Get High Ranking, Quality Backlinks, FREE!

Though many of you will argue that local business directory listings are not true backlinks, in the sense that they may NOT offer you a place to put your website’s URL, and you would be correct.

However, they are a citation for business and are highly recognized by many internet search engines. These citations get treated though actual backlinks to your business website, and your website will gain credibility when you gain them.

Telephone directories like YellowPages for Business (Add a free listing, link in the footer), 411 Canada, GoldBook and CanPages are high ranking directories with key search engines that offer FREE business listings.

However, as of March 2023, the YellowPages “Add a free listing” link in the footer of their home page has been broken, and the 411 Canada website down for Everyone!

The first three directories mentioned above are relatively easy to see how to make your free business listing… but CanPages is a little bit more difficult to find so…

To add your business listing to CanPages you’ll need to:

  1. ) select your city listed under your province

  2. ) select your business type. I found clicking on the relevant letter of the alphabet under COMPLETE CATEGORY INDEX the easiest method of finding the where to list my business

  3. ) scroll to the very bottom, right-hand corner and click on Add. Should you need to update your listing, click on Update Your Listing. It now appears that you can no longer add listings to their page. Information appears to be being brought in directly from the yp.ca website.

NOTE: All directories need to have the VERY same listing information regarding your business, else this step will work against your business site’s ranking. This is known as NAP – name, address and phone number MUST match EXACTLY in ALL directory listings.

So, if you have posted with directories, and those listings now contain stale information, fixing it becomes even more important than simply adding more listings.

These sites are considered high-authority by many search engines. Having backlinks from these directories, and other similar sites will gain your business website a much higher ranking. Try it!

Best Directories to List Your Website With

BEST

The following is a list of directories you can (and should) readily list your website with for improved SEO:

  1. https://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/local
  2. https://www.business.com/
  3. http://www.canadaone.com/business/addbusiness.html
  4. https://www.yellowpages.ca/
  5. http://www.yellowbook.com/add-update-listing/
  6. http://corporate.goldbook.ca/update.aspx
  7. Google MyBusiness
  8. Bing Places for Business
  9. Yelp for Business Owners
  10. Alignable: The Small Business Network
  11. simply search the internet for “local business listing” (without the quotation marks, of course) to find more!

How to Get Your Free Quality Backlink!

Facebook and Your Website

Do you know how valuable a backlink is for your website’s ranking?

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Very valuable!

Without getting into too much detail, a website ranking is basically a score out of ten… as to the “value” of your website in comparison to others sites on the internet.

Ranking is mainly based on two factors:

  1. the number of links pointing to your website and…
  2. the value of those links pointing to your website.

The value is calculated based on the rank of the page linking to your website and questionably, the relevancy of the page linking to your site. I’m stating it like this because there is no real ‘hard-evidence’ to back up the relevancy factor in regards to a website’s ranking …not that I’ve seen so far. However, it certainly is a factor in your website’s overall ranking.

So now, do you want a free backlink?

So now; do you want a free backlink?

Here’s all you need to do… be logged into Facebook and click on the LIKE button at my business fan page:

…then, find an entry on my fan page wall that you like and make a comment… feel free to add a relevant link to your comment, giving YOU a FREE backlink to your website!

Please Help Us Spread the Word About Our FREE Backlinks post - Click Here!

Posting Quality Comments on Blogs Helps Your Website

Let Us Know!

When posting a quality comment on a blog you could gain a backlink to your website, which in turn will help your website’s ranking with the search engines.

When you fill in the “Website” textbox offered when commenting, then the “Name” you use becomes linked to the Uniform Resource Locator (URL) that you typed into the “Website” textbox.

However, there are no longer any advantages for using keywords as the “Name” used when posting a comment. So, simply use the name you want the blogger to address you with as your name.

First, I would like to say “Thank you Jeremy”, for your the questions left in an original comment he posted before I merged this post with the one above (Only wished I had of thought about keeping at least a screen print of his comment before deleting the original post.).

Posing great questions like he did helps everyone when answered properly, thus this posting is my attempt to do just that.

Let me start with his first question: “Do you think that posting comments on other folks’ blogs is a legitimate method of link building or should it be avoided?”

My answer: Posting comments on other’s blogs is a great way for helping others, as well as a widely accepted means of sharing the advantage of adding value to another blogger’s website when posting a quality comment, and not simply spamming.

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For those of you who are not sure what a spammed comment looks like, below is a screen print of two spam comments. This is the administrative view (Dashboard view in WordPress) of such comments. Note: The comments do NOT make sense.

screen print of spam type comments

Making it a SMART idea to NEVER automatically accept ANY comment made. Always moderate your comments.

