Search Engines Have Replaced the Yellow Pages
If you have ever talked with a salesperson from your local Yellow Pages company, you can feel how desperate the industry is. In the old days when most consumers relied on the Yellow Pages for business information, every company had to have a presence in the Yellow Pages. The way to gain the dominance on the Yellow pages is to print larger, more colorful ads. In most locations, businesses pay at least $5,000 per month for a half-page ad, and $10,000 per month for a full-page ad. That is $60,000 – $120,000 a year!
As search engines like Google and Yahoo become the place for people to search for products, services and information, smart businesses are investing their money into search engine optimization to make their web sites more visible to searchers. When it comes to the cost, SEO costs only a fraction of that of the Yellow Pages advertisement. Unlike the Yellow Pages that charges a fixed price over 12 months regardless of the results, SEO can be very scalable. You can increase or decrease your SEO spending based on your business cycle, seasonal cycle and search marketing results. The SEO cost can be varied based on the business’ needs. Even spending $5,000 on a one-time search engine optimization service can produce great, long-lasting results.
If you are a business owner and you are skeptical about the effectiveness of SEO, here a question you should ask: if SEO doesn’t work, why are your competitors doing it? Based on the experience of our clients, those who used to advertise on the Yellow Pages had all stopped after they started with our SEO service. In term of the return on investment, SEO outperforms the Yellow Pages by 5-10 times.
Scam Alert – Useless Online Marketing by the Yellow Pages
Yellow Pages companies are pulling some “magic” internet tricks, which amount to some worthless advertising. Very often, what the Yellow Pages companies promote as “search engine optimization” is nothing but a scam. They build a generic web site from their standard template so your web site looks identical to your competitors’ sites or even sites from other industries. They then rely on the pay-per-click advertising to buy some untargeted, unfiltered traffic. The so-called “search engine marketing” by the Yellow Pages companies has little effect in attracting the right traffic. Because all these web sites look the same and lack valuable information, they fail to convert any traffic into leads or sales.
The web sites built by the Yellow Pages companies have no organic rankings at search engines. Organic rankings count for 70-80% of all search clicks. The Yellow Pages’ strategy leaves out the majority of the web audience. No wonder it didn’t work, isn’t working and will not work. If you have ever had your web site designed by your Yellow Pages company, you may have already realized it is a waste of time and money.
Don’t Renew Your Yellow Pages Advertisement Again
If you are still debating whether to renew your Yellow Pages ads, here is an objective look at this dying industry by The Wall Street Journal:
The yellow-pages industry is running out of lifelines. In recent years, as its customers migrated to the Web – flocking to sites like Google – the telephone-directory business followed, hoping the Internet would be its salvation.
But that strategy hasn’t panned out. Now, the economic downturn is sending the already ailing business into a tailspin.
The audience for online yellow pages remains relatively small, and traffic growth is slowing. So many directory services are vying for the ad dollars of local businesses that no single site has an authoritative roster.
Meanwhile, ad dollars are drying up as small businesses – the industry’s bread and butter – find it harder to pay bills or have cut their spending sharply.
Quoted from Extinction Threatens Yellow Pages Publishers, by EMILY STEEL, The Wall Street Journal, Nov 17, 2008
Search Engine Optimization Is The Better Choice
Have you noticed that some of your competitors have already dropped their ads in the Yellow Pages? Does that give you a hint as to what you should do? Do you also know that the Yellow Pages companies now give homeowners the option of NOT receiving their publications anymore? Doesn’t that tell you that consumers not longer care for who advertise in the Yellow Pages anymore?
The good news is that if you stop advertising in the Yellow Pages, you can use the same amount of money or less to get much stronger results with search engine optimization. Many businesses have done just that. Perhaps some of your competitors have done that too. Now it is the time for you to take action.