yell websites – Don’t be fooled!

Yell has had it’s day, and they know it, why else would they be resorting to a multi-million pound media advertising campaign for their yell websites service? If they had any clue at all about what their business customers needed they would have done this 10 years ago. But no, they went down the road of attracting customers to their Directory service Yell Direct for all these years instead, and I use the term “attracting” very loosely. From first hand experience and from what my clients have told me, they are very good at promising the world in their sales calls. Only problem is they never back up their claims.

Yell websites and other services

I myself fell victim to their “scam” when I started up, big time. I was given statistics relating to my industry of how many searches were being carried out on Yell.com on a daily and monthly basis by the friendly, helpful, caring sales man on the other end of the phone. He even took me through some online page where they “prove” how many searches are being done etc. Great! I thought, but there was more, if I took out a Heavyweight listing I’d be in the top part of their results every time. Fantastic! With the amount of searches being done and a heavyweight listing, I’d dominate the local market immediately and get a massive Return On Investment. It was a no-brainer, so I signed up for the sweet price of £370 per month, however I was still a bit skeptical so I made it clear I didn’t want their 12 month contract offering, instead I wanted the ability to cancel whenever I liked so I was placed on a monthly rolling contract. I was happy as Larry and sat back, waiting on the phone to ring off the hook every day.

The phone rang alright, but not from eager customers, all I got for a full month was sales call after sales call after sales call.

You see, when Yell tell you about all these impressive search stats, something is fundamentally wrong. I can think of only two things:

• Their search analytics are all wrong, these ain’t potential customers doing searches, they are sales people and marketing agencies looking for businesses to promote their services to. However unethical it is, it happens, and Yell can’t stop it from happening.
• Their search analytics are “altered” to look better than they actually are.

I’d like to believe that number one is the correct explanation, which leads me to ask “If that is correct, then why has such a big company not got systems in place to record accurate search statistics?”. My personal opinion is that maybe they do, but why change it? Most people see “Yell” and automatically think “they’re a massive multi-billion pound company, they don’t need to rip me off”, oh how wrong they are!
Yell, BT, Thomson Local and any other large Business Directory relies heavily on their reputation to convince customers to pay them ridiculous amounts of money for their products, and we pay it, we take their word as gospel and ask no questions, I did it myself!

Yell Websites – worth the money?

Although they have a massive presence, businesses are slowly catching on to the fact that..

• Yell Websites business packages they offer are expensive

• Yell Websites are not optimised to maximise targeted visitors

• you don’t get personalised service and marketing follow-up once you are locked in to a contract with Yell Websites.

These guys focus on the power of their “brand” to suck local advertisers in – but where’s the return on investment with Yell websites?

I was inspired to write this article following a recent chat with a new client (as well as having heard Yell websites radio ads and reading their newspaper ad for Yell websites) and what he told me absolutely astonished me, and I REALLY hope this article prevents someone else from falling into the same trap with Yell websites and similar schemes…

During the conversation we got on to the subject of his current website, not with Yell Websites but with the mighty BT. Now first off, it’s really not a great design and secondly, it’s nowhere near optimised for search engines, infact, the basic principles of SEO have been abandoned altogether and what he has is a website keyword-stuffed to the brim. What does he pay for this privilege? £22 per month, bringing his total advertising spend with BT (including a directory insertion) to just over £100 each and every month. He told me a recent situation whereby he needed some changes made to the website, assuming all this would be included in the price. Imagine his surprise when he was told it would cost him £540! The best part of the scam is that he will never ever own his website, it’s just being rented. So lets look at that closer, by the way this goes for Yell too who charge “£1 per day” (sounds cheap when they say it like that huh?) to rent a website from them.

For £365 per year you can get a website from Yell that you will never own, is NOT optimised to be found in search engines and you need to sell a kidney to finance any changes to the site.  If you also get roped into taking a paid listing in their directory then the shafting really begins.

What’s the alternative?

GO WITH A LOCAL WEB DESIGNER!  You will get far more for your money, you will own it, you will receive a far more personal service and if they are any good they will include basic optimisation to help the site be found in search engines.  You should also receive a couple of website changes each month for free should you wish to alter things.

Don’t be a victim of this big brand.