Yellowbook.com Commerical and SEO

Is This Really Search Engine Optimization?

Webvisible & Nielsen Produced a 2007 Report on Local Search (Link) that noted:

* 74% of respondents used search engines to find local business information vs. 65% who turned to print yellow pages, 50% who used Internet yellow pages and 44% who used traditional newspapers * 86% surveyed said they have used the Internet to find a local business, a rise from the 70% figure reported last year (2006) * 80% reported researching a product or service online, then making that purchase offline from a local business

I recently received a comment about this "quick thought" that made me think about how I presented this article. So with that comment, I wanted to clear up something. First of all I am not bashing Yellow Book and definitely not yellowbook.com and if you read this short thought it was actually complimenting yellow book on migrating towards the online lifestyle of their users. As for the hard copy of the Yellow Book it definitely has its place with certain individuals even though 90% of people go online to find information about a business. So for the other 10% who use offline sources Yellow Book is a great local marketing option.

Quick Thought: Because I believe in business transparency, doing the SEO basics, and educating businesses about good SEO practices, I had this thought. Last night I saw the TV commercial for yellowbook.com with the monk-type guy talking about Yellowbook being the online alternative to the traditional yellow pages which is not a bad thing because the last time I used the hard copy of the yellow pages was about a year ago and I used the pages to start my fireplace. Anyway, I didn't have a problem with it and actually think it's a great idea for local marketing until they got to the part of the commercial where one of the listeners says, " what about search engines" and the monk-type guys says, "trust Yellowbook to submit your site to the search engines". This threw up a red flag for me because I can see someone hearing that and mistaking what they said with Search Engine Optimization and thinking they don't need to do SEO because Yellowbook is going to do it for them. Yes being in a local directory is great, and being submitted to the search engines is great (although most times not even necessary or can be done in about 1 min by the business owner for free) but to be honest being submitted holds little to no value to a business from an SEO standpoint because if you are doing the basics of SEO the search engines will see your site.