yellow pages Canada

Local Inspection Issues Canadian Home Inspectors
1

Yellow pages Canada has been bugging me to take a one year contract to improve my on line listing position.
I am interested if they will do what they say, display my listing in the top 3 to 7 positions for 120 bux per month.
My concern is that they want me to agree to a one year contract that I can’t cancel if their service sucks.
I find their app does not work all that well on my smart phone. Searching for home inspectors shows all kinds of non relevant service providers. I don’t use it much when I look for local services.
My other concern is how can they make this promise to place me in the top listings when no doubt they are making the same promise to my competitors, if everybody signs on, somebody won’t get what was promised.
My question to Canadian Inspectors who have used yellow pages Canada, what is your experience? Are you getting value for whatever you are paying them?
For all our US cousins, as far as I know, Yellow Pages Canada the Yellow Pages Group, is not the same as Yellow Pages USA or anywhere else.

2

I have a yellow pages add. I do get work from the print side of their services. They do other online stuff that i don’t fully understand. With the age of the clientele in my location, the print add is what pays off for me.

I know others will disagree, but it works for me.

3

I did it for a year and tracked every call. Where did they here about me or how did you find me on the web. A grand total of three calls came because of the yellow pages add in the book and 9 came from online yellow pages. It was not worth me paying 1500.00 for the year in my opinion. I still track every call and find that most are through the agents and my website. That is where I spend my money.

4

Yes I also saw the same thing Greg. They tried to use the trick like “How many hits to the your web link.”

5

Excel Inspectors is still free until Turkey Day. Get your company out there, wherever, whenever, you can.

6

Yellow Media cuts 300 jobs

CBC News Posted: Nov 12, 2013 10:31 AM ET Last Updated: Nov 12, 2013 12:53 PM ET
Yellow Media plans to lay off 300 staff. The company is moving its focus from print to digital. (Judi Bottoni/Associated Press) (AP)
Related Stories

Yellow Media is cutting about 300 positions in its print division, and shifting more assets towards digital properties.
The cuts represent about 10 per cent of the overall workforce at the Montreal-based publisher of Yellow Pages directories.
The positions will be largely phased out by the end of 2013, with the remainder to be gone by early next year. The cuts will also come from across the country, and the company declined to offer specifics on those on Tuesday.
The company maintains a large presence in Halifax. Fiona Story, a spokesperson for the company, said there are currently 50 employees in that office and it’s unclear how many of those will be affected in the company’s ongoing digital transformation.
Shift to digital

“As the announcement outlines our intention to realign our workforce on a rolling basis through to early 2014, currently, all that we can confirm is this will touch all our offices across Canada, including Halifax,” she said in an emailed statement.
Current employees affected by the reorganization will be placed in other functions where possible, the company says.
Yellow Media has been undergoing major changes as it shifts to more online and digital publishing in response to changing conditions. Advertising dollars that once went to print titles are increasing shifting to online, mobile and other digital properties.
In contrast to the systemic contraction on the print side, Yellow Media says it has hired roughly 175 people in various IT and digital media functions this year, and plans to expand even more.

7

Yellow Pages? You could also try the Eaton’s catalogue…

G

8

No way we used to use them in the out house 70 years ago.
Too hard a paper .

9

I tried the yellow pages both paper and on line. I cancelled after the contract was up. I tracked the HI I got from the YP group and it was not cost justified. Save your money for marketing directly to real estate agents, that’s where you get a good return on your marketing dollars. Some may disagree with this but that’s my experience to date.

10

Think about it how can every client of theirs be listed in the top 3-7 positions?

Cheers

11

The secret is to get your website registered on as many free services as possible. Using the free Yellow Pages service does this, and there’s no need to pay.

Then it’s just a case of getting the keywords into the mix.

Use sites that have a high hit content and use trackbacks to and from them (e.g. nachi.org) Make sure that when you post a trackback, it has the URL of the site you are tracking back to. Otherwise the TB will get dumped by the search engine as an attempt to harvest high-hit sites.

The more your URL pops up in various places, the more you will drive your site to the top of the Google pile and show up on the front page of a search engine enquiry.

The downside is that more SEO marketing people will phone you. That is the true indication of your site and therefore you details being publicized properly. I’m up to about 6 phone calls a day from SEO/SM2 marketers.

I pay NOTHING for marketing, but it’s starting to get tedious with the constant barrage of Indian call centres telling me they can do what I’m obviously successful at doing already.

12

Len:
Can you elaborate on this “track back” thing?

I didn’t know there were free sites to get listed on can you share?

Cheers

13

My experience was similar to Greg’s when I was providing home inspections. I had a print ad and enhanced online ad with the Yellow Pages for 1-2 years several years ago. I also tracked every call and found it was not worth the money. I found that ensuring my own websites were highly ranked using Dominic’s tips was all that was necessary to get plenty of calls coming in.

14

That’s great news sort of, here I thought SEO marketing calls were a mere pain in the rear. I had no idea that they were web site performance meters. Next time I will say thanks for calling before slamming down the phone.

15

Douglas,
Excel Inspectors is Free until Thanksgiving. (One year membership)

16

Thanks
cheers