By
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May 10, 2018
Yodle is an internet marketing solutions provider that aims to help small-to-medium-sized businesses in various industries build a strong online presence.
They offer everything from local SEO to social media marketing up to customer reviews and more. If you’re a small business owner looking to grow your company online, then you’ve probably heard about them.
Yodle claims that they can help their clients rank high in local search results so they can get found first, increase sales, and grow their business exponentially in no time. Sounds very tempting.
But before you consider buying their service, you might want to read this Yodle review first to know if they’re someone you can entrust your digital marketing efforts with.
Yodle assigns each of its clients a local tracking number. They say it’s necessary so they can monitor the ROI from the digital marketing campaigns.
However, doing this can mess up your NAP. But Yodle claims that their tracking number has no negative effect on your online ranking. Sounds completely harmless, right? But the truth is it does.
Using local tracking numbers can create inconsistencies in your NAP, mess up your citations, and lead to duplicate page problems. All of which can hurt your online rankings.
Plus, if you decide to end your contract with them, you lose the number too because they basically own it.
So, you have their number all over your online presence that won’t lead to your phone ringing, and the moment you decide to end things, you’re left with nothing.
Duplicate content refers to pieces of content that are identical or very similar to each other. There are two types of duplicate content:
• Internal duplicate content is when you have the same content that is accessible using different URLs on the same site
• External duplicate content is when you have the same page copy with other sites
A lot of Yodle’s previous clients and existing ones have complained about how their websites’ content is shared with approximately more than 10 other sites.
They were the exact same copies with only the location, business name, and contact number changed.
Duplicate content can hurt your online ranking. It confuses search engines and forces the bots to choose which of the two identical pages they should rank in the top results.
Regardless of who published the original content, there’s a huge possibility that the original piece will not get ranked. To check if your site’s content has duplicate issues, check out these several tools you can use.
Established firms with huge marketing budgets probably wouldn’t mind fluctuating rates as long as they’re getting the results they want.
But for small businesses with very limited budgets, being able to anticipate their expenses is very important.
This is an excerpt from Yodle’s user agreement:
“Yodle may use up to 110% of the Monthly Yodle Ads Advertising Budget. Any balance of the Monthly Yodle Ads Advertising Budget at the end of a monthly billing cycle, positive or negative, will be rolled over to the next monthly billing cycle, and any negative balance of the Monthly Yodle Ads Advertising Budget at the end of the last month of the Yodle Ads Service is due at that time.”
Yodle states in their user agreement that they do not guarantee any specific rank, position, or placement in any search engines even though they make great claims in their sales pitch.
It means that there’s no assurance that you will get the results you want.
It’s any internet marketing company’s job to do the best in their ability to deliver on what they promise their clients and that is to build them a strong online presence.
Google disclosed the best SEO practices that can help any site rank high for relevant searches, so there’s just no excuse for a digital marketing company (that’s supposed to specialize in SEO) to not deliver results.
Although there’s no way of ever securing a specific spot on SERPs, Yodle should at least strive to provide the results that they promised their clients in the first place.
A previous client of Yodle complained about how the company billed them for positioning their site for the top spots under three different keyword phrases.
However, upon checking, the monthly traffic that those keywords generated was zero.
So, why would Yodle bill their clients for nothing? Now, there’s a big difference between having an incompetent system and scamming clients.
Yodle transfers all your information on a website that is owned and operated by them. Because of this, you can’t hire a web designer or developer to fix or make improvements whenever you want.
It also renders your original site useless. It also means that the moment you end your contract with Yodle, you also lose your site.
Did you know that Yodle relies on a third party to provide you the results you want for certain services?
So, it’s like they’re a reseller of the service. Not a big deal since a lot of companies sub-contract. However, the part that makes us very furious is that Yodle has the option to stop providing you certain features if their third party supplier can no longer fulfill their part but you are still obliged to keep your end of the deal.
This to us seems a bit unfair because you’re supposed to get what you pay for. If you don’t then you should at least be able to get a refund or have the freedom to opt-out of the contract without any fees or penalty.
If you don’t believe this Yodle review, check out the Local Search Forum and Better Business Bureau where over 190 customers were complaining about how they paid significant money to Yodle but are not getting the results they were paying for. Were you a victim of Yodle too?
If you were or are about to be if not for this helpful Yodle review, don’t worry because we got your back. Digital Resource is an internet marketing agency in South Florida that has helped many businesses build their dream websites, increase their rankings on SERPs, and grow their business online. And we can help you too!
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