Given the SEO fallout around web directories of the past, there’s a lot of confusion (and perhaps fear) around the use and effectiveness of local business directories. And rightfully so – they were known, once upon a time, as “link directories”, and auto-submitting your URL to hundreds of them for about the price of a bowl of poutine was pretty common.
The majority of SEOs who pushed these practices weren’t interested so much in reaching customers through the business directories themselves, but in the back-links they created. It was no surprise, then, that Google and the other search engines stopped paying attention to them or algorithmically penalized their use all together…
