Targeting Internet Yellow Pages

Optimize Your Online Local Presence

Part 2

Originally Published: April 2005

First, do a search for the keywords/keyphrases your business is targeting. Ask yourself; Do any of these Internet Yellow Pages come up in the main (not local) search results? If so, then listing your site with them will help get your business indexed on a site that is already doing well in the organic (i.e. non-paid) search results. In essence, you are piggy-backing off a site which already doing well in order to achieve top rankings.
Second, determine how many other businesses are already advertising in your target category on that IYP's service. If there's just a few, then you can probably get a prominent listing without having to compete very hard for attention. However, if there are already so many advertisers that your business won't show up until the second or third page, then the effectiveness of your listing is greatly diminished. You might want to look elsewhere.
Finally, determine which of the IYPs is likely to be the dominant provider in your region. Users in your area will tend to focus on the IYPs that cater to their part of the country. You can usually tell who targets your region by finding out who produces your local phone book – that's probably the dominant phone company in your area. For instance, RealPages.com is put out by BellSouth, while SuperPages.com is put out by Verizon. Determine which phone company has a lot of users in your area, then find which IYP site(s) they own.

This article is copyrighted and has been reprinted with permission from FirstPlace Software.