More and more of my local searches are turning up paid ads for clients by Dex. Why I believe this is bad:
1. They all have the same ugly template and offer no opportunity to brand the business.
2. They are not driving the searcher to the Dex client’s actual web site.
3. The ads show no regard for whether the keywords will produce a conversion (and it likely won’t even if it is good based on point #1)
4. Often, the ads are displayed on irrelevant keywords.
5. The ads displayed on the right side of Dex’s landing page are very often not relevant to the key words (so not adding any value to THAT advertiser) and distracting to the user who has arrived at the page.
6. These ads drive up the price for businesses who are legitimately trying to run a good ad campaign with relevant key words and good ad copy – much better for the consumer to have specific, targeted ads placed in front of them.
In general, I feel that the phone books do a terrible disservice to the client when they buy a domain for the client and put up a splash landing page to run the PPC campaign to. Why not do it correctly and drive the traffic to the real domain of the business. A domain I saw the other day didn’t even make sense – it was for The Cookie Company, Dex bought myTheCookieCompany.com and applied their expert design skills to the landing page. Terrible for the brand image of the client, confusing for consumers, and probably much more expensive for the client in the long run.
If you need help with your online exposure via paid or organic search please be sure to give me a call - I have the expertise you need as an Omaha Adwords professional.