Content and service distribution is critical to the long term success of Local Search & Lead Generation companies. Understanding how location underpins this is another competence that Aerotopia adds.
Overview
In all but a few cases, the days when the bulk of visits through a Local Search / Directory site
came through the home page (organic traffic) are gone or fast disappearing. Search engines
(through SEO) generate an increasing number of visits as users first search broadly, then click
through via a result to land on a company page within the local site. This traffic can account for
a third or more of all visits. Another third in many cases comes from traffic redirected from third
party sites. Companies such as citysearch.com have gone so far as to accept that the organic-only
approach is gone, and that wide distribution of their rich content (via their CityGrid initiative) to
third party sites is the best way to provide value to customers. Partners range from high-volume
portals wishing to "monetize" their web site "real estate," to a large and varied assortment of
medium to small niche sites focusing on a range of verticals. Local Search companies need a
syndication strategy in order to deliver good ROI to their advertisers.
Syndication in De Telefoongids
De Telefoongids is the leading Local Search & Lead Generation company in the Netherlands.
It is a household name; however, both Google and Bing are making strong inroads into
this local market. While striving to keep and develop organic traffic to its key domains, De
Telefoongids recognizes that content distribution is key to continued success. The first step in
their approach has been to develop and launch easy-to-integrate "widgets" that allow third parties
to easily connect to their rich content and search logic. The second phase in Q4 2010 is to add
location-based widgets such as "find nearby" store locators and routing widgets, followed by
an increasing range of flexible integration options for partners. A critical success factor is the
creation of an affiliate incentive program that pays third parties for traffic generated against
advertisers' detailed business pages. The affiliate model is key to enticing third parties to place
De Telefoongids content and search boxes on their site rather than, for example, Google's ads –
it is all about how best to monetize the third party sites' real estate (free page space).
What Aerotopia brought to the project
Aerotopia's Stuart Fish managed the development process in a syndication product owner role,
working closely with different stakeholders representing the management team, partnership
managers and the product development team. Stuart scoped the requirements for the location-
based tools and managed the development of these tools through to completion.
