phone package

How to Respond When Your Domain Is Held Hostage

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

From time to time, our team is reminded of a very depressing truth: Many SEO providers out there do scummy things.

The latest reminder? Just the other day, we were talking to a small business owner, and he told us how skeptical he was of the SEO industry. At first, we couldn’t understand why he was so mistrusting of us. But after some prodding, he revealed where his trust issues came from…

As it turns out, his last SEO provider registered his domain for him, and then held it hostage when he tried to quit. Since his whole online presence had been tied to that URL, his traffic and calls plummeted.

And the worst part? This didn’t even surprise us. We’ve heard versions of this same story dozens of times before.

In fact, we’ve even seen some SEO companies demand thousands of dollars in payment (a.k.a. ransom) before they give the domain back!

But instead of getting down about the slimy state of SEO, we’ve decided to turn our angst into action. In this blog post, we’re going to help you fight back against these bad guys by giving you advice on how to proceed when they hold your domain (and/or associated phone number) hostage.

What you’re about to find out will save you a ton of headaches and money going forward. Keep reading!

When You Can’t Get Your Domain Back

Unfortunately, as we mentioned, this scenario is not uncommon. But the good news is, you’re not powerless. There’s a solution. We’ve helped countless business owners in the same jam reclaim domains that were rightfully theirs to begin with.

The process involves working closely with GoDaddy (or whatever registrar you originally used) to prove you are, in fact, the business owner and that the domain is yours. This process is more successful when your business name is in the URL that was used in your SEO campaign, but it’s not a requirement.

In the past, we’ve helped business owners work with their registrar and obtain sufficient evidence that the domain belongs to them. The steps involved in obtaining access to your domain vary from business to business and will depend on the extent of your current online footprint.

However, in rare instances where there isn’t enough concrete proof that you own your website, you might have to rebuild your web presence from scratch. This means getting a whole new domain, wiping the slate clean on your web presence, and starting your SEO from scratch. This is not ideal, but it does sometimes happen.

Keep in mind, though, that starting over with a clean slate and a consistent URL is far more effective than clinging to a patchwork web presence with conflicting details.

Need help building your case? The specialists at Prospect Genius are happy to listen to your story and advise you on the next best steps. Give us a call!

When They Keep Your Phone Number From You

Along a similar vein, unscrupulous vendors and SEO providers have tarnished our industry’s reputation by withholding metered phone lines from former clients. It’s the same as what they’re doing with domains: They set up a metered phone line for your campaign, and once you quit, they refuse to give you access to that line.

This issue is critical because your metered phone number (alongside your URL) was probably the primary contact detail in all of your online advertising. By not giving you access to it, they’re essentially tying your hands behind your back.

Thankfully, the law is on your side here. FCC regulations forbid this practice. In fact, the FCC stipulates that if a phone number ever rings to your phone, it’s yours. So if you have a metered line out there that was ringing to your business at one point in time, then your old vendor or advertiser cannot withhold it from you without violating federal law. They are legally required to port your number when you request it.

Again, if you’re having difficulty communicating with them or convincing them they’re in the wrong, let us know. We can point you towards some information and resources that may help.

Simple Ways to Protect Yourself

Before we wrap things up, let’s make one thing very clear: It’s not your fault that a sleazy SEO company took advantage of your trust and acted spitefully against your interests.

Furthermore, it’s a natural response to mistrust other advertising teams after this kind of experience. We know how you feel. Nonetheless, SEO campaigns and metered phone lines remain critical marketing tools. If you want to bring in new customers and keep track of incoming leads, then you can’t avoid using them.

