3 word phrase.</single></original> We'd like to rank higher than #6 for the 3 word phrase. Should we: (1) Build a bunch of links with anchor text equal to the 3 word phrase and point to the existing page (which is optimized on-page for the first 2 of the 3 words) or (2) Make a new page optimized for the 3 word phrase and then start building links to it with anchor text equal to the 3 words (and non-cannibalizing variants of the 3 words)? The 2 word phrase is pretty competitive and it has taken us months to get that page to be #3 or 4 organic for that phrase. The 3 word phrase is much less competitive and we don't think it would take that long to make a dedicated page rank higher than #6 for the 3 words. Suggestions? Thanks.
Link Building | | scanlin0 -
Are backlinks to a domain that redirects useless?
I am working on trying to get backlinks. We are currently redirecting a few Domains to our current domain name. One of the Domains that is redirecting is the main Domain, we will be advertising in the near future. Can I send backlinks to the redirected URL or does it only carry link juice if it is to the main Domain?
Link Building | | hfranz0
