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• The community is convinced they can sell anyone on the community if they talk to them.

Sorry for the confusion. What I meant by that statement was that the community believes that if they can talk to someone on the phone, they can get them to come to the community for a visit.

Luckily for my client, their facility is top notch and they have a very solid reputation. They are booked on some floors but have openings for people with more serious issues and they are always actively looking for new residents. In this particular industry, you are constantly "losing" customers.

I must say that just because the facility is great does not mean potential customer visits shouldn't be met by someone trying to extol the virtues of the facility. I think the word "salesperson" is throwing us all off here. It is a very soft sell on their part because the community understands that location, smell, cleanliness and quality of food are huge. And they are not worried about that.

All they want to do is talk to someone on the phone and schedule a visit, the rest will take care of itself.

Thank you all so much for your thoughtful answers. So a little info that might help the discussion.

• This is for an assisted living community where residents a large monthly bill
• it is normally the son or daughter who calls to discuss the service.
• The phones will be manned by industry professional, not salespeople. Although they are instructed to put on a very soft sell, the initial call is not a true sales call. It is more for the caller looking to learn more by speaking with the community liaison.
• The community is convinced they can sell anyone on the community if they talk to them.
• They will be available 24/7.

Again, I appreciate all the feedback and will update this post after our campaigns run and tests are over to see what worked and what didn't. Hmmm, could this have the makings of my first YouMoz post? Stay tuned....

Thank you EGOL. The hope is that the landing page will do a good enough job explaining the services provided that they will want to pick up the phone and call. We currently get a lot of form submissions that do not lead to sales so, essentially, this phone-centric landing page is actually a test. Can we close more people when we only give them a phone number and no other way to contact us?

Also, we are using this landing page for one specific product we sell, not for the entire campaign. So we will be able to see how it compares to other search terms that are being sent to specific areas of the site that speak to the search term.

I guess my question was born out of me being nervous that if we ONLY provide a phone, we will
a) piss people off
b) lose leads

Maybe the test is. we build two landing pages - one that does have a form and one that doesn't and see what happens.

My client has explained to me that they want to drive sales CALLS instead of form submissions because they feel they have a better chance of "closing the deal" on the phone. So my company is working to design a PPC landing page that focuses on the phone number. But the question is, do you still think we should include a simple form on the landing page? There are two competing trains of thought in my office. One is concerned that if we offer a form, people won't call. The other is that if we DON'T offer a form, we will lose out on possibly good customers.

In addition to the form, no form question is the question of providing additional links to other parts of the website. One person I work with is concerned visitors will leak away and not pick up the phone. My concern is that if we do not offer a way to "learn more" the visitor will become agitated and not call at all.

This is specifically for a focused PPC effort. To recap:
1- Form or no form?
2- Links or no links?

This title tag violates many of SEO best practices.

1- There are 5 dashes separating the keywords.
I was taught that using the same word, symbol, or phrase more than 3 times is a no no.

2- It is too long: Keep it under 70 characters so the entire title tag displays on SERPs. The way you have it now, the title tag will get the ellipse treatment and will be cut off.

3- You use the word Barcelo 7 times in the title tag.
Red flag! Warning! Be careful. This is definitely keyword stuffing and not necessary to get Google's attention. Unless of course your going for negative attention.

4- You do not have a meta description at all:
Write a brief sentence that explains the page. This will show directly under your title tag and is also incredibly important for rank factors as well as conveying the message of the page. Your description should include the keywords in your title tag.

Think of your title tag as an advertisement. Sure, it is used by Google to determine the focus of the page, but it is also the first thing a potential customer will see when your result comes up.

Here is how I would change this title tag and the meta description i would used for this page.

Title Tag: Barcelo Hotel Reviews | Barcelo Resorts | Mexico, Dominican Republic
Meta Description: Read our reviews or get more information on Barcelo Hotels and Resorts in Mexico, the Dominican Republic and Costa Rica.

In addition, http://www.jwsltd.co.uk/ has a 0 PageRank. In Google's eyes, you are getting hundreds of unnatural links from a low quality site.

Have you thought about turning the footer into a javascript footer that expands if someone clicks it? In essence, you would be removing the static footer to boost the UI and replace it with a dynamic footer that would continue to provide SEO (and occasional user) benefit.

I am interested in hearing the effects this removal has.

Matthew's response is spot on. I just helped a client get a virtual office where he can receive mail and hold meetings when he needs to. Some may disagree, but legitimately using a virtual office space will work in the local space. My client's home is in a small town near a few larger cities - not ideal for local search because no one would search his industry with his town name. So we picked the largest city, which is only a few miles away, and for $75/mo he has an office in a major business hub that he can attach to his business. Along with home address, I am also apprehensive about using personal cell phone numbers for your NAP. To circumvent that, I secured a Google Voice number that is tied to his cell phone. So now his mobile number and home address (where he lives with his two young children) is hidden from public consumption.

I tried to sign up with them, but they scoffed at me when I showed them my traffic report. "We don't provide support for clients your size. You can use our service but you'll need more traffic to see any results."

It was a total turn off.

Thanks Miriam for your detailed response. I passed along your ideas for ways to gradually create content rather than all at once. I imagine the slow method would also help this website by adding content continuously throughout the year, rather than a "set it and forget it" model. It is a heating and cooling business so there website is more of a description of services and who they are and less an SEO-driven portal for dynamic engagement.

With that said, I'll play devil's advocate for one second to get your take. The footer we are proposing, in my view, does serve a larger non-SEO related purpose. It is used to actually convey what areas the business represents. I recognize that adding this to the footer of every page can be seen as duplicate content, but it is intended as information for a prospective client. If we just put it on one page, it might get missed.

