Search Engine Land’s Grant Crowell reviews Internet Yellow Pages™ video in a recent post. Grant discusses how IYPs like Superpages.com and Yellowpages.com aren’t getting the SEO thing among many more deficiencies.

The fact is that Yellow Pages™ publishers still think and react in print time. Get an idea, put it on the drawing board, discuss for a few months and then in six to eight months they will do an in-depth study. A year later, they are “testing” the product. How fast do you think Google would do it? Oops!, it’s done already.

My background is in Yellow Pages™ advertising and I can tell you that I had no idea what work was till I got involved in search engine optimization. SEM is a advanced marketing. Search engines work at light speed in comparison to IYPs.

Still, it is not the Yellow Pages™ products that continue to keep clients holding on to old technology, it is the terrific sales force. Pretty tough to keep up to them with little or no feet on the ground, knocking on doors. As long as they have that advantage, they will continue to be heard from in the online marketing world.

The Wall Street Journal reports that R.H. Donnelley Corp has purchased Business.com for approximately $340 million and $360 million.

Business.com is basically an online yellow pages directory and is used for search engine optimization purposes by many small and medium sized businesses.

Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan leads a private equity-group that has won control of BCE. They are paying a premium of $42.75. So why would someone pay a premium on a stock that has been treading water for the past several years?

The same reason that Google has an estimated 40 to 70 data centers filled with computing and storage power and is proposing to pay $ 4.6 billion dollars to create their own wireless network.

It’s all about the pipes.

In the National Post, Peter Nowak, gives us a perceptive vision of why Google would need so much hardware. Peter envisions Google moving into the telecom space in the not too distant future. I suspect Google is moving to a full blown mobile phone supported by advertising.

Read our article on Google AdSense for advice on taking advantage of Google’s ad programs.

Can’t get enough of SEO?

Daily Blog Tips ranks the top 25 SEO blogs. Great reading to get your day started.

Customer surveys are powerful weapons in your link building arsenal. Search Engine Land describes their method of crafting a survey in a recent article.

For more information on link building, check out our articles section.

Comscore says that Google’s search volume was down 1.2% in June compared to searches in May.

Yahoo 25.1%
MSN 13.2%
Ask 5.0%

The numbers leave little doubt where your search engine optimization efforts shoud be focused.

A Searh Engine Land article article by Stoney deGeyter lays out the age old question (in internet time); Is SEO affordable for small businesses?

Stoney sujests three main componets to finding an efficient balance:

Investment in Time
Investment in Budget
Investment in Neccessities

I agree with Stoney that,” As long as your marketing campaign is returning a positve ROI, then the true cost of SEO is affordable.” Still, it can be difficult to convince a client to spend more money even though they are making more. You run into a mental road block. The client has a budget number in mind and has difficulty approving anything past that number.

However, if you can prove to your client through data analysis that his ROI is worth the investment, your client may very well up the ante. Easier said than done, I am well aware. That is why we offer our local directory service (shameless plug). If you can’t afford SEO for your site, there are affordable opportunities out there. Educate yourself and be patient before stepping in.

Search Engine Watch reports that while most search marketers spend the majority of their time providing search engine optimization in dominant markets, there are fast growing multicultural audiences gaining momentum.

U.S. Hispanics are more intensive than the U.S. general market. The average U.S. Hispanic spends 20 percent more time online, with 25 percent more pages viewed. They’re using the Internet more than 17 hours per week, and more than half that time is spent on sites written in Spanish. In fact, U.S. Hispanics now spend more time online than they do watching television.

According to a 2006 Interactive Advertising Bureau study, U.S. Hispanics are slightly younger, better educated, and more tech-savvy than non-Hispanic respondents.

Roughly half of U.S. Hispanics speak Spanish fluently, and roughly half of Latino adults (7.1 million) prefer Spanish language sites.

Read the article to find out why the market is so desirable for search engine marketers.

Wolf21 has developed a local directory for small businesses wanting to gain visibility on the internet for their keyword terms without the time delay in building a new website.

Not just another directory, Sesimi, promotes your individual products and services on Google, Yahoo and MSN without showing a list of your competitors. In other words, search engine users do not have to search for a service/product and then search again through a directory (and your competitors) to find you.

I attended a 30 minute session on driving traffic to your website last week.

The entire presentation was built around Google adwords. In fairness to the presenter, 30 minutes is barely enough time for introductions, never mind a detailed presentation on Google, Yahoo and MSN. And the fact is that Google dominates the pay per click (PPC) market, so if you are going to talk aboout PPC, you have to talk about Google.

I was , however, suprised at how the presenter blew off yellow pages advertising and search engine optimization in the Q and A session.

The facts are that approximately approximatley 70% of search engine clicks are made on organic listings. Even if you don’t want to spend the money on SEO (search engine optimization), you should at least do the basics. Basic SEO info can be found all over the internet, just search for free SEO tips.

Print yellow pages is still the main resource for local searches. That’s right , print yellow pages. Keep in mind that results are industry specific. You may need a full page ad if you are an attorney but if you are renting computers, all you need is a listing or small space ad.

Don’t be fooled by someone who only sells only PPC or only SEO or only Yellow Pages™. Chances are they are looking out for themselves and not for you. Do your homework, take responsibility for your own business.