Are local business directories worth the effort? Eg. White pages, Yell.com, Local.com?

[Fetseun]

Hi Guys,

Im new to Moz and very keen to do SEO right without upsetting Mr. Google too much.

Are local business directories worth the effort? Its a laborious job, but happy to do it, if its effective and won't be considered spammy by Google?

Thanks

[Fetseun]

Thanks Patrick,

I am based in Australia so unfortunately can't take advantage of MOZ local. But hopefully it will be available here too.

Ill get hacking away at the business directories then.

We have 3 business sites that need to be uploaded. All have different details, can anyone suggest a quicker fill option. Ive heard Google has a extension Call Auto fill but I cant seem to get it to work. Ive also heard of CSV files?

Anyone with advice or experience with this?

Thanks

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hi thereI

I do, overall, find these to be valuable links and listings because ultimately what you want is traffic to your site. You want traffic coming to your website for brand awareness and for users to take action. These listings do just that, they put you in front of audiences looking for your business or services and send traffic. From a SEO standpoint, some of these sites / links may not send ranking or linking value because they are nofollow, but I would not let that you deter you - remember, your purpose in obtaining that link is sending quality traffic to your website to take action, not praying for higher rankings. Just make sure the listings you obtain are relevant and through known entities.

As you said, it's a tedious undertaking to manually list your website in all of these local business directories, but services like Moz Local take all of the work off of you and do this automatically. You can learn more about Moz Local here and focus on other things, like building quality content and obtaining quality links.

Hope this all helps! Good luck!
Patrick