Yellow Page Alternative - Save Your Business Money And Get More Customers

Consumers gathering information on the location and contact information of local businesses have always turned to the local yellow pages. And, although the Yellow Pages directories’ industry specialists across the United States maintain that traditional print Local Yellow Pages directories had 13.4 billion references in 2007, this figure has been in steadily dropping, beginning in the middle of the 1990’s. A variety of recent factors caused this decline, including the overwhelming popularity of cellular phones, the various directory offerings given out by cellular phone companies, and the most influential factor, the internet.

To stay current with the trends in consumer tastes, the Local Yellow Pages companies have resorted to the internet as another tool for providing their local business directories to the public. Thousands of these websites now offer search boxes for users to track down local business listings in a given industry in a method that is not unlike that of traditional print Local Yellow Pages. Online Yellow Pages, as a collective whole, gathered around 3.8 billion searches in 2007, almost a 13% rise from the previous year.

The very nature of the internet, however, provides a multitude of problems for companies wanting to profitably advertise with the Online Yellow Pages. This occurs mainly because, in 2007, online references on the internet to the whole assortment of Local Yellow Pages companies and their websites was just over 3.8 billion, whereas the total number of searches, utilizing the top three major search engine was around 42 billion.

By themselves, such statistics may prove irrelevant; however, nearly every hit, which arrived as one of 3.8 billion Online Yellow Pages views, began with a user first typing a search query into one of the major search engines. Local Yellow Pages have not fallen into disuse because of the internet, but rather, because the major search engines can offer an easy approach and indexing of websites online, based on their relevancy to the user’s given keywords.

When a user enters in his or her search terms, he or she will type “x in y,” with “x” representing a product, business or service and “y” being the location. The results from the search engines then return in a long list of pertinent websites that provide information on the businesses in the given location.

The Local Yellow Pages websites often appear within these search engine index results. Such Yellow Pages results then become an option, or link, which consumers can choose to lead them to more information on the Local Yellow Pages Online’s website.

Advanced knowledge of internet user and searcher behavior is often helpful, at this point. Studies and personal experience help researchers determine that the results, ranking higher in the search engines get the most clicks. In fact, almost 95 percent of the internet traffic is from the first three search results of a specified term. This need to rank high in the search engines for a certain search term is very much like needing to be placed first in a Yellow Pages directory, but can usually be less expensive.

By forming a website, in which the business’ local or regional keywords are designed to place within the major search engines, companies can drive traffic and, therefore, capitalize on consumer business with advertising. Though it was efficient before the advent of the internet and its related search engines, in regards to finding goods, businesses and services, the Local Yellow Pages are no longer a required step to be the first among the consumer references go-to spots.