There is a new local search directory in town, so expect to be cold called.

I learned of LocalAdLink through a press release that was forwarded to me by email. I had never heard of the company before but I read the release and visited the site hoping to find something worthy of the small business owner’s hard earned money.

I was disappointed.

From the press release:

LocalAdLink is a provider of services that enable local businesses to reach local customers with targeted Internet advertising. The customer facing Web site, LocalAdLink.com, is a local search directory and acts as the central hub for the LocalAdLink technology. When a customer visits LocalAdLink.com, proprietary geo-targeting software identifies the customer’s location and displays relevant local business listings. In addition, LocalAdLink has created an Advertising Network that publishes local business listings on its owned and operated sites, as well as partner sites.

Nothing new there. Sounds like a Reach Local clone. The release goes on to say…

In the past ninety days, over 30,000 small businesses have chosen to advertise on LocalAdLink. We expect over 100,000 more small businesses to begin advertising in the next 90 days. In addition, the i-SUPPLY division will begin its exclusive phased rollout to LocalAdLink’s Independent Salesforce the first week of May. We anticipate revenue growth from both product sales and advertising space created by this new division.

From my visits to LocalAdLink since the press release was released, there really does not seem to be much interest by local advertisers. Many searches returned the dreaded “No Results Found” page. I got this page time after time from searches that should have provided me with some form of a business listing. I even got this page when searching for specific cities.

Obviously, there is more to do at LocalAdLink than the press release would reveal. This is understandable. It is better to get something online than to wait for everything to be put online. This, however, is not understandable.

http://www.localadlink.com/directory/search/hotels-and-motels/Nashville%2C+TN+37201%2C+USA/

That is the link to my local Hotel and Motel category. Do you know what that is? It is an ugly URL. Specifically, it is not SEO friendly. Now it’s not the ugliest I have ever seen, but to be a local search marketing directory, you would expect to see something a little more SEO friendly than that.

As if that was not bad enough, I made one final observation that says all that needs to be said about LocalAdLink. The page title for every page on their site is, LocalAdLink. Nothing more. This makes it almost impossible for any of their pages to rank for the categories or local listings they are selling. This means no natural search rankings that will send searchers to your category or business listing.

Titles on web pages are extremely important. No page title or worse, page titles that are all the same is the death of a website’s natural search rankings. Spending money on any listing within the LocalAdLink is literally like throwing money away.

Do you have money to trash?

LocalAdLink has three packages. $49.95 a month, $99.95 a month and $199.95 a month. None of them are worth a dime.

If you are considering advertising with LocalAdLink, contact me first. I do not do high pressure sales. I specialize in local SEO and my SEO rates provide real contact with a SEO professional that can increase your website traffic.

These search directories offer to send you traffic from their website for a monthly fee. You will pay this fee even if there is no traffic to the pages in the directory. Don’t let the middleman conn you from money that is better spent optimizing your own business website.

FYI: LocalAdLink is hiring!