I don't expect the website to rank for those cities considering how competitive their industry is and because we are not mentioning the cities in the content or URL structure. We are not doing link building for those cities and the client does not want Local SEO services. The new website was conceived with modernization in mind, not SEO. The footer is merely a way to mention cities, not part of a larger strategy.

Thoughts?

I am resurrecting this thread again as I have a question:

I am working on footer text for a client that serves a large swath of the SF Bay Area. I have separated the cities in the four counties they serve by population and have added the most populous cities into a sentence that will go on every page. Is this tactic tired? Is it played out? I've used it before with great success, but I am questioning it now with all the new guidelines/changes put forth by Google. Unfortunately, the client cannot afford to create unique content for each large city they serve so this is our attempt to get as many cities as possible mentioned multiple times. I am, however, apprehensive about this tactic.

Thoughts?

BusinessXYZ serves Oakland, Hayward, Berkeley, Vallejo, Fairfield, Walnut Creek, Concord, Daly City, as well as all SF Bay Area cities in Alameda County, Contra Costa County, San Mateo County and Napa County.

Great article on this. Although it does not discuss your duplicate content question. http://www.technshare.com/discover-eliminate-and-avoid-stolen-content/

There is also this from the DCMA
http://www.dmca.com/takedowns.aspx

Google's Matt Cutts has said that their algorithm makes every effort to identify the original content and rank it higher than the scraped content. Unfortunately, this is not always the case.

My heart always skips a beat when I log on to Analytics and see things changed. "Oh god, what did they change now?" But this time, i was pleasantly suprised to see that Google is finally showing conversions as a number rather than just as a percentage.

excellent link. Thanks for sharing.

I just got off of another long call with the CBS rep and in a nutshell, I finally understand what they do.

They take over your adwords campaign and buy a unique URL (an example of the type of URL is joesplumbingserviceoaklandca.com). Then they craft a two page website that provides a phone number as a means of contacting the business. No email, no form. The website gets indexed by Google and will beat out your real website if someone searches that exact URL phrase. In Joe the plumber's case, that long-tail domain URL is a valid search term someone would use. So if someone finds the CBS site organically and calls the number, the client gets charged. Also, the link on the CBS page pointing to the main website goes to a mirrored site at a different URL than the actual business URL and the phone number on that is a tracking number as well.

They asked me to run a test with them to see if it works. I said, I am not going to take a $8000 test with you because if it doesn't work then it is me on the hook for recommending this product. They said if it doesn't work they will throw in $8000 worth of radio advertising and banner display ads. But they wouldn't tell me where.

I asked if we could do a 1-month trial or even a 2-month trial and they said no. 6 months is needed for the campaign to ramp up.

I asked for a reference of a client that is happy with the product. I got a 5 minute explanation of how advertisers would not want to discuss their plans with anyone else and that I should trust them that everyone is satisfied. So I pressed again and said, "If this product was so amazing and I had a huge ROI and you called me and asked me to speak to a potential advertiser to vouch for your product, I would do it in a heart beat." They replied by saying they would try and find someone.

Oh and they said they are not selling this product to make millions, they are just trying to solidify their relationship with our agency. It was all about the sale and it became more and more obvious by the end. I think they could feel my disdain through the phone.

Sorry, that wasn't a nutshell.

Anyone know anything about ringrevenue.com?

Thanks Robert.

Let me clarify that the places page I am referring to is the "free" CBS Local places page that they will create and optimize if you sign up for the pay per call program. This has nothing to do with the Google Places page.

But yes, all in all, I am very skeptical of everything they say. I like the idea of pay per call, especially for business that thrive on getting people on the phone, but I don't think I'll be recommending CBS Local to drive calls. Especially when they kept coming back to the fact that they guarantee a certain number of calls. They kept using that word "guarantee" - like the whole purpose is to get someone to dial the phone. After 10 seconds, if you don't sell a car, it's the dealer's fault, not the quality of the call. Oh and you get charged if the answering machine picks up and they don't leave a message.

They talked a great game and got past our account director (who forwarded this program to me so I could look into it), but the minute they begin talking to anyone who understands search engine marketing, they are going to be outmatched and the curtain will be lifted.

I will definitely read that Yext article.

Thanks for the response!

I know this is a year and half later, but I wanted to chime in as I found this thread while trying to learn about this topic. I was asked to vet this vendor for a client of mine, specifically around the Pay-Per-Call Advertising program with CBS Local and what I am finding is a tad disconcerting.

I just got off the phone with two reps and they explained that the places page is geared toward driving calls. According to them, they create a page that is optimized to rank in search engines. I found that very hard to believe seeing as the competition for the first page is intense for my client and I don't know how they would show up organically in the major search engines. THis leads me to believe that the calls are coming from other, less qualified sources...

They white label the software from Marchex. For the auto industry they are charging $36 per call. And they are asking for a 6 month contract where we determine how many calls we are willing to pay for. They charge the client if the call lasts longer than 10 seconds.

I was instantly skeptical when the rep said they bid on organic placement. Huh? I called him on it and said, you can't pay the search engine to be no. 1. Then he went on to explain that he was originally a radio and broadcast rep and is new to the digital world and he might have misstated how it all works. He just kept using the words "back-end developers" and "optimization", but I don't think he understood what he was saying.

The reps also discussed where "bid on links" to the local page. Places like citysearch and citymedia - pretty much ghost towns. They said they work with Google, Yahoo and Bing as well, but pretty much blew them off as not the only place to get leads.

Basically, this is an ad program that guarantees a certain number of calls regardless of their quality.