How much do you spend on Yellow Pages advertising each year? More important, are you getting your money’s worth?

If you are not reviewing your Yellow Pages ad results on a regular basis, you may be tossing hard-earned dollars down the drain. Yellow Pages ads have a number of built-in limitations that may reduce the effectiveness of your advertising dollar and restrict your ability to reach new patients.

These limitations include:

• High cost. Depending on its size and location, a Yellow Pages ad can cost up to $20,000 per year. And you can easily spend another $5,000 designing a customized ad. At those rates, it takes a lot of customers just to break even on the cost of the ad. Plus, studies show that the phone directory companies continue to raise their fees far beyond current inflation rates.
• Cluttered media. You spend a lot of money to design and place your ad, and where do you end up? Depending on the size of your market, right next to dozens, perhaps even hundreds of companies all competing for your next customer.
• Lack of flexibility. In today’s mass-media world, it takes a variety of messages to reach your audience and motivate them to contact you. Yet, once your Yellow Pages ad goes into the directory, that’s it. You can’t make any changes for a full 12 months.
• Difficult to test. Because of their inflexibility, Yellow Pages ads don’t allow you to test different marketing approaches. Once you place an ad, you have to wait a year to test a new headline or message. And unless a patient says they found you through the phone directory, you have no way of knowing the effectiveness of your ad.
• Reach the wrong market. Yellow Pages ads tend to attract only elderly and non-internet savvy. While these people can augment your regular clientele, they’re not the kind of customers upon which you can build a healthy, growing business.

With the Yellow Pages, it depends entirely on what you’re advertising. If I owned a shoe store that specialized in orthopedics, I would take out a large full page ad. The elderly who are in need of orthopedics still use this directory.

It’s all about your demographic.

There are several good reasons to advertise in the Yellow Pages, but it’s nowhere near as valuable as it once was.  All advertising (especially print) is undergoing a major revolution.  Search engines have taken over as the method of finding products and services.

That aside, there is also a tangible SEO benefit to having your website linked in directories like this. However, the cost of the link is most often not worth the investment.  If you wish to use Yellow Pages, then try it once.  Use a unique phone number and a unique website.  Negotiate very hard with the sales representative.  They often charge ten times more than the fair market price on print advertising.  Don’t get scammed!  And carefully monitor the responses you receive.

Otherwise you are best to utilize the current major marketing method of SEO and Social Media.  Even late adopters such as the elderly are catching on to this.  The simplicity of looking things up via Google and Bing have replaced the cumbersome task of thumbing through a yellow pages book.

And more and more people are becoming aware of what directories really are.  A place to pay for advertising.  And people want to know what’s fair information, not what some company has paid to make you believe!

Contact Media One Pro if you would like to learn more about the advantages of SEO/Pay Per click Marketing and Social Media.  Leave the yellow dinosaur (yellow pages) in the past.

as of 8/31/2009

Google - 1st page local business listings “internet marketing”

Google – 1st page local business listings “internet marketing services”

Google - 1st page local business listings “internet marketing service”

Google – 1st page local business listings “best internet service”

Google – 3rd page local business listings “designer shops”

#1) Hire a good solid team, not individuals 
Many people make the mistake of hiring people for different phases of the website.  For example, Company “A” might hire a graphic designer to developer a layout for the website, but this person has no idea of business flow or optimizing code for search engines.  Next, Company “A” may pay for a web developer to code the site and database, but that person may not understand SEO structure as well.  Finally, the company hires a professional Internet marketer who charges a ton to overhaul the entire site and make it SEO friendly. 

If company “A” had hired a team that had all of these people working together already, then there would have been less money wasted, the site would have been developed faster and the marketing and business process would have been key throughout the entire development.

At Media One Pro, we have an experience staff of professionals that specialize in both the front-end user interfce (UI) design (with an emphasis on sales flow and conversions) and coding the backend for ecommerce and SEO.  This way, you’re site is built properly from the very beginning!

