Backlinking has long been the mainstay of SEO operations.  The truth is that Backlinks are just one piece of the puzzle and because of their overuse it appears that Google has caught on and is reducing the importance of backlinks.

A backlink is a mention of your website on another website.  This gives you “credibility” or so it was thought before India and The Phillipines started churning out backlink’s like chocolate flowing at Willy Wonka’s.

The spammy websites and domineers would pay big money to dominate a keyword using backlinks, and Google found that it’s users weren’t getting what they wanted.

The move to lower the ranking of websites that weren’t mobile friendly might have been an attempt to remedy this.  It will likely have just the opposite effect as the spammers and domineers only work on their websites.  Small businesses have to run their business.

There is good news and bad news from this shift.  The bad news is that small businesses will have some work to do, and being on page one even for long tail keywords is going to get way more expensive.

The good news is you can probably just conceded the pay-per-click war to the spammers and domineers, and focus on your business.

There are now over 50 local directory services online which combined have a search strength nearing Google.

A local directory is a service like Yelp! or YP.com or 411.com.  These companies have free apps for smart phones that use geographic location to find the right service close by.  Isn’t that all we really wanted in the first place?

Smartphones are clearly on pace to be the primary tool for searching the internet, so why get in the battle for placement on Google?

What a small business really needs is a consistent presence across all of the directories and someone to maintain it.  This should cost less than $500 a month even with a small budget for ads on a couple of the directories.

The directories haven’t figured out that you as a small business owner don’t have time to deal with it.  A few are just starting to create accounts for marketing companies to manage more than one business.

For more information or to sign up for local directory service click here.