Yellow Book Advertising – Is Yellow Book Advertising Good for Your Business?
A number of years ago, when I was considering getting (sorry for cursing) a job, I had an interview at Yellowbook.com for an account specialist position. The position was primarily for a PPC (Pay per Click) account manager, which I have a bit of experience doing, having first experienced the activities involved with a PPC campaign
about 7 years ago and I believe the entire campaign was run on what was known as Overture, which became part of the Yahoo empire. The campaign was for Bicycle Touring with Baldydog, a bicycle touring equipment company(the original Baldydog), that did not do well at all, and actually wasted a ton of money.
Anyway, back to the authority known as Yellow Book.
Yellow book advertising is a method of advertising that many businesses may decide is an appropriate method of spending their valuable advertising dollars.
From the humble beginnings in Long Island, Yellow Book has grown to be a huge advertising medium. I bet most people have let their fingers do the walking on more than one occasion. Currently though, the old Yellow Pages has seen a serious decline, and is struggling to stay a float. However, it is still a preferred advertising medium to many of the mom and pops to name a few. I am not going to tell you that it is dieing, and the new Yellow Pages is the smartphone..I am sure you new that.
Possible Ways to Capitalize on Yellow Book
What I am going to give you are four ideas for taking advantage of the declining authority of Yellow Book.
- Become a Yellow Book certified SEO Contractor?
- Make an SEO training program, and get Yellowbook to market it to their huge customer base.
- Link Build and Rank for Yellow Book Keywords such as:
- yellow book
- Yellow Book Advertising
- Yellow Book Advertiser
- Yellow Book Advertising rates
- Yellowpages
- Yellowpages.com
- Yellowpages.cm
- yellowpages.cmo
- yellowpages
- yellowpage
- the Yellow Pages
- yellowpages map
- YP.com map
- yellow pages maps
- etc…
- Lastly, go after Yellowpages.com advertising customers who were serviced badly by the old world advertising authority. (there are a lot of them). I have more than a few clients that previously were using Yellowpages.com or Superpages.com, which did provide a website and were being charged on a PPC basis. Several of my clients that previously were with Yp.com, said they had signed an iron clad contract which meant being charged hundreds of dollars a month for clicks that YP said they had received..but the calls did not come in at all and the ROI(return on investment) was just not there. On the positive, I have noticed that the sites that my clients were given, were optimized well for local search, but usually the on-page optimization is where the SEO ends with YP sites.
Why Yellowpages Advertising is so Bad
First, I did say that a few of my clients did sign up for and get an actual website. However, the sites were very basic, and were optimized for only their local geographic regions. So showing up in the SERPs for other geographic regions without any further SEO is out of the question.
Secondly, my clients were being charged for clicks, which meant when ever a person searched for say “Exton Home Cleaner“, and the resulting search brought up a Superpages listing, when the searcher clicked on the link, and visited the Superpages page and then hopefully clicked on my clients link, he was charged for a click…whether he got any business or not.
Thirdly, Yellowpages or any of their affiliated sites do not make money if the clients site ranks, only if the YP pages does. So they have no incentive to properly SEO the clients sites.
What Can YellowPages do to Turn It Around
First, they can quit ripping people off for unsubstantiated PPC advertising, by changing their monetization strategies. They already have the ability to build websites, so why not focus on creating a advertising experience that does not take advantage of the small business owner who is powerless to do anything after they have signed a seemingly iron clad contract after being sweet talked by a Yellowpages Advertising sales person who promises the world but delivers little.
Are You a Prior YellowPages Advertiser?
If you are a small business owner who is tired of paying for Yellowpages advertising, and would like to see a higher ROI on their advertising dollars, please leave a comment or stop by Baldydog.com and feel free to contact us for a quote that will enable you to see a significantly higher ROI than Yellowpages advertising.
Do you have a Yellow Book, Yellowpages, Superpages or other type of experience you can share with us?
MY Suggestions for YellowPages
I as most people who grew up before the Internet, have fond memories of using the Yellowpages for a variety of tasks. Of the day when every home had at least one and it was openned on a daily basis. The Yellowpages at that time was a resource for not only businesses, but government info, zip code info, school info, coupons, and more.
If I were yellow pages, I would cease the practice of making money by charging for phantom clicks. Give their huge number of clients more than they bargained. Give them an ROI that makes Google Adsense pail in comparison.
If I were in charge at Yellowpages, I would do everything to insure that I stayed the advertising authority that YellowPages once was. I make sure that the brand had a positive image rather than an image of an advertising dinosaur.
As a wise man said, if you want to make a lot of money, find a way to help a lot of people. Yellow pages has the ability to make a lot of money for generations to come, by helping a lot of businesses to succeed.
Finally, I would like to offer my help to Yellowpages to improve their brand reputation that it was in the past.
Written by Pixelhead on July 27th, 2010 with 73
comments.
Read more articles on Advertising and Uncategorized.
Niche SEO – Find Your SEO NicheTravel Bloggers : TNI Tweetup for Travelers
My StumbleUpon Page
