I got no love for Yellow Pages. Anyone who knows me knows not to get me started. The Yellow Pages print book serves its purpose, on some level or another, or at least my dad likes it. I must admit, even I crack it open once every year or two but that’s only because so many of my local businesses haven’t clued into how awesome Google Maps is and have yet to list themselves on it.

The noise in the other room

The noise in the other room is the sound of print dying. Don’t mind him. He’s been dying for years. We all saw it coming but he wouldn’t listen. He kept insisting he was still relevant while we warned him to devise a back up plan. And now he’s in his final death rattle and when he comes a-callin’ asking for my advertising money, I always ask him the same question, “What have you got for me online?”

Too many print organizations are trying to transfer their print business models to the web and are dismayed when they don’t succeed. Yellowpages.ca is guilty of this in 3 major ways.

1. One year contract? Exsqueeze me? It’s not permanently “out there” the way the print book is. If your online service is any good, prove it by letting me try it for 3-6 months before I commit.
2. Showing my print ad as my online listing. Online is not print. A print ad scanned and put on a web page is illegible and uncrawlable to search engines.
3. Charging me by location. They over complicate their model and their rates are anything but competitive when I need to pay separately for each neighbourhood I want to be listed in.

My bone to pick

Most of our clients find the Internet a little bit overwhelming and all its opportunities more than a little confusing. As a result, I feel that the people who work in the industry have an obligation to be as clear and up front about their offering as possible. My contention with YellowPages.ca is that they obfuscate the facts, taking advantage of the lay person. I realize that’s a bold thing to say, but as I mentioned, I got no love.

Of all the things on the Internet, nothing seems to confuse people more than SEO (search engine optimization). It’s a magic word. If you use it, you can convince people of anything because they know they want it but aren’t entirely sure how to get it. So when Yellowpages.ca claims to be partners with Google and says that paying for a listing with their online directory increases your SEO, it seems like a win-win.

Organizations claiming to be “partners” with Google make my head blow up

When the sales package I was faxed (yes, FAXED) from Yellowpages.ca had a Google logo in it and claimed they were partners, I asked the sales representative to clarify.

He stuttered a little and when I followed up by asking if I would see the Yellow Pages logo on a Google.ca page he flat out didn’t know what to say. That’s because web stuff can be confusing. And he didn’t know his own product because the people in charge had made it more confusing than it needed to be.

The vague wording in the sales package implied that Yellow Pages had a special relationship with Google which enabled your Yellow Pages ad to be advertised in Google’s sponsored listings for a small additional fee. On top of that, your Yellow Pages ad would rank organically better in Google.

Sigh.

How Yellow Pages uses Google’s sponsored listings

Here’s a quote from Google’s Philosophy page on the Google website: Advertising on Google is always clearly identified as a “Sponsored Link,” so it does not compromise the integrity of our search results. We never manipulate rankings to put our partners higher in our search results and no one can buy better PageRank.

The truth is, if you pay them extra, Yellow Pages will run a sponsored listings campaign in Google on your behalf driving traffic to your Yellow Pages ad.

The Pros: If you don’t have the first clue how to run a sponsored listings campaign and can’t afford someone who can, this is a great way to get presence in Google’s Adwords for a reasonable amount of money.

The Cons: Yellow Pages is using your money to advertise themselves. Notice how they aren’t driving traffic to your website, but to their ad? What’s more, if you haven’t paid for a live link to your website, your advertising money is flapping in the wind. And the part that really cheeses me, if Google users are interested in your ad and click on the sponsored listing, you still pay for the click but it’s Yellow Pages’ page ranking which increases.

How your Yellow Pages listing impacts your page ranking

Does listing in Yellowpages.ca improve your SEO? Yes. But so does listing in Canpages.ca and Toronto.com and any other high ranking business directory. Google collects information about your website from everywhere. The more times it sees your business listed the more credibility you have. Especially if your listing is surrounded by lots of juicy keywords. In other words, directories where you get to submit a description of your business and your website link are ideal.

The Pros: Yellowpages.ca has a good page rank so being listed with them is one more notch in your SEO belt.

The Cons: The link to your website is indirect so it doesn’t count as one of your high ranking backlinks (which is kind of the point). Yellowpages.ca shows the image of your ad online (if you bought one) which is useless to search engines. All those relevant keywords are no where to be found and the only thing Google learns from Yellowpages.ca about your business is your address. This would explain why the SEO for yellowpages.ca itself sucks. Type any business category into Google (example “accountant Toronto”) and see if yellowpages.ca shows up on the first page. It doesn’t because the Yellow Pages site contains no relevant content.

My advice on choosing a directory

Most industries have online directories specific to them that rank well in organic searches. Try anything once. Track your results. Review your analytics (your web traffic sources) and make sure to always ask how customers heard about you. Pay close attention to your traffic on the day a print ad runs and assume any increase is from that.

For every marketing channel, take the number of click throughs and divide it by the money you spent on the channel. If a product is good, it delivers good results: solid traffic for a reasonable cost. What’s a reasonable cost? We like anything around $2 per click but it differs from business to business. If the click is highly targeted and likely to convert (result in a sale), you can pay significantly more. If you are in the double digits (or, God help you, triple digits) for a channel, you can certainly do better.