Spam comments are posted by bots or robot (automated) scripts or software. These types of comments are a major headache for many bloggers, and create added administrative work to a website when trying to sort through several comments posted, in order to find those nuggets of quality comments made by real human beings.

Now however, there are many great plugins to slow down, if not stop those spam bots. By Google searching for those types of plugins, you will find a wide range of options to choose from.

Now for Jeremy’s second question: “Are the comment links more likely to have longevity when you put your name instead of your keyword in the name field?”

Name textbox example

My answer: Bloggers who understand the value of a good comment will be very grateful for the fresh content that quality comments provide for their website.

So, if no detrimental keywords are used (Example: Ontario website designer) in the Name textbox provided in the comment section of many popular blogs today, then I see no earthly reason why a blogger would ever want to even consider deleting such a comment (…and here’s the qualifier, so please everyone pay close attention…) providing the comment adds quality and relates to the post.

By allowing a commenter who adds real value to the “conversation” a backlink, using their chosen keywords, a blogger will simply be rewarding them for a well stated comment.

In a case like this, why shouldn’t this be a win-win situation for both the blogger AND the commenter?

Below is a screen print of a comment I posted where Mark published a very interesting article about commenting (the blog has now been reformatted for other uses) followed by Mark’s response to my comment:

screen print of a comment I posted

Since my comment was posted, I noticed Mark has had the Name textbox of the comment section on his blog adjusted to accommodate a future commenter like me. Thanks Mark!

Reply Name textbox example

Now, I’m not saying that ALL bloggers will accept your chosen keywords when used in the Name textbox, but I am saying that many bloggers today WILL accept them.

After several unsuccessful attempts with this method of posting comments, I now find my rate of accepted comments high enough to make this technique my standard when commenting on other’s blogs.

UPDATE: Do NOT make it a habit of using the exact same keywords for EVERY comment you create.

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Google will penalize any website with the exact same anchor text link used over and over again, because it is not considered as “normal” behaviour.

And, too many bots have been used in creating these types of backlinks. Penalizing websites for this is Google’s way to make certain that human-placed comments get ranked higher than bot or spammed comments.

As of 2020, while updating this post, Google no longer rates backlinks in comments as valuable as they once did before, due to the many previous years of abuse.

For everyone: As a bonus for reading this post thoroughly, here’s a FREE blank backlinks log I created using Excel 2007; it’s in a zip file for ease of downloading. This can be used to help you keep track of comments made on other’s blogs.

screen print of my free backlinks log

Be sure to re-visit the same blogs again in about a month after posting your comment to see if your comment was accepted. The NOTES column will help you to discover your rate of comments accepted, and thus backlinks gained.

Should you discover a low rate of accepted comments, then check to see if your comment(s) truly did add value to the blogger’s post or not.

An easy question to ask yourself is; if this was your post, would you accept this comment should it appear on YOUR blog?

If your answer is “No!”, then adjust your comment to add real value to the article and submit it again… being sure to make note of your edited version of your comment in your backlink log file. Again, re-visit in about a month to see if your revised comment was accepted or not.

Side Note: Commenting on a blog isn’t that difficult when you think about it. How many blogs have you discovered over a period of time that have offered you really helpful hints, recipes, and/or solutions to a software issue you may have suffered?

When you take a few minutes to add a quality comment to such a post, you not only help the blogger know their information is helpful and worthy of remaining posted, but you also help ensure the blog’s continuance …and, you just might gain a great backlink too as a Thank YOU!

Trish

Website Designer for Parr's Publishing. As a full certified Internet Specialist, I help business owners and organizations increase their profits by providing them with a fully managed, custom designed website as well as basic Search Engine Optimization.

4 thoughts on “Get High Ranking, Quality Backlinks, FREE!”

  1. I’ve debated this and would love your opinion. Do you think that posting comments on other folks’ blogs is a legitimate method of link building, or should it be avoided? Are the comment links more likely to have longevity when you put your name instead of your keyword in the name field?

    Reply
    • Great questions, both of these, Thanks Jeremy!

      Yes, I do believe that posting quality comments on other’s blogs is a legitimate method of link building, and authors of posts should encourage additional discussions on their topic, which serves to prove to Google that people are actually reading the posted information.

      Quality comments help blog post authors gain popularity with Google and will server to help the post rank better with every conversation that takes place in the comments.

      Whether you use a keyword or your real name is no longer as relevant as it was back in 2011, though either way, if a persons comment adds to the topic then why now allow the contributor their keywords. The comment links are NOFOLLOW anyway.

      Reply
    • Nice to have a highly recognized SEO service provider take the time to read, act on the advice given, and then compliment my article.
      Much appreciated,
      Trish

      Reply

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