Directories have problems. I’ll show you. Do you really want to be off in these weeds?

In this video, we look at a random directory to see some of the problems common to nearly all of them. Make sure you watch video eight in this series first. How do their numbers compare to Google’s? What is the logic behind how they present your listing? How do they sell their proposition to their customers and how long is their contract? Maybe you can stay out of the weeds and just fish in the big pond instead – where most of the fish are. It’s not hard. Stay with me and I’ll show you.

Transcript:

Michael Byrd here with WordwrightWeb in Wilmington, North Carolina. Video number nine in our series. We are talking about the top 10 organic search results in a Google search results page for whatever it is that you do as though you are a prospect of the business. What we’re doing is starting at a very top level. For example a speeding ticket – speeding ticket attorney. Let’s say you’re an attorney in your community and one of the things you do is you handle speeding tickets or traffic attorney. Well a person might say speeding ticket attorney because they got a speeding ticket maybe they wouldn’t say traffic but we can find that out of course we can find out which search terms have the most volume. But let’s get back to where we were on the last one. Now we talked about what is typically in that first ten in one of these kinds of searches and we have essentially two things- we have your competitors (or you if you happen to be fortunate to be in that top 10 on the. Google page), and we have directories. I am pointing out some of the logical fallacies of the idea that a directory is a great idea for your business. 

Let me dig in a little deeper for the example of the directory and here we go we’re going to switch on over to the screen to do our fancy picture-in-picture video edit. Here we are now in the last video we did this example search and we went to one of the directories, that’s where I left you. Let’s go back to that directory because I want to point out a couple of the problems with the directory. The first major problem that we pointed out last time I want to review this to try to say it better than last time is that the numbers for each directory are way less than the numbers for this page right here that you’re already looking at. So the biggest pool of prospects is on this page right here and it will be better if your business will represent it right here on the top level and not have to go to another directory and not ask the customer to go to Google and then click again before they even start to have choices. But let’s say they do that. Let’s look at some of the other things you’re going to find with the directory and yeah I am really casting aspersions on this particular one but I’m not singling them out. We will find similar problems with some of the others. The first problem that I pointed out is that there are now 20 law firms represented on this page okay. I counted them and it’s a little bit misleading but it does say right here there are 20 but there are actually 24 on this page so let’s go back up to one of the other things that are a problem in a way this directory is doing exactly what Google does. They have paid listings at the top and I’m not against paid listings but the point is that in order to be in this directory at all you have to pay. You have to pay to be down and pay more to be up here okay now maybe because these red buttons are here somebody’s going to click on these more frequently. Some other directories one of the misleading things is done is that they are sorted by most relevant add air quotes because most relevant means those are the ones that paid money to the directory. Let’s look at another problem that I know with this directory here: let’s get down to the so-called organic results or the pure results. What is the order of these results, what logic, what system is being used to display these results. I can’t see one other than who’s paid the most money. They’re not in alphabetical order.  I don’t get it how are these people going to get clicked I don’t really know but let me tell you one of the ways that this gets sold and it’s very impressive and very very very good sales people but doesn’t mean is where you actually – I’ll give you a marketing principle which is to never choose a marketing option that walks in your door or that that calls you without first seeing what all the other options are. Because some of the better options are the ones that don’t walk in your door they don’t have to. That’s really the point. Google doesn’t have to seek you out; Google typically doesn’t call people. I shouldn’t say typically I’m pretty sure they don’t call people but anyway you’ve got this pile of folks in this directory with the hope that somebody who just got a speeding ticket is going to find them in so-called FindLaw.

What FindLaw is trying to do is build a brand for themselves to compete with Google. Not much hope of that really is not much hope of that. They can throw money at it all they want, they can sell like crazy, they can make all kinds of profit by advertising. It’s going to be really tough. And how do they sell it? They sell it by giving you some really big numbers. Let’s say in 2016, it’s now 2017 but they come to you in 2017 they say in 2016 we experienced 10,000 searches for speeding ticket lawyers in your community. So 10,000 eyeballs in the course of the year came to this page. That might be true but if that were true a hundred thousand eyeballs came to the Google page or more because directories are not that attractive. But again back to what I said in the last video if I got a speeding ticket I’m looking for an attorney. I’m not looking to make another click and go through another list when I’m already looking at a list so this doesn’t make sense that’s what I’m trying to say here. They have a really great status effort and make it all real easy for you, you don’t have to do anything just sign up, we take care of everything etc etc contract (that’s another thing I’ll talk about that in another video maybe the next video). Understand the directory before somebody walks in before somebody insists on talking with you and at least showing you the program. Look at what happens when somebody needs what you do – they go to Google they don’t go to findlaw necessarily. A few do but that’s really not that’s really not where the fish are. There are fish everywhere in the lake but  that’s not the big pond and that’s really what you want to go to. So go take a look at a directory, notice the things that I’ve just pointed out here and see if it makes sense to you. Trust your own Mind.

Michael Byrd at WordwrightWeb

Updated: 10/25/2023

Categorised in: Uncategorized

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