Yell's New Connect Service
I'm not alone in being highly suspicious of this latest offering from Yell. They've long been pressing the panic button as a result of declining interest in their services. I shan't go into discussing their exhorbitant fees again.
Their new service Yell Connect for the sum of £420 pa (inc VAT) purports to centrally add business listings to hundreds of business directories - in one hit. This is done via a control panel. It also enables subscribers to add posts to Social Media accounts with just a couple of clicks. And voila - high listings in Google!
The business community in the UK is already onto this latest ruse with forum comments such as: “so how do they do this how exactly - interview every damn biz owner in the UK? then do the huge promotion required to get the results, and all for £360+VAT? this is an insane service offering that can't be workable, even for Yell.com.”
Another contributor writes: “Yell seem to be grabbing at straws since their core business fell off the proverbial cliff. I'd treat any of their claims with a couple of tons of salt. Particularly their claim of being 'Google's biggest partner in the UK'. Are they implying they have some kind of insider information to help rank your website?”
You'll find more of these posts in: http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/threads/yells-new-connect-offering-seo.355258/
One of the best comments was this: “The world would be a better place if the selling of SEO as a service was not legal, then people would produce websites that serve their customer and build their reputation to achieve status in Google.”
Google is not stupid - they're already across link farms - and submitting directory listings centrally by the hundred would ring very loud alarm bells at Google HQ.
THE FACTS
All website owners can do this work themselves. Getting listed on Business Directories is a good idea and is accepted as being well worth the time and effort. It takes time to add manually but it certainly won't alert Google to dodgy goings-on. You'll also control which Directories you're on - avoiding being listed on spam sites.
Oh and yes ... you only need to list yourself on a directory once - so why keep on paying Yell to do this every month/year?
As for centrally posting blogs - how many social media accounts do businesses have? Facebook? Twitter? Google+? It's hardly time-saving to post on these centrally.
I supply an SEO help sheet for every customer after I build them a new website - which includes the main Directories to target. You can find out more on my SEO page.