So, instead of forgoing online marketing altogether out of fear, you can take a few simple measures to protect yourself the next time around:

Ask your prospective marketer what their standard cancellation procedures are.
- If you own the website content and domain, how will they return these assets to you upon cancellation?
- If you purchase a metered phone line, how will they port the number back to your phone?
Make sure you have a contract with your marketer that clearly states you have ownership of all website assets (domain, images, content, etc.) upon final payment.
Ask your marketer which company will be hosting your website and get that company’s contact information.
Ideally, you should buy your own domain in your name so it’s 100% yours from the beginning. (GoDaddy is a popular domain registrar for this purpose.)
- Note: Some SEO companies prefer to register your domain under their own account so they can monitor your website and receive alerts. This is usually done as a service that you purchase so you don’t have to monitor everything yourself. In this situation, being 100% clear about cancellation procedures (including how you can transfer domain ownership) and having a signed contract are crucial.

Prospect Genius Is Here to Help

Of course, even your best efforts sometimes aren’t enough to protect you from a particularly nasty or vindictive agency. If you find yourself stuck dealing with such an agency, call Prospect Genius for help right away. We’ve been working in this field for more than a decade, and we’re very familiar with the laws around these topics.

Keeping our industry honest is something we’re passionate about. We’ll be more than happy to help you protect your rights however we can.

And, hey—if you want to work with a company that won’t hold your web presence hostage, you know where to find us.

Phone Package Upgrade: Scam or Necessity?

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

Has your phone package recently been upgraded? Are you confused about why the phone package upgrade raised your bill by a few extra dollars per month?

Some clients have been vocal about their confusion—which we always welcome—and have even shared their concerns about it with us. Now, we’d like to explain why we have to handle the phone package the way we do.

First, Here’s What You Need to Know

Before we dive into our explanation, let’s make a few points clear:

The level 1 upgrade results in a 2.9% increase (about $9) in your monthly bill.
Your package is only upgraded after you exceed 100 minutes of phone time on your CallTrax™ line.
This is a pass-through cost. We’re not charging this fee to earn more profit, but rather to cover the increased cost we incur by buying more minutes for your campaign.
We don’t automatically build these extra minutes into your plan because we don’t want clients to have to pay for them unless they’re actually using them.

Now that we’ve established the facts, let’s get into why the upgrade is truly necessary.

It Keeps Our Interests Aligned With Yours

Why can’t Prospect Genius just cover these extra costs on your behalf?
The answer has to do with keeping our interests aligned with yours. You see, as your LeadTrax™ campaign performs better and better, it will generate more calls from customers. That’s why you hired us, after all. But if we were to pay out of pocket for all of our clients who exceeded their allotted phone minutes because their campaigns were too effective, then we would be incentivized to do a worse job so that you receive fewer calls (thus minimizing our payments).
Obviously, that would be against your best interests. You want us incentivized to send you as many quality leads as your business can handle. That’s why we pass the phone costs on to you. The way we see it, asking you to pay a nominal fee of $9 to the phone company is worth it if it enables us to continue working hard for your business.
If we didn’t do this, then we would wind up footing the phone bill for some ultra-successful clients, which could actually do some serious damage to our own finances. Take, for example, a taxi company in NYC that we work with. This particular business was fielding so many calls that it once racked up $900 in phone charges in one month! We wouldn’t be able to continue to do good work for all of our clients if we had to pay out of pocket every time that happened.

It Keeps Us Motivated to Do Good Work

The good news is that, as long as you pay the nominal fee for extra minutes, we have only the incentive to provide you with quality advertising services and to send you the valuable leads you want.
That’s what sets us apart from pay-per-lead advertisers. Unlike them, Prospect Genius’s bottom line is not dependent on the number of calls we send you. Pay-per-lead advertisers, on the other hand, earn their profit by charging you for each lead they send to you. This means they have the incentive to send as many leads as possible, even when they aren’t legitimate or relevant to your business. As a result, low-quality leads are common with these advertisers because they’re trying to maximize profits.
Thankfully, our flat-fee model means we’re free to only do good work for you, no matter what. That’s probably why you chose to hire Prospect Genius in the first place. But if our finances were suddenly tied to the number of leads we sent you, this would inevitably change. Again, that’s why we pass the phone costs on to you.

