Yes, the yellow pages industry is dying, some would argue it’s dead.

Unused and unwanted.

But a part of me hesitates at completely dropping out of the book.

What I would love to say is “keep your ad or an ad because the yellow pages gives you a free backlink in their online product with any paid ad,” but this is not the case.  It is my personal experience in my local market and my observation in other markets that the yellow pages sales people are not offering a free backlink in the online product with the purchase of an ad in print book. One must pay to be in the print book and pay to be included in the online directory too.

And even if you pay for it, how valuable is that backlink from deep within the yellow pages online directory?  Apparently, not very.  I checked a few different tools for the online directory page where my client would appear if she paid to be included in the online directory, and the page has a 0 (zero) value.

Also, the backlinks are nofollowed. Wow.  Talk about about a waste of advertisers money and about a wasted opportunity by the teleco.

So my suggestion to the client was half-hearted … decrease your big expensive display ad for a smaller in-column ad so you’re not totally out of the book just for the few people who are still using the print product.  She looked at some internal data, and came back with feedback saying she has gotten no patients from a yellow pages referral so she was dropping her yellow ages ad.  I have no data to advise her otherwise, and really, it’s probably a sound move.

In LA too they throw the printed phonebook right away to the trash

Yellow pages sales people have always offered call tracking, but on a limited basis – only to those clients who were waffling on renewing that giant display ad.  What they could be doing is dropping a call tracking number in the every ad over some benchmark value (say $1,500.00 because that would include some of the more elaborate in-column ads) and adding a tracking website URL into the ad.  Together, these tracking mechanisms would give some real data for advertisers to make this renewal decision.  But I know that the real data is probably more hurtful to the renewal rate than having no data.

In comparison, at Search Influence (where a few of us grew up in yellow pages a few years ago),  we understand the need for tracking, for constant proof of our value.  We track form data.  We track phone calls from organic traffic and from paid traffic.  We track all kinds of stuff so we can give real ROIs.  We do this all of the time, and at least every month.  Proving our value every month, month after month, definitely keeps us on our toes, and we share the successes with our clients because of that accountability.

Thanks to Sabrina Tang and lejoe for the great pictures!

Orlando Plastic Surgery Yellow Pages Ads

I worked in the yellow pages industry for just short of 10 years at a CMR, Certified Marketing Representative, where all of my clients were national clients in multiple markets.  So I’ve spent a full decade of my life working in the yellow pages industry, which is not a glamorous media, but at one time it was incredibly profitable for clients based on their return on investment (ROI).  That ROI in yellow pages is now dropping dramatically with every year because of the overwhelming competition from internet for media dollars.

It is in the yellow pages industry where a lot of tracking techniques were started.  I can’t tell you how many tracking phone numbers I have set up and used in a yellow pages ad.  And given a client’s number, had to track a very real ROI each month based on the calls made.

I have organized split run comparisons where we run 1 ad in half of the distribution area of a phone book and another ad in the other half of the distribution area, and then sit back and watch the tracking phone numbers data.

And now in search engine marketing for 2+ years, I find I am doing many of the same things.

When Will first asked me to work with his company, Search Influence, I hesitated – I mean what did I know about search engine optimization?!?

It turns out, it’s a lot of the same stuff. Getting our clients in the right directories, listed under the right categories, tracking incoming calls, proving value …

It is this last, “proving value,” that is the most telling.  Knowing what a large display ad costs in the yellow pages which a lot of our clients would have been doing 10 years ago, and comparing it to what Search Influence charges for SEM and SEO, I realize that the value is definitely in the internet.

In yellow pages, a plastic surgeon might buy a full page or a half page ad for a large percentage of their annual advertising budget.  In some larger metro markets, this can easily reach up to $100,000.00, over $8,000.00 each month, with a yellow pages industry average of 5% increase each year.

