Is it a good idea to have some backlinks point back to your business listing on the various directories?
-
During my link building campaign Ive been doing competitive research. I noticed that one of my competitors, who ranks very well organically and locally, has several back links pointing back to his business listing page on the various directories, such as Manta, Yellowbot, and so forth. Ive seen one of their profile pages with a PA as high as 65, where mine has a PA of 1. They seem to be heavily involved in spammy and shady techniques. This is why I'm asking if this is a recommended practice?
-
Hello MFC,
Thanks for coming to Q&A with your question. If I've correctly understood your query, you are saying that you are seeing competitors doing linkbuilding to their directory listings. Is this right?
While I can't see a real problem with the idea, I'm also not sure it's a very good use of time/funding. Given that Local is so Google-centric, and that it is the strength of your website which is so big a factor in your rankings, building links to your own property (your website) is likely to be a much better idea than building them to 3rd party sites.
Also, of perhaps relevant interest is this recent discussion regarding building links to one's Google Place Page. I had a discussion with Mike Blumenthal about this, which he subsequently turned into a blog post. I recommend that you read it, including the great discussion below the post:
http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/01/24/google-places-myth-linking-to-your-places-page/
Hope this helps!
Miriam
-
I think the crucial factor here is long-term goals over short term benefits. While using some directories such as the ones you listed are showing boosts in SEO for your competition, there is always the chance (and a likely one at that) that they are found for what they are by Google and other search engines.
Because of this, while there is a boost at the moment, it's quite possible that when they are found out to be using "black hat" techniques and subsequently punished for it, the sites they link to will also be punished. This has happened before with link farms and such.
My recommendation therefore would be not to use these, and instead stick to properly monitored and customised link building techniques. Directories are a fantastic resource for incoming links, and there are lots out there that are properly maintained; use them instead and you'll reap long term rewards.
This is a longer road, I understand, however you will be sitting pretty in the long term.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
Looking strategy for Backlinks
Hi, I'm a new bee here, Just wondering if we have some good but easy strategies to get a higher rank in PA and DA?
Link Building | | BeriCollection
My Store URL is [https://bericollection.com].
We are selling Shoes, Watches and smart gadgets.
We do shipping worldwide but need help from the community.0 -
What are the benefits of having more refering domains than inbound backlinks or vice versa? and is it neccassary to get a click on a backlink which i created on someone elses website,
somebody told me if i get a click on my backlink , i will get more refering domains
Link Building | | calvinkj0 -
My site backlinking search came back with 19k results, that's WAY above the usual number
Looking into the results I found over 18,000 instances of the same 2 websites having links in every single page, staging version of their site. How do I get rid of these? Are they damaging my SEO?
Link Building | | dynastymedia1 -
Outreach for backlinks
What are some of the best ways to reach out for back links? The goal is to get a link from their website to our root or an anchored text but what are some techniques and options to consider to make it beneficial for both parties?
Link Building | | Cfarcher0 -
A backlinks question
Hi all Could do with a second opinion on this one if anyone has a moment please. Recent Google updates have targeted overally optimised backlink profiles as they are clearly for seo purposes and not natural. The question I have is how does this relate to an ecommerce website? If I sell 'blue 1980 aged cheese' (I know nothing about cheese so perhaps not the best example!!) and I have a url on my shop domain.com/store/blue-1980-aged-cheese with the product name as the page title along with the domain name. If I were to get backlinks pointing to this page using the anchor of 'blue 1980 aged cheese' (and other variations of that, blue cheese, aged blue cheese etc) would this be considered to be too optimised? Given the page is about this item then surely it could be considered natural that people link using the product name, as well as using the site name and the domain url Any thoughts please Thanks, Carl
Link Building | | GrumpyCarl0 -
Broken back links
I have noticed that some of the back links built for us by our SEO agency we have no longer work. Is there is a common view on the percentage of back links generally do not work say after a year or so. If there is an acceptable number, want to give to my SEO agency as a KPI?
Link Building | | kesh-2833120 -
What do the "best" backlink profiles look like, in terms of percentages from quality content, bookmarks, social media, directories, etc?
I recognize that there is no such thing as one ideal link profile, per se, but I am curious, if you sampled 100 high authority sites, what would their inbound links look like on average, broken out by source type? Some sites would have a ton of social sharing due to their funny pop-cultural content, while others might be quoted and linked in context for their brilliant insights. A very technical resource might gain a lot of links from forum discussions. If I can complete this exercise on my own, I welcome your advice on how to do that with OSE or the like.
Link Building | | withoutthestress0 -
Value of paid for directories
For a company with a limited budget, is it worth spending money on paid for directories which a high authority to boost your page rank? Thanks
Link Building | | f1plustraining0