#2) Research, Analyze and Target specific Keywords/Terms

Don’t go after random search terms.  In other words, let us do the research and find out what exact keywords you should be focused on.  For example, if you want to sell cars on your website, don’t bother to go after the term “cars” only.  You’ll never break into the top page of  Google!  Instead, you should be more specific and detailed with your keywords, like “1996 toyota 4runners for sale las vegas”.  With a “longtail keyword”, you’ll stand a better chance of breaking into the SE’s natural rankings.  

At Media One Pro, we help our clients with keyword strategy and provide many different services to garner keyword search results. 

#4) Don’t stuff the “Keyword” Meta Tag

A while back, the search engines used to look at keywords for relevance on the web page.  Now days, there is less emphasis on keywords in Meta Tag’s as they’ve been abused by people who practice black hat SEO. 

You can still utilize keyword meta tag’s bt make sure that you use a different keyword(s) for each page.  Don’t put up more than a few keywords.. never, ever stuff a bunch into this tag as that’ll be a red flag for spam.
 

#3) It’s all about the content
Write good, clear and concise content about your products and services using different keywords and phrases that make sense for you or your business. The more keyword-rich content the better, and the more you vary your usage of your keywords and phrases, the better. Don’t think that just because you use the word “Book” in your content a million times means Google is going to care. The more useful information you have, the more your users are going to care, and that all adds up to good search engine results and rankings. Hey – why do you think I’m taking the time to write this article?

#5) The “Description” Meta Tag
This tag is important and still used by Google in many cases. It is often the blurb that comes up under your search engine result link. Choose a short and sweet, 1-2 sentence description of your site or business for your home page. For the other pages, change it up to reflect what kind of information is on that page.

#6) The “Title” Meta Tag
While it’s not really a meta tag at all, the “Title” tag is a very important part of SEO. I’d say it’s a good idea to have 3-12 words (keyword rich of course) describing what the page is and telling users (and search engine crawlers) where they are on your website. The more it relates to the content on the page – the better.

#5) Page URLs and Naming Conventions
The naming conventions of URLs on the pages of your website are an often overlooked way to make sure your pages are found by search engines in a way that is relative to their content. Instead of a 1 word file name or url ending like “about.php” – why not call it “about-specialty-book-seller-san-francisco.php” ? Seems a little lame I know, but from our experience, it seems to help in search engine result rankings. This is even more important on products in an e-commerce store. If the url is plain and doesn’t say anything about the product (i.e. “category.php?id=1″) then it isn’t telling the search engine crawler anything. If instead, it says something like “category-name-here?product-id=detailed-product-name-here” then you’re better off. A string of useless, arbitrary numbers isn’t going to do you a bit of good. Also, dashes between words are better than words with no spaces, and even underscores.

#6) Incoming Relative Links
This is probably one of the most important things you can have that will help your ranking in search engines. I’m not suggesting you do what some SEO companies may do, and add your site to a bunch of useless link farms, but the more links you have to your site throughout the pages on the internet, the better. Why? Because it means more people are finding your site, which increases your traffic, and more importantly, more people find your site valuable enough to link to it. With a little bit of a proactive effort, and a little grass roots internet marketing, we can show you how to increase the number of incoming links to your website.

#7) Traffic, in General
The more traffic, the more relative your website is to Google. If you just sit there waiting for things to happen, chances are, nothing will. An internet business or website is only as good as the marketing efforts and work you put behind it. If you aren’t sending people there, or promoting it in some way, your rankings just won’t get much better. Pay-per-click advertising like Google Adwords can be a good way to jump start this, e-newsletters are another.

#8) Keep your Content Fresh.
If you never change your site’s content, your users may not have a good reason to return, and to put it bluntly, search engines won’t care about you. Update your site on a regular basis to keep it fresh, and to increase your site’s content, and you’ll be better off. Make sure you have a webmaster that can keep it updated for you on a regular basis, or better yet, get Media One Pro CMS set up so you can add and edit content on your site all day and night if you want. Content Management Systems are a must, in my opinion, for good search engine optimization.

#9) Be Smart: Don’t Spam or try to Trick the Search Engines
If you’re an idiot about bloating your site, your keywords and trying underhanded tricks like creating hundreds of useless pages, making real small, unreadable text or making the text the same as the background color so no one can see it – you’re eventually going to fail at getting a consistent placement. You may think you’re hot when it works for a couple weeks, but in the end you’ll be knocked way down the list or out the results completely.

