The process that I described in that post was not the link building for their new organic product but rather a pilot program called the “Expert Authors Program.”

The Expert Authors program is free and intended to bring in additional leads at no additional cost to the advertiser. Interestingly, the articles are ghost written by Yodle’s internet marketers and not by the business owner. Interesting because Bryan Phelps of Orange Soda and Nick of Brick Marketing commented on the last post that leaving this up to the customer would be a bad idea. Turns out Yodle agrees.

Yodle was careful to point out that the client I cited was not part of their new organic product and “they would not block robots on a Yodle Organic client’s site nor set up duplicate Web sites for Organic clients.”

One of the questions I was anxious to ask was whether the new organic strategy would be applied to the client’s site or the .net site they often create for sem customers and I was shocked by their answer. They told me that on and off-page optimization would be done to the client’s domain and NOT the .net site. And here is the part that shocked me. I then asked what happens when the client exits the program and they told me the client keeps his or her site.

I’m surprised by this because it removes rather than puts up a blockade to quitting the program. Like cutting the wheel in the direction of a fishtailing rear-end to come out of a slide this seems a counter-intuitive way to reduce churn – actually creating a better product. Who knew they’d come up with that?

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What’s brilliant from an “automation expert” point of view is that they turned the job of creating content over to the customer; eliminating the time and cost of producing good content. Here’s an example.

The client’s original site needs to be seen to be believed— here it is. So, I have little doubt that Yodle can help them or that this small business owner knows a single thing about web marketing for that matter. But my problem with this from a customer stand point is that the link building is being done on the site created by Yodle, the .net version of the domain. Which means they are just renting the SEO. Because there is such a long time investment required in an organic campaign this represents the SEO version of holding a gun to the client’s head if they wish to cancel.

Or perhaps Court Cunningham is trying to automate a solution to the churn problem.

What are your thoughts on this type of SEO? Does the customer’s level of sophistication matter here? Is this the future SEO business model?

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Search Results Page For What Is Sure To Be A Very Popular Query

Begin by doing a search on Superpages.com for your type of business, get a feel for it. Think about what a consumer would type in when looking for a business like yours. Is your competition there? If not keep looking, you might be in the wrong category? Think about what a consumer would type, not what YOU think they SHOULD type

You found your category? Good. Now go back to the results and look in the left-hand most column. You’ll find suggested related categories under best match. Write down the ones that apply to you. Below that you’ll see headings: Products, Services & Brands. I’ll tell you how to get your business listing in those “categories” when we talk about the business profle later in this post.

Let’s talk about the layout. Superpages has 2 columns of listings, in a well-searched heading both are dominated by advertisers. As you would expect the left column of listings is going to get the majority of traffic. Forget about the right unless your interested in advertising nationally.

The left column contains up to 25 listings with up to 10 pay-per-click advertisers. The rest of this post will be dedicated to using pay per click on superpages as it is only way to grab the top spots.

Ok, here’s how it works – the Algo. Like Google, placement is based on relevance so placement is determined by your Click-Thru-Rate (CTR) as well as your Bid Amount. So like Google you want to write compelling copy.

Unlike Google, superpages has 4 campaign types and you need to understand them to know in what types of searches your ad will show and the types of searches in which your ad will not show.

1. Local
2. Metro
3. State
4. National

Your account can have as many campaigns as you like.

Advertisers that use a Local and/or Meto campaign will show in the results when a town or city is included in the searcher’s query. For example, Chiropractor Paramus NJ would display only advertisers in Local & Metro campaigns (covering the Paramus area).

In a Local Campaign you can advertise in your
a) Your Home City
b) Your Home County which will obviously include your home city.
c) Your Home County + ANY County That borders that County.
Counties separated by water are in most cases ok when reasonable. Bergen County NJ borders Westchester County NY despite the Hudson but Orange County Ca is not considered local to Hawaii.

Metro areas are pre-determined by superpages and coverage area maps are provided in the account set up tools in the PPC portal.

State campaigns are shown when the city is omitted and just the state is typed-in. For example, Chiropractor NJ.
This isn’t very practical for a local business and I don’t use it. If, however, you target the whole state you can and probably should include this.

National – No geography is used by the searcher indicating they want to search the whole country. Not a good option for a local business.

Local and Metro campaigns are your best bet so let’s talk more about those options. Your goal is to cover your entire service area without showing your ad in areas you don’t service. Obviously showing ads outside your service area is going to cost you money without any hope of a return.

If your service area is larger than just your home & contiguous counties, you will need to go to a Metro campaign to cover your whole service area. Maps of Metro areas are provided as you set up your progam on the superpages.com ppc portal. If your service area is bigger than Local but smaller than a Metro, you’ll have to decide. Perhaps start with a Local and move up if you find the ROI is there.

If you do a metro campaign, you will want to include a local campaign as well. The more local you get the more local signals you can provide at the listing level. You may choose to display your actual address in the local campaign and hide it in your metro. There are advantages to displaying your actual address in a local campaign I’ve been told, but I think I’ll save that for a future post.

As you go through the portal, superpages walks you through setting up a campaign step by step in the fashion of a wizard. When you get to the business profile option you’ll want to fill out as best you can as each word you include in your business profile becomes a keyword that will allow you to come up in a keyword search.

Superpages.com is kind of a hybrid between a search engine and IYP as it will search for business categories like a traditional Internet Yellow Pages but it will also search for keywords if the query demands it. And the place it seaches for keywords is the business profile.

You will also need to determine what links you want to do display at the listing level. Go back to superpages.com and do a search. Under the listings you will notice links. Phone, More Info, Map it, Email etc. These are all clickable and in a pay per click you can imagine what that means. You guessed it, you’ll pay the full price of the click and might never even get traffic to your website if you decide to display these links. You are also likely to have a higher CTR than a business that doesn’t display them. I’ve made the decision that I will only pay for a click to my website, so the only clickable item I will display as part of my listing is the url. If I need to bid higher because of decreased CTR I will do so.

Because I track my site using Google Analytics I also use url builder otherwise the traffic will show as direct traffic in Google Analytics. If you don’t understand that last sentence. Don’t worry about it. Use the tracking provided by superpages.com and don’t give this paragraph another thought.

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