Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Are Yellow Pages links good for SEO
-
I have a client that has 2500 yellowpages.com links like this one http://m.yellowpages.com/hillside-nj/guardianship-services Are these SEO relevant? Can they hurt SEO efforts. Is this something should push for clients? Can Yellow pages be a good link building strategy? What say you?
-
These links are coming from when a business advertises with Yellowpages.com. I have seen evidence that they are destroying one of my clients NAP's because each link is coming from a different city that the local business doesn't belong to them. Have your client Stop advertising with them immediately and disavow all links just to be safe.
-
Without having the client's site to be able to check, I'd guess that the reason you're not seeing these links popping up within Open Site Explorer is due to the size of Yellow Pages' site in conjunction with the way that we compile our index.
When we crawl through a site during the indexing process, we limit the number of pages that we'll crawl on a single domain in order to help us sample a broader and more diverse link landscape (or Mozscape, if you will
). There are a few million pages on Yellow Pages' domain, and since we elect to cap out indexing a single domain around ~50,000 pages (I'm uncertain of the exact value), only a relative handful of the most prominent pages on the domain would be included to avoid index saturation. I hope this helps to explain what you're seeing there! -
Hi Miriam,
What a great question. Yellowpages.com has linked to individual blog posts on my clients site from each town listing in New Jersey. I have like 70 posts on the site and there are like 550 twps. in New Jersey so there you go.
They don't show up in my Moz Analytics or open site explorer. I see these links in google search console. I imagine that these are no follow?
Thanks
-
Hey Donald,
YP can be a good citation for a local business but I am puzzled by the sheer number of links you've found - 2500? Most businesses would not have 2500 listings (unless they are McDonald's or something like that). What is the origin of this many links from a single entity?
-
Hi Donald,
I normally stay away from yellowpages as google can see this as spam and even more so when you have 2500 coming from one site. I normally disavow them altogether. If they acted like a other local listing sites and didn't give so many links it's fine but yellowpages is known to do this for sure.
Local Citations can be a great part of your link building but you need to be careful and insure its done right. Here is a page Moz has put together https://moz.com/learn/local/listings about local listing/citations and why you should do them and how to get started.
Hope this helps.
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
-
Local Landing Page Optimization and Multiple GMB Listings
Hello, We’re building out a site for our business that has close to 100 office locations in different cities. Many of these are ‘partner brands’ that we have acquired under our brand. Similar to a franchise model. We want to be able to help users find offices near their location. Each office will have it’s own landing page with a physical address and contact information. We know we’ll have to build out unique copy and markup customized to the office/location. We’ve already read through https://moz.com/blog/overcoming-your-fear-of-local-landing-pages as well. We’re also considering ‘silos’ to build out pages for each location. To preserve authority and avoid cannibalization; our thought was having each location as sub-folders off of our domain (i.e. domain.com/locations/Partner#1/). The other option would be using a sub-domain (i.e. Partner.Domain.com/) which we noticed competitors doing and treating each sub-domain as their own independent site. Is all of the above the correct strategy? Any further suggestions? Should we fill out a separate GMB for each office and should they all use the same brand name? (in other words “BrandA” vs. “BrandA” - Brooklyn Office). In addition to GMB; would each location need local listings created (also all under the same name)? Any help or insight would be very much appreciated. Looking forward to hearing from all of you! Thank you in advance. Best,
Local Listings | | Ben-R0 -
Local SEO penalty?
Hi Moz Community We are in a unique position. We just launched a new site for a client. The site was doing fine before but it wasn't very user friendly. We created a site with almost identical architecture and content as the last one, just new design and layout. Within 5 days, the site dropped off of LOCAL search almost completely, it now ranks on the 9th page in Austin Texas. (reliantplumbingdotcom). Every other location (Dallas, LA, Philadelphia, Houston) all show the site on the first page for relevant keywords (Austin Plumbers, Austin Plumber) I have no idea what to think about this and don't know if we're being penalized somehow (checked GSC and no manual penalty) I have never experienced a site being blacklisted locally but well ranked everywhere else. Thoughts?
Local Listings | | GrueBleenAgency1 -
GMB best practice for chiropractic office (individual vs. business pages)
For a chiropractic or other doctor's office with multiple doctors, should each have their own personal Google My Business page page AND a business page for the practice? If they just have a business page now, is it worth creating a page for each of the individual doctors? And what if some of them have different focuses (like a acupuncturist and chiropractor), does that mean you should make individual doctor pages when you otherwise wouldn't bother? And IF we should create pages for the individual doctors, should they all have the same address and website since they work in the same practice. Curious if there is a best practice for this... has anyone seen positive or negative results with or without the individual doctor pages? Thanks!
Local Listings | | Mike-i0 -
Why would a website link disappear from a Google Place listing?
Hi, a local non-profit recently re-branded their name from MacDonald Center to Maybelle Center. When they updated their business information their website link disappeared. They've updated from within and dashboard to no avail. We've requested edits/updates via Google Map maker but it says Denied. Here's a URL for the SERP result. Note the button for "website" would normally appear by the button for "directions" https://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome-psyapi2&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8&q=maybelle center portland&oq=maybelle center portland&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i59j69i61.4316j0j7
Local Listings | | Flock.Media
Can someone please explain why this is happening and how we can fix it? They are a great community organization who's about to receive some media coverage and we'd really appreciate it if users hearing about the group be able to easily access their new website.
They are aware of their duplicate listings but, typical of non-profits, have limited time and funds so are prioritizing to address more urgent issues first. However, I don't believe duplicate listings would cause such an issue but please let me know if I'm wrong here
0 -
Do you need contact details (NAP) on every page of your website for local search ranking ?
We’ve got a clients site which doesn't have the contact details on every page, all the contact details are on the /contact page which is using the schema.org local business markup Some sites that our outranking us locally have their contact details on all pages, where as others only have it on the contact page also. Is having your contact details on every page a ranking factor for local search ?
Local Listings | | mike8780 -
How does dynamic call tracking affect local SEO?
I would like to begin tracking calls and offline conversions, but I am concerned that if I add a dynamic call tracking software that it will negatively affect SEO.
Local Listings | | FluidAdvertising1 -
Competitor outranking me on google with their yelp, facebook and youtube pages
I'm working to rank for a local search term (my city wedding photographers). I'm frustrated that my competitor is outranking me not with their website (they are no. #9 and I'm #6) but with their Yelp account (#1) Facebook Account (#5) and Youtube account (#7 - not outranking me, but right below me). I'm going to continue working on my SEO to hopefully get higher up, but even then, they are basically dominating page 1 with their links. It gets worse on page 2. They are showing up 5 times for youtube/vimeo videos, and 1 time with a spammy landing page with no images, full of keyword anchored links to their main site. What gives? Since when are social media profiles outranking local sites on google organic searches? Could it be that our keyword is just so low competition that google has allowed all this stuff to rank so highly?
Local Listings | | studio35design0 -
How to get a verification tick next to the URL in a Google Plus Local page?
Google Plus Local: https://plus.google.com/+PrestedHallFeering Website: www.prested.co.uk So how do I get the verification tick next to the URL on this businesses Google page? Also, even though the website is much strong then those in the map listings for Wedding Venues In Essex, whats preventing this website from appearing in there? My local optimisation knowledge is poor!
Local Listings | | jasondexter0