This gets the surgeon an ad that is in print for a year, and that’s what you get.  Hope that people pick up the fat book shoved in the back of the cabinet, find the heading, (not under “Doctors,” not under “Physicians & Surgeons-Cosmetic Surgery,” but buried under “Physicians & Surgeons-Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery”) and choose your ad to call.

Most people today are already in front of the computer for work.  They just type it in exactly what they want, no digging, “Plastic surgery Houston“.  It’s too easy to use the internet.

The internet is a living, breathing medium.  For the same amount of money or, amazingly, much less in some big metro markets, SEO actively finds the people searching for your product.

Ringing Phone = Profits

Changes can be made daily or hourly for specials and promotions.  Yellow pages ads are in print for 12 months.

Tracking is not limited to phone number tracking – we can find which pages are working and which pages users are most likely to leave the site on, edit some graphics and compare the traffic patterns week to week instead of year to year.

The average yellow pages display ad attracts over 440 calls per year (Source: YPPA Media Impact Study, 2004).  Search Influence has many client sites with thousands of visits each month, with hundreds of contacts each month.

Businesses are moving their marketing dollars to the internet from yellow pages more and more every day because it’s smart money spent.   I mean I don’t want to glorify SEO for more than it is, but dollar for dollar, internet marketing gives so much more impact for money spent by bringing in real customers.

I did a very informal survey which I think sums up America’s use of their phone books.  Here are some responses to “Where is your print phone book?”:

1. “I may have thrown it away, if I have it, it is in the pantry.”
2. “I threw out the new ones.”
3. “I saw it this weekend when I was trying to make room (in the kitchen cabinet)”
4. “I don’t have one.”
5. Another, “I don’t have one.”

Of course, my survey of 5 people may not be fair because I did only ask people who sit in front of a computer all day, and so I ask, do you know where your phone book is?

I added it to my feed reader under Local Search. I put it there because I don’t have a category for Dinosaur or Dead Trees or Dying industry

I kid — I think the Yellow Pages has 5-10 years of life left in it.

There may be some consolidation and there will certainly be heroic efforts to save it, but ultimately it will completely lose relevance in a world of ubiquitous connection.

Of course, it may all turn around. Who knows?

Often as Search Marketers we use words which have been redefined by our industry without thinking about how they’ll be understood by customers.

“Trust” however has the same meaning to marketers and customers. We just need to understand the differences in how trust is measured by our customers and the search engines.

When talking with clients I often slip into SEO-speak and use the term “authority” differently than above.

My use comes from the idea of “Authority Sites”, and “Hubs and Authorities” in the search algorithms.

But customers need an example, like: “The same phrase on YouTube has much higher likelihood to rank than on drkim.com because YouTube is an authority site“.

Really though it’s about Trust. How much do the search engines trust your site? What are the signifiers of trust? Are they the same for search engines and humans?

As it turns out, they are. When trying to describe the concept of Authority I often use the analogy of personal referrals. “It’s one thing for me to tell you how cool I am, but if you hear it from 30 other people you’re more likely to believe it, right”?

It’s the same for the search engines. Ultimately they’re looking for indications of your trustworthiness. There’s a great point here relative to off-page SEO but for today let’s talk about the Yellow Pages and what we can learn about human behavior from 100 + years of experience.

New Haven directory, November, 1878.

For many years, the Yellow Pages ad design process has been directed by adherence to what are called the “RASCIL Factors”.

RASCIL is a way of distilling down the elements of an effective add to communicate many of the most pertinent decision making factors for a Yellow Pages shopper.

What might not be wholly intuitive, however, is that many of these factors speak directly to the idea of building trust.

I’m reminded of my friend Jerry Kennedy of KAMS Construction who’s tagline is

“At KAMS, the first thing we build is your trust”.