It’s a Small Price to Pay for a Successful Campaign

If you’re still unsure about paying an extra $9 per month, try viewing phone minutes as just another minor business expense. In this context, the phone package upgrade should be a no-brainer.
For instance, let’s say you’re a traveling repairman and you have a set budget for gas every month. In May, you unexpectedly start booking more jobs and, because you’re traveling so much, you end up surpassing your gas budget by the end of week three. Would you increase your gas budget to cover the fourth week, expecting that your increase in jobs will more than make up for it? Or would you pass on any incoming jobs for the rest of the month because you refuse to pay a little more for gas?
Or, let’s say you own a car audio and accessories shop. You have a set budget for the electricity bill each month, but in December, you suddenly get a lot of new customers looking for holiday gifts. Would you take the extra jobs and run up a slightly higher utility bill as a result? Or would you stop accepting new customers as soon as you reached your limit?
In either of these scenarios, we’re guessing you would probably accept the slight increase in costs in exchange for more jobs. Paying a little extra for phone minutes shouldn’t be any different.

Ultimately, It’s About Transparency

Some other advertising companies avoid the issue of a phone package upgrade by building extra phone costs into their monthly prices. As we explained in an earlier blog post,

Every company in this business must pay phone line charges. No matter who you deal with, those minutes must be paid for. If an SEO company never raises their phone package price or never adjusts your bill to allow for more minutes, that means they’ve been unnecessarily charging you for the biggest package from the get-go.

But we don’t think that’s honest or fair to the client. Wouldn’t you rather start with a lower baseline price and then only pay extra for minutes that you’re actually using?
We think our approach to clients’ phone packages is the only way to remain open and transparent. It also keeps us doing honest, good work for your local business. While you may not be ecstatic to see your bill go up, remember that the upgrade is just a side effect of a strong, vital campaign.

What Can You Do Now to Up the Ante of Your Campaign in 2015?

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

Around this time every year, we hear from a lot of clients asking us how they can add more oomph to their campaigns. They want to start off the next year strong. This year, of course, has been no different. We’ve already had several proactive business owners ask us what they can do to put themselves in a position where they will see even more leads than before. With that, we decided to dedicate this post to the numerous ways in which you, our clients, can improve and build upon your existing campaigns. If you’d like to maximize your online advertising success, read on!

For Our Starters

First and foremost, if you’re currently enrolled in our Directory Dominator or Starter program, you can upgrade to the Core program. Core is lead generation, instead of basic web presence management, so upgrading is a good way to get more calls and e-mails.

For Core Customers

If you’re already a member of our Core program, there are plenty of things you can do to make your SEO campaign even more effective.

Make sure your LeadTrax™ site has a page for every service you offer so you don’t miss out on valuable leads.
Make sure your LeadTrax site is not promoting any service(s) you no longer offer so you don’t have to turn down jobs.
Make sure you notify us if your contact information has changed. That way, you won’t miss leads because they went to an old e-mail address or phone number.
Update your phone package if you need to add more lines or route your calls to a different number. You can change the forwarding number yourself in the Client Portal if you have only one line.
Add brand pages to your LeadTrax site (e.g. “Maytag Appliance Repair,” “Trane Furnace Repair,” and so on). This will help you capture traffic from more specific searches.
Let us disclose your hidden addresses. If you’ve requested to have your business address hidden, let us display it, at least on some directories. Most directories require a physical location these days, so a hidden address means your business can’t be listed in those directories.
Add a second LeadTrax site if you’re expanding your business to cover a new service area. (This only works if you’re actually opening up a second physical location.)
Add SocialStream™ to your campaign and have our team create blog posts for you and share them on your social media accounts as many times per month as you’d like.

If you want to make a more drastic change, you can always upgrade to our Premium package and enjoy all the immediate benefits of pay-per-click when it’s combined with your existing SEO.

