The paper version of the Yellow Pages that used to turn up on your doorstep once a year may be about to go the way of the dodo, but it’s electronic cousin hold s fair bit of sway in the online world. Over the last few years, it has successfully transitioned from a business listing site, into quite an important source of traffic, new leads, and an extra weapon in one’s SEO-arsenal.
While the Yellow Pages will obviously never out-rank the monolith that is Google, it is still helpful when it comes to targeting suburb-specific search terms and can help when it comes to local SEO. So, with this in mind, its clearly not going to hurt to optimise your Yellow Pages listing. And, the most effective way to rank as high as possible is to ensure that all available information is complete and adheres to SEO best-practice.
Here a few things to include and focus on when optimising your Yellow Pages listing.
Accreditations and Awards
Yellow Pages allows for inclusion of up to 3 accreditations or awards. You can capitalise on your accreditations and awards by including a relevant hyperlink and an icon or an image for each accreditation or award. This icon or image should adhere to all SEO best practise, including keyword-relevant titles and descriptions.
Unique Selling Propositions
You are allowed to have 5 unique selling propositions for each listing, each with a maximum of 50 characters. You need to make use of this feature. The best way to do so is to craft concise, compelling statements – put together a couple of drafts to ensure that you make the most out of these 50 characters. Really think about what it is that makes your company stand out from the crowd.
Hero Carousel Images
Five hero carousel images can be included on your listing. These files have to be 674 pixels high by 1200 pixels wide. Because these images can have best practice SEO built into them by including keyword relevant file names and descriptions, they are absolutely essential to optimising your page. For these images, it may even be worth investing in the services of either (or both) a photographer and graphic designer, just to add a little something extra to your listing.
Promotional Tiles
Up to 3 feature tiles may be included in your listing. The purpose of these is to increase engagement with potential customers and prompt them to learn more about your business, increasing the likelihood that they will then contact or visit you. The promotional tiles should be images with short action oriented phrases to call out promotions, offers and specialities. These could be phrases like ‘Book An Appointment Now’, ‘Get Your Free Quote’, or ‘Explore Our Specials Today’. Each one needs to have a photo that is 640 pixels high by 260 pixels wide, a 25 character description, and should link through to a page on your website.
Image Gallery
Up to 10 images can be included for every Yellow Pages listing. These need to high-quality, high-resolution images at 450 pixels by 450 pixels. All images can have SEO best practice built into them, including file names and alt text (up to 120 characters).
Videos
Up to 3 videos can be included for every Yellow Pages listing. Once again, all videos can have SEO best practice built into them, including video link titles (up to 32 characters) and video descriptions (up to 200 characters).
About Us Content
The perfect ‘About Us’ section will include:
- 1 x 400 character overview
- 4 x 400 character text blocks
This content should be optimised to ensure proper use of the best and highest search volume keywords. As such, when writing your ‘About Us’ content, its always a good idea to begin with in-depth keyword research, analysis and opportunity mapping. It’s also a good idea to include links to the most important pages on your company website or landing pages. As with any (and all) SEO writing, just be sure not to go overboard – no one responds well to keyword stuffing – and to keep your intended audience in mind.
PDFs
Up to 10 PDFs can be uploaded to a Yellow Pages listing. You may want to include product brochures, copies of resources your customers are likely to find useful (like whitepapers and ebooks), or a company overview document. All of your PDFs should include SEO best practice, including a title (up to 32 characters) and alt text (up to 120 characters).
Keywords
Up to 50 keywords can be included. You need to ensure best possible keywords are used, and that the maximum possible number of keywords are displayed. As with your ‘About Us’ copy, make sure you put some time into keyword research for this one. Don’t just have a guess at what your potential customers might be looking for. Use Google’s Keyword Planner so you have real data on what people are actually searching for. If you need some further details on keywords, then take a look at our recent article: Keywords Are Key in Online Marketing.
FAQs
FAQs are the perfect way to demonstrate how your business’ products or services can solve all the issues of your potential customers. When writing FAQs, think about what your customers main pain points are likely to be – phrase these as questions, and then use the answers to demonstrate your worth. Make sure that all your FAQs content makes use of the best possible keywords, and include links to your companies website, particularly those that demonstrate your business can help solve any issues related to the FAQs.
Social Media Profiles
Yellow Pages allows links to Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn. You should include links to all of your active social media profiles. You can also have your social media profiles link back to your listing as a means of encouraging reviews.
External Links
Yellow Pages allows for 6 external links to be included. Make sure you include all six. Its always a good idea to use the contact page on your website as the first link, any quote request form as a second link, and an ‘About Us’ page as the third. The rest will depend upon the types of products or services your business offers.
Article and Blog Links
Yellow Pages allows for 4 article and blog links to be included. Each of these links can include a description (up to 50 characters). You should make use of this as it is a fantastic way to promote your company—you can demonstrate, through free resources, how knowledgeable your company is, that you are truly a leader in your field. Plus, its a great way to increase traffic to your website.
User Reviews
Yellow Pages gives preference to companies with ‘User Reviews’. You should encourage customers to leave reviews on your website. The more reviews, the better. So you need to come up with innovative ways to elicit these reviews from your customers or clients. Including a link on your products is a great way to do this, or you could send out emails to your customers asking them to leave a review.