Yellow Pages - Fingers Walking

The RASCIL Factors

• RELIABILITYTime in Business, Affiliations, Memberships and Certifications, Guarantees, Size of Firm
• AUTHORIZATIONAuthorized brands (Maytag, Whirlpool, etc)
• SPECIAL FEATURES AND/OR SECURITYCredit Cards and payment options, Hours of operation, Special Services
• COMPLETENESS OF SERVICEProduct Types, Pickup and Delivery, Buy, Rent and Lease
• ILLUSTRATIONHigh Impact Pictures and Headline
• LOCATION Location or Locations, Areas Served

As you can see, a lot of this actually makes for good web design too. Or as Tim Coleman says, Local Seo Is Easy… Just Create A Good Yellow Page Ad .

Hard at Work Thanks to The Yellow Pages

Authority and Trust in Website Promotion

It’s unfortunate that small businesses no longer have such ready access to that friendly and helpful Yellow Pages sales agent.The great news is that many who are marketing online have little experience with traditional media, including Yellow Pages advertising.

Additionally, most of your competition don’t know how to appear trustworthy to the search engines.

Just as your web site (or any ad) needs to instill trust in humans, your online behavior needs to instill trust in the search engines. And interestingly, there’s a pretty strong correlation to theRASCIL factors.

Below are just a few examples:

Reliability: Time in business (domain age), Affiliations (links from chambers of commerce, BBB, professional accrediting organizations), Mentions in regional / national press

Authorization The Hunchback of Notre Dame release : Authorized brands (links from manufacturer / distributor web sites)

Location: Do you deserve to show up on that map result?

Illustrations: Does your site look professional? Does it match the marketing message which brought the visitor

Unfortunately, there are some things which are harder to affect. You can’t reset your domain registration age. It may be possible to buy an old domain but the chances of buying one relevant to what you do are very slim.

Simply put: trust = links.

And authority matters. A link from the BBB is worth 100 from a free links directory. If you’re a real business though, most of those authoritative, trustworthy, links are easy to acquire…

… just ask.

A Happy Customer

And best of all, many of the steps you take to appear more trustworthy to the search engines are equally valuable offline — to the human beings with whom you want to do business.

Notes:

1. Introduction to Information RetrievalBy Christopher D. Manning, Prabhakar Raghavan & Hinrich SchuetzeWebsite: http://informationretrieval.org/© 2008 Cambridge University Press
2. Thanks to Kenyon Design Group Yellow Pages Ad Design site.

I placed a comment on Greg Sterling’s writeup of the Yelp issue pointing him to my post.

In a reply to my comment Greg Sterling says , and I totally agree:

“There also need to be clear rules at these sites to that SMBs understand the “Hows” and the “Whys” of these systems and they’re not surprised by something they thought was OK.”

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This triggered a thought process which reminds me of a discussion I often have with prospective clients and other interested parties.

I believe in links! Showdown in Little Tokyo video In fact I believe links are often more important than content.

So I’m often asked “why do these sites want to link to you”? To which I reply “because we give them content”.

• Directories: the content they want is business listings
• Article sites: the content they want is information
• Press release sites: the content they want is news
• Content exchanges with other sites: the content they want is… content (and links back too)

So lets be perfectly clear about the motivations of these free sites. They’re not free! They need the critical mass of listings, articles, news, reviews or whatever to continue to be “free” because they’re selling advertising!

Sure, the business who lists their site for free isn’t paying, but we’re paying. Every time we click an ad, watch a video or in other way interact with an advertiser we’re paying for the site’s operation and we wouldn’t be there without the content.

Traditional print publishers have had hundreds of years to get used to the idea of their responsibility. Online publishers fewer than 20. Unfortunately it appears Yelp is about to learn this lesson in court.

So, it ain’t free. It’s barter. Our content, their links — and they’re the ones getting paid.

Update:

Great quote from TechCrunch:

“Their goal is clearly to make businesses need Yelp, but not to expect a lot of help when it comes to disputes. Complain all you want, you’re just proving that you need Yelp more than they need you.”

And another update from the comments of the original post in response to Dave Ingram of Brown Book:

“I think you make one particularly interesting point which I missed in my rant.

The idea of businesses recommending one another is an offline behavior and attempts to squelch it online only serve to enforce an unnatural order.

