6 {{ upvoteCount | shortNum }}
6 {{ upvoteCount | shortNum }}

Building links to Yelp, Foursquare, Manta listings

by Claude Whitacre
4 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I have created listings on Manta, Insiderpages, Justclicklocal, Foursquare, Brownbrook, Yelkowbot, Kudzu, City Search, Mojo Pages, EZlocal, Judysbook. I do this for local clients to improve Google page on listings. The listings show up fine. The pages that have the listings are all nofollow links. So linking from these pages won't help your website SEO. (unless I'm missing a big secret here)

But my question is, is linking to these listing pages going to help. Most do not show Pagerank when I go to them. Will linkbuilding to them be wasted? Or are these real pages that will build Pagerank if I work at it?

I know linking to a Google Places listing is a waste of time, (maybe that changed now that it's Google Plus Business) but what about these other sites? Anyone know off the top of their head? Thanks guys.
#building #foursquare #links #listings #manta #yelp
  • Profile picture of the author Claude Whitacre
    OK, I've decided to find out for myself. I found the links to 16 local directories (all the popular ones) and looked up the listings for four clients.
    That took an hour or so.
    Now, I'm sending that list to two Fiverr people that really produce a ton of spam blog comments. This type of "evil spam blog comment linking" has been one of the 3 best methods to drive Youtube videos to the top of a Youtube search. So now, I'm going to try it for directory listings.

    I just want to see if the links matter. And if they either improve Google Plus Business positions or at least drive up the listings themselves in the search results, I'll use this to help my other clients. If not, at least now I know for sure.

    For anyone interested, I have found that driving links to Youtube videos and photos that I place on Google Places (Now Google Plus Business) listings actually make a difference, as well as SEO for the listed website.

    I hope that helps someone.
    Signature
    One Call Closing book https://www.amazon.com/One-Call-Clos...=1527788418&sr

    What if they're not stars? What if they are holes poked in the top of a container so we can breath?
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[6575770].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author mikaroee
    I see only good things coming from this experiment. You'll strengthen the links and you'll likely make those pages rank. "Evil blog comments" are bad when you send them to a new site in a mass quantity. Sending them to a trusted site (like youtube or yelp) in mass quantity or even a new site over a period of time will help rankings.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[6577553].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author Claude Whitacre
      Thanks for the input. Yeah, I would never blast spam blog comments to anyone website, even aged websites.But blog posts on high PR blogs and article websites? Sure.
      Signature
      One Call Closing book https://www.amazon.com/One-Call-Clos...=1527788418&sr

      What if they're not stars? What if they are holes poked in the top of a container so we can breath?
      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[6583699].message }}
      • Profile picture of the author Claude Whitacre
        If you found this post, it's worth reading.

        I did my experiment where I drove about 20,000 links (low quality comment spam) to each of the sites mentioned above for four client's listings on 16 different local business directories.

        No difference at all. I also pinged these links through Linklicious.com
        all the links are there, all are crawled...but no effect that I can tell.

        The only way this test isn't valid is if Google has not crawled the Directories between the time I started this and now. But I think these sites get crawled pretty often.

        If anyone has a different result from similar testing, I'm here to learn.
        Signature
        One Call Closing book https://www.amazon.com/One-Call-Clos...=1527788418&sr

        What if they're not stars? What if they are holes poked in the top of a container so we can breath?
        {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[6694886].message }}

Trending Topics