I have a client who is a general contractor in a rural area. We've got them showing up in the search engines well enough, but there just isn't enough search engine traffic to do much good. The traffic is probably going to online telephone directories like Switchboard or YellowPages, etc. I'm finding it confusing figuring out what the biggest bang for the buck is. My expectation was that, if a business had a telephone listing, it should show up in any and all online directories for that locale. But, each listing needs to be purchased for each directory, and those listings aren't very cheap. I can't tell which directories are worth the investment. For my web design site I have a listing on Verizon/Yellowpages. I haven't gotten a single call as a result of my listing, so I don't know what to tell my client is a cost effective way to go. Anybody have any advice?
Not everyone in his town might be wired up to the internet. If his business is truly local, then it might be best to just advertise locally.
There is a real market down here for people from distant states selling their little houses for small fortunes and building big new houses down here. But when they type in "mecklenburg va contractors" not much comes up, so I'm figuring the next thing they're trying is the online telephone books. That's what I did when I was moving here. I would guess they will be replaced eventually by Yahoo and Google local listings, once people figure out they exist, but in the meantime, I need to figure out which online phone books to fool with.