Search Engine Optimization

Wall street released a new article with a provocative headline “Extinction Threatens Yellow-Pages Publishers”

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. Now, the economic downturn is sending the already ailing business into a tailspin. The audience for online yellow pages remains relatively small, and traffic growth is slowing. So many directory services are vying for the ad dollars of local businesses that no single site has an authoritative roster. 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 sharply.

Google is consolidating local markets Blitzkrieg style – calculated, sure, fast and hard to stop. As yellow pages decline due to mass migration of users online, Google is putting more salt on the wounds by heavily investing in local technologies and promoting them for all local queries. Google is the new yellow pages and small businesses need to adapt to the new game.

With Decline of Yellow Pages Costs Can Go Up

If you’re a small business owner, your costs may go up as yellow pages fade off and users switch to search engines. This however depends on your niche. Let’s do some calculations. As an example lets take a lawyer in Montreal and a carpenter in Toronto. Their yellow page listings will range between $50 – $300 depending on features, city, average category rate, etc. Lets say they will pay an average $180 per month

Google Adwords Alternative and SEO

Google traffic estimator gives around $6 – $10 for “montreal lawyer” per day and with $2.44 – $3.58 CPC and $1 – $2 per day for “toronto carpenter” with $1.39 – $1.79 CPC.

Not bad. If calculated monthly, lawyer in Montreal will spend around $300 per month on Adword clicks and Toronto carpenter around $60 – $150. Costs will go up as competition enters the game.

Small businesses will have to make additional investments in website development, which is few thousand dollars. Those who want to gain ranking on search engines will also have to spend $3000+ on search engine optimization so a total adds up to around ~$5000 in website investment to successfully enter online game.

Check out our search engine optimization services and learn how we can help your business flourish in the new online era.