Think of every networking group you’ve ever been in. I’m a member of BNI, for instance, and even though I might not have ever used the guy in our group who sells granite, you can bet I’ll recommend him because I know him.”

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Small Business owners giving up control over their own online destiny.

From the SFGate (San Francisco Chronicle Online): Merchants angry over getting yanked by Yelp

This article brings to a head a few issues of significance from professionals like us and from the service providers.

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Businesses like those in the article have come to rely on Yelp for the connection to buyers. If only it were just Yelp…

…There’s Insider Pages, Google maps, WordPress and many other free services on which may small businesses rely and which have completely opaque and oftentimes arbitrary rules and enforcement thereof.

There are a couple of significant challenges for small businesses online which are related but not always connected:

• Ignorance of Technology
• Control of Brand (or loss of)

Aaaaaargh! Makes me want to scream. Really.

Greg Sterling constantly points to the need for education as one of the biggest impediments to small business acceptance of online marketing and I think he’s right. But the problem is, the ignorance that comes with a lack of education is really hurting small businesses.

Look at these poor saps in the Yelp article. Even if they knew what they were doing was wrong — and I’m sure they didn’t fully understand the rules, the emergence of these new yellow pages replacements is completely inscrutable to small businesses. As the recent local search ranking factors study (which I intend to write some more about) from David Mihm shows, there’s not even agreement among professional practitioners.

And then The New York Times stirs the pot with an article regarding Incentives for video reviews. You mean there’s something wrong with incentivizing reviews?

And then there’s my dearest Ms. Laycock berating those complaining about failings of a free service (Twitter).

For me it all leads back to a central frustration I feel from small businesses: they understood the Yellow Pages. You pay more, you get a bigger ad, you get more calls. How hard is that?

The problem with online is that many of these services on which the business must rely are free. And since they’re free there’s no repercussions if they don’t work, or don’t work as intended. And worse still there’s no way to get a realistic grasp of the totality of the rules nor an appeals process when one accidentally crosses the line.

So with all these problems how do you effectively use internet marketing for small business Rachel Getting Married video ?

Simple – you go back to the basics. You don’t rely on raw technology and you definitely don’t get caught up in “They’re doing it so should I”.

Oh, and you don’t fall for a slick sales pitch from the likes of SEOMatrix, Yodle (formerly Natpal), or LinksHog (or one of their hundred other names).

The problem with many practitioners and many small businesses either doing it themselves or outsourcing is that they get caught up in the flavor of the week. There are some very smart discussions about regarding how you rank well in Google maps, the value of reviews and the sites on which they live. But…

All that doesn’t matter if you, the small business owner, don’t control your own destiny!

Here are a few clues that the sales pitch you’re hearing isn’t going to allow you to control your own destiny:

• Use of the word “Proprietary”
• Mention of “Optimized Landing Pages” (hint: if they optimize a landing page they own, they’re not optimizing your site )
• Inclusion in proprietary “Directory” listings — don’t get me wrong, directories are great but the ones we like are the ones whose listings don’t go away when you stop paying
• Switching costs – in other words you have to pay to leave
• Mention of ownership of “thousands of sites“

In short, if you’re looking for small business internet marketing, or even if you’re in a niche with higher returns and you need plastic surgery internet marketing or any other internet marketing remember one thing:

• If it doesn’t increase the search engine positioning of your site look twice — make sure you understand the outcomes and that the reward is worth the risk.

So make sure you cover the basics before before you try the flavor of the week and if you don’t understand the pitch ask more questions. And if you don’t believe the answers get a second opinion.

Just to be clear all of these distribution methods have value: reviews, directory listings, blogging, video optimization, even pay per click.

Please be sure you know the reward and most importantly be sure the click you buy lands on your site or makes your phone ring!

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A little background

Way back toward the end of my time punching someone else’s clock I had an idea for a service I was calling “Outsource My Brain”.

