Beware of Reach Local online marketing tactics, their system spells dangerous outcomes for website owners as the duplicate your website then put it live during their Google Adword marketing campaigns.
The reality is clear and simple Google will penalise your website if it has duplicate content or is being duplicated and republished on the Internet. If you are serious about generating more sales and leads for your business then you should consider a pay per lead campaign.
Reach Local break so many search engine rules and copyright laws when they duplicate a website under their subdomains and long tailed keywords.
I did some research http://moz.com/community/q/experiences-with-reachlocal and this is what some people say about Reach Local on the web, the WARNING SIGNS are clear and present.
Whenever you’re dealing with a large company a la Reach Local, you just really need to know what you’re getting into. You should also research your alternatives. The more information you have, the better, more informed decision you can ultimately make.
As some of those commenting here have said (who have more experience with Reach Local than me), they’re not exactly laying out all of the raw data in front of you for your inspection. However, in my personal experience, I have had clients who have dealt with companies as large, or larger than Reach Local who seem to have violated some very basic Google Third Party Policies. The first point is that third parties should provide a monthly report containing AdWords click costs, total clicks and total impressions. In the past, I instructed prospective clients (who later became clients) to ask for this information from a very large AdWords Certified Partner. Even after repeated requests, the client was not provided with this basic information for which they were asking.
Now, if you really want to play ‘lawyer’, the wording in the policy does say that third parties should provide this information. They’re not technically required to provide this information.
The way that many companies structure an SEM program for clients (I believe this is how Reach Local does it), is that the client pays the 3rd party directly for everything, i.e, you, as the client, are not paying the search engines directly for advertising. But if the 3rd party is not required to tell you how much they are spending on your behalf on search advertising, you don’t know how much money is going to the search engines and how much money is going into their pockets. In my opinion, that’s not right. If you agree with me, make sure you know this information before signing anything with a large SEM firm.
Great Comment Steve and true to the word.
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A quick note based on something I saw the other day is to insure they are not just duplicating your content and then adding /reach-local/… to a url.
I have a potential client who had a page that I realized was duplicated by virtue of them simply pulling that entire page to use as a landing page and then adding the identifier in the url. This could impact your other marketing.
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Well you have been warned about Reach Local if you chance it you are playing with loaded dice for real assistance phone 1300 663 664.
