Search Engine Marketing Blog: piloSEO

At least according the sales guy my uncle talked to from YellowBook.

A recent email exchange between my uncle and I reinforced the fact that while there are plenty of honest SEM & SEO professionals there are still far too many out there who prey on businesses that don’t understand the search marketplace. My uncle has owned his own business for quite a while and has been an expert in his industry for 20+ years before starting his own company. He knows his industry inside and out. See, he spends his time developing his business and not worrying about his web presence. Of course, being successful he gets plenty of cold calls and SPAM emails offering him SEM services. One of the companies that contacted him was YellowBook. Since they are pretty well known and have been around forever he decided to talk to them. Instead of simply telling him what they do and how their service will help his business they decided to prey on his lack of search marketing knowledge to make their product sound better. This type of behavior hurts the industry as a whole, confuses those who may find our service useful, and creates a general mistrust among the public at large.

So here is what went down. My uncle met with the guy from YellowBook to discuss the different options they offer. It’s pretty simple. Placement in in the featured listing in their directory and they will run some PPC programs through Ad Words for them. Nothing too difficult and he was up front and honest in explaining that they would be placed in the sponsored listings sections of Google. Of course they never went over if it would just be the company name or if he would actually be allowed to choose keywords. The spin is anytime anyone is looking for your business you will show up in the sponsored listings. Of course they charge an arm and a leg for these services. I still don’t have a problem with that. They are providing a legitimate service and if it meets the ROI goals of the advertiser both sides get what they want.

My problem with them comes with what the sales guy said when he was asked about SEO. When pressed about SEO the YellowPages rep told my uncle that nobody needs to do SEO anymore. His reason was that Google and other search engines want to provide as many different resources as they can so they randomly run through different websites and place them at the top of the rankings. The basic idea was that any site Google knows about will end up at the top of the SERPs every once in a while and that meant that you would only stay up top for a bit before you were randomly moved down. You know, since they like to spread the traffic around to all of the sites. Now to be honest I am not sure if the sales guy knew he was lying or was simply parroting a sales script that came down from above and had no idea what he was talking about. I actually don’t know what is worse, a sales person who flat out lies or one that does not know much about what he is selling.

This deliberate misinformation is bad for everyone in the SEM industry. When business owners see conflicting information from every corner of the industry they tend to not believe anything. I calmly explained to my uncle that what he was told was flat out wrong. I explained that while rankings do fluctuate and are becoming less and less static, good SEO will position your site to do well. Not only for the top keywords but also for a number of long tail variations. I explained that there is no guarantee that he will end up number 1 he will see an increase in traffic and if done well he will increase his sales. The problem is that most business owners don’t have relatives or friends in the industry to dispel the blatant misinformation and lies that some of the less scrupulous among us are selling. I think the search community has come a long way in educating businesses and independent webmasters. We need to continue to educate and try to get the good information to overtake the bad.

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While more and more business are beginning to realize how important it is to have an presence on the Internet and investing in SEM and SEO services. The fact is there are still many businesses out there that are still holding the false belief that an Internet presence is not important to their business model. In reality ALL businesses can benefit from SEO and as a result being findable when potential customers are looking for them or the products and services they offer.

While most national and international businesses understand the need to perform well in search engines, many smaller local businesses believe they can get by without an Internet presence. But recent trends show that more and more people are using search engines to find local businesses instead of local phone books. Chris Silver Smith at Search Engine Land wrote an interesting article that shows the use of Google to find locally based businesses going up while the use of different Yellow Pages publications dropping off. As more and more people take to the Internet this trend will increase. Couple that with the rise of mobile web platforms that allow users to easily find a business online and make a call to it with one push of a button and it seems that the old Yellow Pages are going the way of the dodo.

This means that all businesses need to expend some money and/or effort into an SEO and Local Search strategy to capture the attention of all potential customers. Even if you don’t have a website you can take advantage of services like Google Maps, Yahoo Local, and MSN Local (uses a third party vendor) as well as a number of local directories. These services allow businesses to craft their message and add a number of different ways to contact including website address, emails, phone numbers, and in the case of the local and map engines you will be able to provide customers with a map and the ability to get door to door directions. Local search is a great (and free) way to attract more customers.

Outside of the map and local engines many businesses will want to enhance their presence with SEO. Quality SEO will increase a businesses presence in the organic listings of every search engine. For a more detailed explanation of organic listings and the layout of search engine results pages visit this SEOmoz Tutorial. This requires significant knowledge and most businesses will probably need to hire an SEO professional. It is important to show up in the organic results because while the local and map functions in the search engines provide decent exposure they require specific triggers to display results. Quality SEO will help your site rank when your targeted keywords are typed into the search engine no matter if the local triggers are not met.

If you have a local business and feel like you are missing out on a lot of business it might be time to look into SEO and Local Search optimization. Many people still use the Yellow Pages but more and more are eschewing the publications and going straight to the Internet. Don’t miss out on these customers.

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