Yellow Pages vs. Search Engine Optimization

Why shouldn’t you trust the phonebook company handle your online marketing?
How does SEO compare to Yellow Pages advertising?
How many of your competitors still advertise in the phone books?

Optimized Websites Have Outperformed Yellow Pages for Years

In 2015, the last nail in the Yellow Pages coffin was driven home. Phone companies all across the nation stopped automatically delivering telephone directories to their customers. If you’re still investing your marketing budget in the outdated phone directories, you’re simply throwing money down the drain. Those worthless advertisements simply don’t work any longer. They have zero value for your business. Today, 90% of all consumers find the products and services they need on Google, Bing and Yahoo. They click through to the top listings. If your website doesn’t show up on Google for a wide range of queries, it’s time to take immediate action. Here’s why:

Consumers don’t even think about the Yellow Pages today.
70% of search engine users select websites from organic listings.
The top three organic search results get 90% of the clicks.
Our powerful SEO website designs achieve your marketing goals.

Investing Your Yellow Pages Budget in SEO Helps Your Business Grow

Yellow Pages publishers knew that the phone books were dying years ago. The impending loss of those advertising revenues forced them to admit that the internet was the future. They attempted to convince their customers to put their advertising budget into the equally worthless online directories. Companies who did that soon learned that the online directories failed to produce anything meaningful. They saw their revenues slip and watched new customers flock to competitors. Why were those competitors succeeding? The answer is that they had quit paying for useless advertising and invested in powerful, search engine optimized websites. Here’s what they learned:

Yellow Pages Have Lost Their Relevance to Marketing

In their attempt to harness the marketing power of the internet, phone companies simply took their outdated advertising strategies and plugged them into the online world. Using the same cookie-cutter advertisements and standard templates, they created low-quality websites for their clients that all looked the same, lacked information, and had no power to convert visitors. Worse, those extremely costly web page ads didn’t understand how search engines work. When search engine users typed in keywords and phrases relevant to what they were looking for, those advertising pages didn’t show up at all in organic search listings. Between 70-80% of all search engine users click only on organic search results. The Yellow Pages bought ad space to feature their listings, but when visitors clicked on those, they didn’t find the information they were looking for. They quickly discovered that organic search listings led to informative, relevant websites and never looked back.
Stop Wasting Money on Zero-Return Advertising

If you’re still buying advertisements in the Yellow Pages, read what Emily Steel said in The Wall Street Journal, as early as 2008, and learn the truth:
- “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.”
- “The audience for online Yellow Pages remains relatively small, and traffic growth is slowing.”
- “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.”
Today, the picture is even clearer. If your marketing dollar is going into any form of Yellow Pages advertising, it’s long past time for a change.
Cost-Effective SEO Is the BEST Investment

Of all current advertising and marketing methods, search engine optimized websites with excellent content have the lowest cost per customer acquisition overall. Invest your current Yellow Pages marketing budget in a professionally designed website that is optimized for high organic search rankings and conversion. That change will produce more leads and sales than any outdated advertising campaign can bring. It reduces the cost per customer acquisition down to a level that assures you of maximum profitability and increased revenues. In many cases, an effective website and search engine marketing plan will actually reduce your costs. You can add Google AdWords pay per click advertising as another productive strategy without spending a penny more than you already are.

Full-Service SEO, Web Design and PPC Marketing Company – Twin Cities, MN

Take a look at your successful competitors. Are they still clinging to the phone books? Are they prospering while your business stagnates? Is your marketing budget still being used to pay for costly print ads that don’t bring in new business? Stop throwing good money away and call Site Revamp in Minneapolis. Let us evaluate your current marketing and discuss what we find at no cost to you. We’ll propose a complete search engine optimization plan that saves you money and produces increased revenues. Ask us to show you how our satisfied clients have benefited from our exceptional services. Make a smart decision for your future profitability.