The concept went something like this:

You’re a middle-manager or executive with more work than you feel like doing. So instead of pulling an all-nighter, or even foregoing American Idol with the kids, you drop that outline for a PowerPoint presentation to the board into you email.

Wham, bang, boom! Next morning in your inbox is a nice shiny presentation filled with charts, graphs, numbers and cool animations.

Like magic, no?

No — the recipient of your email was an offshore virtual assistant with an MBA from the IIT who knows more about PowerPoint, charts and numbers and your job than you do.

So here’s the problem with my big idea… somebody’s already done it! In fact a bunch of somebodys. One of the more well known is a company called Brickwork, made famous by Tom Friedman

and A. J. Jacobs.

Best of all, I learned about it while reading “The World Is Flat

” (see quote)…

on a plane…

on my way back from India.

Man I was bummed. Another great idea gone. Then comes this “4 Hour Workweek The Holiday move ” craziness and it all goes to the dogs.

So, for anyone who hasn’t read it the “4 Hour Workweek” is about how you too can become a lifestyle designer using extreme time management to live the life you’ve dreamed while running a profitable business supporting your every need.

Sound too good to be true? Maybe. The author insists its possible!

We report, you decide.

Outsourcing your brain

Let’s set some ground rules:

• Nobody knows your business like you do (yes, yes, I’m sure – maybe)
• You can’t do everything (and do it all well)
• Working on your weaknesses is a waste of time (tons of work yielding incremental moves ending in mediocrity)
• Working on your strengths is what will make you rich (small efforts increase outcome exponentially)
• You must be honest with yourself
• Accept that control is an illusion

Nobody knows your business like you do

Whether you’re the last kid on your upline for Tahitian Noni, Herbalife or Shaklee or if you’re a virtual assistant, contract writer or run a local internet marketing company you have something in common with other business owners. You got into business because of your passion. Passion for product, customers or even money is still passion. No one is going to have your passion for your business (see quote).

I don’t know your story so I’ll tell you mine.

I used to work for a company that built the software on which some major online yellow pages run. We had customers with one phone book and others with 300 + on the Fortune 1000 list.

The yellow pages is where consumers used to go to find products and services. The Yellow Pages Association of the time had a great tag line “We’re the Yellow Pages; We Sell Things” — I love it. Sounds like us: we’re internet marketers; we sell things.

We built that company, we had some great customers and partners and we then sold it to a company who is still growing and pushing new boundaries in local and mobile search, Local Matters.

I’d been working on the web since 1994 and we had done some work in search marketing but after the acquisition a small team and I started working on search on behalf of our yellow pages customers.

I saw how well we were able to rank for local search terms for yellow pages and I thought “why not take it to the masses”. We’re still working on the mass(es) part but we’ve been doing pretty well so far. Robert Kiyosaki tells a story in his books of his rich dad saying that the way to wealth was to figure out how to do what you do now for more customers with the same effort.

In other words, if we can help the individual advertiser rank as well as or better than the Yellow Pages it’s a big win. The advertiser pays less and gets better exposure online and we get a customer. That’s the passion: helping small businesses get the most of online marketing at a reasonable cost and in control of their own destiny.

Among my strengths is seeing the systems which need to be built and finding people with skills to build and run them.

And talking.

In the past I have built the systems with my hands on the keyboard — it’s just not a thing at which I excel. Others excel… I hack… I outsource or hire to my weakness.

In the early going, I would sell the projects and do some of the work and I would find smart, reliable, contractors for the rest. You might guess that reliable part is hardest to find.

All the while I was looking for ways in which we could systematize and streamline the process.

I’ve been incredibly fortunate in the time since to develop a full-time dedicated staff (and a reliable set of contractors and vendors) who are working together to help grow even further.

You can’t do everything

So, yes, nobody knows my business like I do. I hope it’s clear that I know I can’t do it all myself. I have to rely on my team. If I had to do it all I’d only be able to serve a few and I want to serve many.

