It wasn’t that long ago that the Yellow Pages ruled the marketing world. Especially for local businesses. Advertising in them wasn’t optional. Today, the internet & particularly Google have made them an endangered species.

The other thing that has been working against the yellow page publishers is market saturation. It used to be there were maybe two versions of the yellow pages for an area. Today at our home in McKinney we probably receive 6 or 7 different versions over the course of the year.

No one keeps all of these. Every time a new version is introduced, the marketing effectiveness of each existing version is diluted.

In May of 2007 Bill Gates predicted that “within five years, yellow page usage amongst people under age 50 would drop to near zero”. A bold prediction at the time, but at the present rate it could be less than five years.

Think of yourself. If you’re looking for the phone number of a restaurant or for an allergist what are you going to do, dig out the yellow page book or search Google?  For the majority of consumers today it’s Google.

So, as a business owner you must position yourself so you are found by the search engines, especially Google.

This is where local search engine optimization comes into play. More and more internet searchers are typing in geography specific “long tail keywords”, that is rather than simply searching for “dentist”, they’re searching for “cosmetic dentist, dallas” or “children’s dentist plano, texas”.  According to Google the average search now consists of 4 words.

If you want to maximize your businesses’ potential, your website has to be positioned so that when someone types specific, local search terms you come up high in the natural or organic search engine rankings. Ideally on the first page of Google.

Depending on your the business you’re in and the market you serve you may be able to obtain page one listings faster than you may think. With the right combination of optimization on your website and some strategic link building, the internet could quickly become your number one source of new customers.

And don’t forget about Google Maps (but that’s another topic for another post).