I cannot say I am a seo expert, but I just know the basics of SEO and I am wondering how come sites like yellow pages are always on top of google or at least at the first page, but often on top in a top-5 position. Sites like yellowpages and similar directory sites are often on top, but they even don't have (fresh) content. How come they are always on top? Or is it just because of the amount of backlinks they have which are relevant + the onpage SEO. I would like to see some theories about this since seo experts always say content = king, but in this case there is no content. PS. here's an example with search results of a query of keywords: car wash Miami and see one of those pages that appear in the search results at the top here and guess what.. no content again
One of the main things that directories like that have going for them is lots of their backlinks will be on-topic and usually fairly good anchor text. I'd guess there's lots of people linking from either car wash related sites or car related sites using the anchor text "car wash companies in miami", "miami car wash companies" etc. Second this with the fact they've probably got thousands of internal pages pointing to that page with targetted anchor text, usually the directories are pretty successful.