Demise of the Yellow Pages?

Two Important Lessons for Your Business

by Bill Treloar

The Yellow Pages have long been an essential household tool. What easier way could there be to find local sources of essential products and services? Need an exterminator? An accountant? A doctor? A rental car? Just let your fingers do the walking!

However, lately Yellow Pages usage seems to be declining. Why?

As more and more families need two breadwinners to maintain their standard of living, people find themselves having to find and call that exterminator from the office instead of from home. Try to find a copy of the Yellow Pages in your office. Unless you’re a secretary or administrative assistant, chances are you don’t have a copy at your desk. Tracking down a copy of the Yellow Pages can consume your entire lunch hour, leaving no time to call that exterminator.

While you may not have a copy of the Yellow Pages at your desk, I’ll bet you have a computer. And in all likelihood, that computer is connected to the Internet. How easy is it to search the web for an exterminator in your town or county? Very easy. And fast, too.

A Yellow Pages Ad Is No Longer Enough

As more people move from the Yellow Pages to the search engines on the Internet, there are two important lessons for your business.

Lesson One

First, you need a web site. Having your own web site is no longer optional. If you get business from the Yellow Pages (or used to) that source of leads is drying up. People are looking for you on the Internet. And if you don’t have a web site, you’re just not there! That becomes especially serious, for obvious reasons, if your competitor has a web site.

Your web site doesn’t have to cost a fortune. You should be able to have a one-page “brochure type” web site created (that says far more about your business than an newspaper or Yellow pages ad) for just a few hundred dollars. Registering your web site name like ExterminatorBob.com costs at most $35/year. And the cost of having your site hosted on the Internet often runs under $20/month.

Chances are that cost is less than the annual cost of a Yellow Pages ad that says less than your web site would.

Don’t eliminate your Yellow Pages ad just yet, though. There are still plenty of people clinging to old habits. As long as you’re still getting customers who call based on your Yellow Pages ad, it’s a worthwhile marketing tool for you, too.

Lesson Two

Now that you have a web site, future customers have to be able to find it on the Internet.

Sound simple? Try it!

Pretend you’re a customer looking for your most profitable product or service, but who doesn’t know the name of your business. Try to find your web site in any of the search engines. Check Google, Yahoo, AOL Search, MSN Search ... whichever one you normally use. If your own web site doesn’t show up in the first three pages of search engine results, then people are giving up before they find you.

And if your biggest competitor does show up in the first three pages, you’re abandoning your future customers to them.

Once your web site is on the Internet, you need to make sure it can be found when people search for what you offer. Here are a few essential tips:

•          Make sure the words people will search for to find your products or services actually appear on your web site. If some people search for “exterminator” and others search for “pest control”, be sure both terms appear on your site.

•          Get other web sites to link to yours. Search engines often won’t list a web site that doesn’t have any links from other sites.

•          If those two steps don’t get you the search engine rankings you need, learn how to do “search engine optimization” or hire someone to help you. After all, it doesn’t help to just get listed by the search engines if you end up on page 72 of the results!

Bill Treloar is president of Rank Magic in East Hanover, NJ, a consulting firm specializing in making Internet marketing and search engine optimization more efficient and cost effective. He can be reached toll-free at (866) Rank Magic or online at www.RankMagic.com.