And if I don’t trust the decisions of those around me how many can we serve? Even if my team makes decisions that aren’t 100% what I’d do 100% of the time, they’re pretty close and it means they don’t have to wait for me to get our clients what they need.

In support of helping our clients we write a TON of content. This is a big management effort. Amy Arnold my production manager is responsible for keeping track of the hundreds of pieces of content we create on any given day.

I used to do this myself. I did it OK when I could get to it. Amy does it great. It’s all hers and I trust her to do it better than I would. Is it perfect? Ain’t nothin’ perfect but the Lord (as they say down south). Could I find fault if I looked really hard? Sure, but it’s getting done and I’m not doing it.

My teammates are great and they all know that we have to do 2 things: get results and serve the customer.

And the whole team knows to feel free to take things away from me.

Eva Moran keeps me from having to focus on message and brand and vendors and conference swag and all the other things which I’d love to be more involved in but which are ultimately not the best use of my scarcest resource: time.

Angie Scott our controller makes sure I don’t have to worry about money.

Prashant Tribhuvan our production team lead makes sure Amy and I don’t have to micromanage every page of HTML or directory submission or blog post or whatever.

Jennifer Wojtowicz keeps me from having to organize pay-per-click campaigns and reporting.

So, we all get to work to our strengths and know that someone else is picking up our weaknesses.

Working on your weaknesses is a waste of time

Let’s look at what Jennifer does as an example.

I know how to set up a pay-per-click campaign. I am by no means an expert. If I took the time I’m sure I could be competent. Time is the issue.

I’ll only ever be competent because my life is about talking to customers and prospective customers and defining systems.

I’d rather have excellence on task and my own time to focus where I can be excellent. Jennifer spent the last 6 years in big agencies running multi-million dollar ad campaigns. Excellence.

So, if it was all me we’d have mediocre pay-per-click implementation and we wouldn’t have the systems to support customers and staff to:

Working on your strengths is what will make you rich

So, where am I strong? Systems and talking.

I have to be focused on getting systems in place that support all these smart people because even smart people occasionally let things slide. The systems help reduce the stress of the work.

The people excel and we get results and serve the customer

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And, the more I talk the more customers want to work with us. So I have to talk to more people so we can have more customers so I can feed all these people building and using the systems.

I talk to customers we grow. I work on systems we grow with happy customers and teammates.

You must be honest with yourself

Face it, you can’t do it all. And there are some things at which you suck!

I’ll admit it, I am not great at keeping track of 300 + pieces of content a month. I don’t have the attention span for it and while I see the big picture I need the time for other things.

Amy rocks.

I’m also not great with money. In my personal life I’m rich until my ATM card stops working.

Thankfully Angie is really good with that stuff. My AmEx mysteriously gets paid, vendors are happy and I don’t worry about it.

Angie also rocks.

Hey you! Get some help

After… hd

Accept that control is an illusion

I trust my team to get the work done. I could try to micromanage but I’d be sapping everyone’s effectiveness (including mine).

I live in hurricane country and I know that it can all go bad overnight. There is no control, only trust.

I trust my team to get things done. And I trust our systems to show us what needs doing. And most importantly I trust our partners and customers to tell us when we get it wrong. We’re lucky. Our customers don’t expect perfection, they expect results. As long as they get results they’ll cut us a little slack on perfection.

You can’t control everything and to try will waste your time and drive you mad.

Getting started

Look, not everyone gets as lucky as I did. I knew Amy for years — she was getting ready to reenter the workforce at exactly the time that I needed her. It just worked.

Angie who has years of high-level financial management experience happens to live in my house and take care of my kids (and me) and drive my car and is the recipient of my life insurance… and you guessed it, is married to me.

And the rest of the team, in all honesty, arrived just as we needed them most.

What about you?

Start easy, do that rigorous self-assessment and identify those things which take your time but not your passion. And then find someone else to do them.

One good starting point is Elance. Elance is a global marketplace for people who know how to do stuff to connect with people who need stuff done.

