The amount of value you can generate from directory link building can have a huge impact on your SEO efforts if you are doing them right. Here are a few reasons this practice is important, as well as some best practices you should try to employ when you look to build directory links to your domain.
Name, Address, Phone Number
Name, address, phone number, or NAP for short, is the main reason you should be pushing directory style links toward your domain. Google loves to see consistency and accuracy in their information. Your business information on the web can be hard to manage and if you have inaccuracies in that information you could be hurting your efforts as they relate to SEO. Say you moved addresses and went back to change the listings you had built in the past, there are sure to be some that fall through the cracks. Those that have fallen through can be the thorn in the side of your SEO efforts. Having an SEO provider comb through your links and update the information across the board can help you tackle these tasks. If you’d like to work through this yourself there are a few tools you can use to check for accuracy.
Are These Guest Posts?
The term guest post has become quite the buzz word in the SEO industry. While they have their place in your strategy, these links are a little bit different. There are tags that live with the code on the web pages you are interacting with. These codes establish the value and tell search engines how to treat those links. The main differentiator is follow vs. no follow links. There is a much deeper explanation of these tags, but on a surface level they indicate Google (and other search engines) to either pass value through the link (follow) or do not pass the value (nofollow). The better value a website has with Google, the more value that site will pass through its links. So a domain like Facebook or Google has a massive amount of value, but most links from these domains will carry a nofollow tag which constricts the potential value you could receive. It is not to say these links are no good, in fact they can be low hanging fruit requiring very little effort. In the end, directory style links are all about quantity and guest posts are all about quality.
Accuracy of Information
As we have discussed above, the importance of these links falls to uniformity. You should have the same address listed in the same way across all avenues. Here at Firestarter we keep meticulous records to ensure all of our information is uniform. We have one source of truth for our client’s link building efforts. This confirms all data entered will be the same because it will all come from the same place. Some of the most common requests for information include the following:
- Business Name
- Address
- Phone
- Business Categories
- Year Established
- Payments Accepted
While these are all pretty straightforward and don’t leave much room for errors, you’d be surprised how much you could have with slight differences in that list. Some of the more advanced information we get requests for include:
- Staff Bios
- Social Media Cover Photos
- Holiday Hours
- Associations
- Languages
As you can see, the information can stack up fairly quickly. Having a one stop source for all of the information you’ve used to build links in the past keeps your NAP consistent and search engines happy. If you’d like to discuss more about link building feel free to contact us today. We would love to hear from you!
