Search engine optimization (SEO) and website consultant Brian Javeline has never hidden his disdain for residential lead service businesses. He reminds us why, in this RemodelCrazy LinkedIn group posting:
Review & Remove YOUR links to Lead Gen companies
Links to other sites should not be taken lightly, and the vast majority of contractors are tricked into providing them under the disguise of multiple Best of Awards, and Super Service Awards and the #1 of Whatever Awards.
Many problems are:
1) most contractors put these on their Home Page, the most valuable real estate from your business site,
2) most contractors don’t check where those links go, and many Many MANY times, you are driving traffic to a landing page that is not what it originally looked like, and
3) most contractors don’t check where those links go, and many Many MANY times, these links are also introducing the services to your competitor!
The “many Many MANY? is not a typo.
Ask yourself, in addition to helping a Lead Gen company, why would you ever want to redirect a prospect away from your website after they landed on your website. If anything, keep the logo for whatever value you think it brings, but remove the Link.
You can bet you will never get an inbound link from a Lead Gen Home Page so why would you do so?
Now go review those links on your site and get rid of them.
I am not looking to deflate your ego if you are getting an unsolicited ?Congratulations You are the best of the best award?, but I rather you get testimonials to validate how good you are as opposed to a blind solicitation to post an image that links to someone else?s site, a site that promotes your competition too?. Hope it helps while the Award Season begin to kick in.
Javeline’s view — which I believe to be 100 per cent correct — is that contractors should focus on building their own websites and attracting traffic directly to them; not to third-party services which remove your?control (and worse, could send your leads to your competitors.)
I think in the residential sector, lead generation services appeal to lazy contractors — though there is nothing lazy about paying for and then chasing leads sold to several competitors at the same time! You may not think of yourself as a web guru, but I would speculate the time you take learning how to do things properly, and perhaps the expense of working with a consultant such as Javeline, will far more than return its investment when you gain control over your lead development and generation process.
If you are willing to pay your time/effort dues in understanding how to build and maintain your website and related social media business assets, you’ll find the return on investment to be astounding because once you learn your way, the operating costs are virtually zero if you maintain things yourself and certainly not onerous if you contract the task to a competent service provider.
(Lead generation services have a much better reputation in the ICI world. In this environment they aren’t a substitute for on-the-ground relationships and connections, but they provide useful heads up data on opportunities, key players, and potential new markets. Most importantly, they don’t misrepresent their intent or value.)
That said, even your business is a professional service or contracting business serving other businesses or governments rather than homeowners, I believe?an investment in learning effective website/social media marketing will pay you wonderful dividends going forward.
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