How bout that?

Ask around. There’s a lot of untapped talent out there. Think of how many secretaries, lawyers, ad execs and bankers are at home tending children? You think they have some spare time?

Is this you? Are you that smart work at home person with a growing business? Maybe there’s someone in your neighborhood who hasn’t figured out what they’re going to do with their time.

Take them under your wing and give them your least valuable tasks… It’s a starting point.

Critical takeaways?

• Know yourself.
• Find people who are strong where you are weak and trust them.
• If only you can do it you don’t have a business you have a job.
• Do what you love for more clients with the same effort and you’ll be rich!

———–

My favorite quote from “The World is Flat”

Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up.

It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed

Every morning a lion wakes up.

It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death.

It doesn’t matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle.

When the sun comes up, you better start running.

This is an answer both to Miriam and to current and future clients wondering about our process.

What this post will not cover:

• Managing offline conversion (I’m working on a case study for this)
• Effective map spamming techniques (If I knew, I wouldn’t tell – “first do no harm”)

So, here we go!

Most of what we know around here comes from years of testing in the local space on behalf of yellow pages publishers.

Yellow pages are in decline and usage is moving online. In response to this, Google, Yahoo, MSN and a hundred other folks small businesses never heard of are trying to connect local searchers to local businesses.

I believe that small businesses need to control their own destiny. They give up this control whenever they pay someone else who has a vested interest in outranking them.

This argument sometimes leads us to counsel against paying for inclusion even when there’s traffic to be had from that source. And it always leads us to be skeptical… and to test (see upcoming post on managing offline conversion).

In working with local small businesses we believe the following to be self-evident:

• Expectation setting is the hardest part
• Local SEO is long tail SEO (long tail: more specificity leads to higher likelihood of conversion)
• “Low value” links are still valuable links

We work with clients with monthly budgets of $99.00 to $9,900.00 and more. In every case, it’s important to realize that even small results can have a big impact when the expectations are right.

And, amazingly enough we have been able to obtain #1 rankings for our clients’ “money” phrases at even the lowest budget levels. It just sometimes takes time (expectation setting is key).

Working with service businesses with a local focus we find we can leverage the long tail nature of local search to deliver ready to buy customers.

Here’s the great news: given the long tail nature of local service searches, link-building becomes less challenging.

Even low value, free inclusion, directory links can have significant value.

Not everyone needs Yahoo! directory and BOTW to win. For local businesses targeted inbound links in abundance can make the difference.

Two examples:

These two are indicative of our small business clients. We have a package for them. It fits their budget and they get results.

It should be obvious these aren’t giant budgets or super-competitive phrases. We have clients who are after those too, but their budgets are MUCH larger, the cost of their links greater and the variety of technique infinitely more.

So, to answer the question, our lower budget clients are still doing great in local SEO with a comprehensive package of what some would consider “low value” links.

It’s an oversimplification, but I always say it’s about 2 things, content and links. With those two, lather – rinse – repeat until you move on up. The more competitive the market, the more you have to repeat.

These interviews are a little technical in some cases but still make a great read regardless of your level of knowledge. How do I know so much? One of them is with me

Among the other usual suspects so far are:

Between Showers move

• David Mihm – a small business website designer and SEO consultant off to find fame and fortune as a Portland SEO Crossroads ipod
• Mike Blumenthal – who devotes way to much time to Understanding Google Maps
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  Ancient Warriors film
• Andrew Shotland – The Local SEO Guide
• Tim – A fellow YP refugee who tells us how to Convert Offline (a pet concept)
• Me

So, the most telling thing I’ve learned thus far is that 3 of 5 interviewees are Yellow Pages refugees.

Miriam is doing a great service blogging Beethoven’s 2nd hd , writing over at Search Engine Guide and keeping up with the goings on in local SEO.

It’s a good thing too — It’s easier to live vicariously than try to add all that to my plate.

Following any links in this post will take you to some great reading.

Cheers,

WillNight at the Museum release