#10) Register Your Domain for a Long Time.
If your domain is only registered for 1 year, it doesn’t look as good to a search engine as it does if it is registered for 10 years. Why? Because search engines don’t like fly-by-night, get-rich-quick sites that aren’t reliable or worth anything. Be smart and register your domain for at least 3 years if you are serious about your business and what you are doing.

Media One has teamed up with Microsoft® to deliver fast, secure, ultra-reliable email, direct to your Outlook® inbox. With a new, built-in connection to the world’s most popular email client, Media One Email is easier and more convenient than ever before. Plus, you’ll have everything you need to stay organized, too, including calendar, address book and task management tools. Choose the plan that’s best for you based on how you use email…
Email Accounts

Microsoft Outlook earned its place as the world’s most popular email software by making it easier for users to stay connected, manage their schedules, increase their productivity and more. Powered by Microsoft’s Hosted Exchange service, here are the top 10 ways Outlook can work for you.

1. Instantly search all your information.
Having problems finding the information you need? Use Office Outlook 2007 to search for keywords, dates or other flexible criteria to locate items in your e-mail, calendar, contacts, or tasks.

2. Easily manage your daily priorities and information.
Check your priorities for the day by looking at the To-Do Bar where your flagged mails and tasks are clearly laid out.

3. Get better results faster with the redesigned Microsoft Office Fluent™ user interface.
Office Outlook 2007 has redesigned the look and feel so you now have all of the rich features and capabilities of Outlook in an accessible and streamlined location.

4. Connect with people easily and effectively.
New Office Outlook 2007 calendaring functionalities provide easy ways to share your calendar with anyone within or outside of your organization, giving your important contacts immediate access to your information.

5. Enjoy increased collaboration and functionality with Microsoft Exchange Server 2007.
Office Outlook 2007, used in conjunction with Exchange Server 2007, offers a rich and complete Outlook experience. Users benefit from a new scheduling assistant that automates time-consuming calendaring tasks, the ability to schedule and customize out-of-office communications, and managed folders that facilitate compliance needs.

6. Manage your shared information and content in one interface.
Office Outlook 2007 provides rich interaction with information stored in Windows SharePoint Services technology at any time. You can connect Windows SharePoint Services documents, calendars, contacts, tasks, and other information to Office Outlook 2007, giving you a central place to manage your information.

7. Enjoy new measures that help keep you safe from junk e-mail and malicious sites.
Office Outlook 2007 has taken new measures to help keep you safe from junk mail and phishing Web sites. To help protect you from divulging personal information to a threatening Web site, Office Outlook 2007 has an improved junk e-mail filter and has added new features that disable links and warn you about threatening content within an e-mail message.

8. Send text messages from Outlook with one easy click.
Outlook Mobile Service is a feature of Outlook that enables you to send and receive text and picture messages between Office Outlook 2007 and any mobile phone.

9. Organize your information in new, rich ways.
Using Color Categories in Office Outlook 2007, you can easily personalize and add categories to any type of information—e-mail, calendar items, contacts, or tasks.

10. Manage all your communication in one interface.
With Office Outlook 2007, you can now read and manage your Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds and blogs right from within Office Outlook 2007, so you no longer have to leave Outlook to read the latest world news, catch up on your favorite sports team, or remain up to date on interesting blogs.

Here is a collection of methods you can use to boost your Alexa Rank. Most of these tips are derived from several fellow webmasters I know who claimed to have derived positive results through their experiments with the Alexa Rankings.

Some of the other tips were derived articles and sources, which I have duly referenced at the end of this post.

Do these tips work? According to some, yes they definitely do work. But do note that most of them require active effort of some sort and hence, they will work as long as long as you are consistently performing specific actions.

To increase your Alexa rank in the long run, I would highly recommended that one focus on developing quality content which attracts and maintains a large audience instead of purely focusing on artificially increasing your Alexa Rank.

Great link-worthy content will leads to an natural increase in site traffic and is an excellent way to passively increase your Alexa rank.

It is important to emphasize that you should devote most of your efforts in growing your site audience alongside integrated implementation of any of the following tips below.

Install the Alexa toolbar or Firefox’s SearchStatus extension and set your blog as your homepage. This is the most basic step.

Put up an Alexa rank widget on your website. I did this a few days ago and receive a fair amount of clicks every day. According to some, each click counts as a visit even if the toolbar is not used by the visitor.

Encourage others to use the Alexa toolbar. This includes friends, fellow webmasters as well as site visitors/blog readers. Be sure to link to Alexa’s full explanation of their toolbar and tracking system so your readers know what installing the toolbar or extension entails.

Work in an Office or own a company? Get the Alexa toolbar or SS Firefox extension installed on all computers and set your website as the homepage for all browsers. Perhaps it will be useful to note that this may work only when dynamic or different IPs are used.

Get friends to review and rate your Alexa website profile. Not entirely sure of its impact on rankings but it might help in some way.

Write or Blog about Alexa. Webmaster and bloggers love to hear about ways to increase their Alexa rank. They’ll link to you and send you targeted traffic (i.e. visitors with the toolbar already installed). This gradually has effects on your Alexa ranking.

Flaunt your URL in webmaster forums. Webmasters usually have the toolbar installed. You’ll get webmasters to visit your website and offer useful feedback. It’s also a good way to give back to the community if you have useful articles to share with others.

Write content that is related to webmasters. This can fall in the category of domaining and SEO, two fields in which most webmasters will have the Alexa toolbar installed. Promote your content on social networking websites and webmaster forums.

Use Alexa redirects on your website URL. Try this: http://redirect.alexa.com/redirect?www.doshdosh.com . Replace doshdosh.com with the URL for your website. Leave this redirected URL in blog comments as well as forum signatures. This redirect will count a unique IP address once a day so clicking it multiple times won’t help. There is no official proof that redirects positively benefit your Alexa Rank, so use with caution.

Post in Asian social networking websites or forums. Some webmasters have suggested that East Asian web users are big Alexa toolbar fans, judging by the presence of several Asia-based websites in the Alexa Top 500. I suggest trying this only if you have the time or capacity to do so.

Create a webmaster tools section on your website. This is a magnet for webmasters who will often revisit your website to gain access to the tools. Aaron Wall’s webpage on SEOTools is a very good example.

Get Dugg or Stumbled. This usually brings massive numbers of visitors to your website and the sheer amount will have a positive impact on your Alexa Rank. Naturally, you’ll need to develop link worthy material.

Use PayperClick Campaigns. Buying advertisements on search engines such as Google or Exact Seek will help bring in Traffic. Doubly useful when your ad is highly relevant to webmasters.

Create an Alexa category on your blog and use it to include any articles or news about Alexa. This acts as an easily accessible resource for webmasters or casual search visitors while helping you rank in the search engines.

Optimize your popular posts. Got a popular post that consistently receives traffic from the search engines? Include a widget/graph at the bottom of the post, link to your Alexa post or use Alexa redirection on your internal URLs.

Buy banners and links for traffic from webmaster forums and websites. A prominent and well displayed ad will drive lots of webmaster traffic to your website, which can significantly boost your rank.

Hire forum posters to pimp your website. Either buy signatures in webmaster forums or promote specific articles or material in your website on a regular basis. You can easily find posters for hire in Digital Point and other webmaster forums.

Pay Cybercafe owners to install the Alexa toolbar and set your website as the homepage for all their computers. This might be difficult to arrange and isn’t really a viable solution for most. I’m keeping this one in because some have suggested that it does work.

Use MySpace . This is a little shady so I don’t recommended it unless you’re really interested in artificially inflating your Alexa Rank. Use visually attractive pictures or banners and link them to your redirected Alexa URL. This will be most effective if your website has content that is actually relevant to the MySpace Crowd.

Try Alexa auto-surfs. Do they work? Maybe for brand new sites. I think they are mostly suitable for new websites with a very poor Alexa rank. Note that there be problems when you try to use auto surfs alongside contextual ads like Adsense. They aren’t also long term solutions to improving your Alexa Rank so I suggest using with caution.