For Premium Customers

If you participate in our Premium program, then you’ve already done a great job setting yourself up for optimal lead generation. While Premium combines the best of SEO and PPC, there are still a few adjustments and additions you can make to maximize your campaign’s success.
As a Premium customer, you can make any of the changes in the list above. In addition, you can also kick up your PPC efforts by adding a remarketing campaign. Powered by Google AdWords, a remarketing campaign targets your ads at people who have recently checked out your website. This keeps your business at the top of their minds, building familiarity and trust in your brand.
(Note: Remarketing campaigns are also available for customers who use our PPC service exclusively.)

Climb the Mountain

The steps involved in search engine ranking depicted as a path up a mountain As we’ve said before, you can compare online advertising to the slow ascent up a mountain, with the top-ranked position on Google acting as the peak. But, just like climbing a mountain, you have to start at the foothills—which, in this analogy, are local directories and Google Maps. Then, as you climb higher, you’ll reach optimized website content, social media, and PPC. The higher you climb, the more competitors you will outrank.

At the end of the day, your goal should be to get closer and closer to the peak of this mountain. If you feel like you’ve been hanging out at the same altitude for too long, then it’s time to get out your grappling hooks and start climbing again. Prospect Genius has a wide variety of services designed to hoist you all the way up to the summit, so why delay? Call your account manager today to see what you can do to make sure you climb even further in 2015.

Addressing a Few Common Campaign Concerns

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

No matter how many success stories we create, virtually no campaign ever runs as smoothly as we’d like. That’s just the nature of online advertising. Working in conjunction with independent entities like search engines, phone companies, and business directories means there’s a lot that’s out of our control. All anyone can do is keep an eye out for sudden changes and adapt accordingly.
In this newsletter, we’ll address a few of the pain-points and campaign concerns that Prospect Genius clients have encountered lately and explain what we’re doing to mitigate them.

Faulty Yahoo! PINs

Many clients have had trouble recently with their Yahoo! PINs. When your PIN gets sent to you, you turn it in to us, but when we try to input it on Yahoo! it just doesn’t work. While we’re not sure of what’s causing this problem, we are aware that it exists and we have been staying on top of it. We’ve spoken to Yahoo! but we haven’t had any luck resolving the problem.
While this may sound like a huge setback, it’s actually not. Frankly, Yahoo! is not a major search engine; very few Internet users actually rely on it as their search engine of choice. In fact, according to comScore, Yahoo’s market share has dropped to just 10.1%, a record low, as of March 2014.
Moreover, we do hundreds of other off-page tasks to support all of our search engine work. With everything else that we do for your campaign, a missing Yahoo! PIN is not the end of the world.
As always, we’re staying on top of this issue and will update you as additional information becomes available.

Call-Time Upgrades

Contrary to popular belief, phone minutes are not free. Even Verizon and AT&T have to pay line charges for minutes used on the networks that blanket the country. So when clients voice concern over having their call-time packages upgraded, it’s because they don’t understand the reason behind it.
Many clients complain about having their call-time packages upgraded, but they don’t understand what it actually is.
Prospect Genius institutes a call-time upgrade when clients get so many calls that they exceed the allotted number of minutes in their original phone packages. We often refer to it as a “homerun tax” because it’s caused by the fact that their campaigns are generating such a massive volume of leads.
We begin every one of our campaigns with the smallest phone package because it doesn’t make sense to charge our clients for a larger package if they aren’t going to use all of those minutes. Upgrading your phone package is necessary because you’re spending more time on the phone with customers than the original package allows.
The upgrade is a pass-through cost; it’s not designed to profit Prospect Genius in any way. We pass this minimal cost ($9/month) on to you because, if we didn’t, we would not have any incentive to make your campaign successful. Think about it: If we had to pay out of pocket for extra phone minutes that resulted from too many leads, then why would we want to keep sending you more leads? By passing the cost on to you, we are protecting both of our best interests.

Yelp Reviews Not Sticking

We also hear concerns from clients about their Yelp reviews. With Yelp’s strict filters, which are powered by confounding algorithms, many businesses are realizing that random customer reviews aren’t appearing on their pages. It’s a very valid concern, given how many businesses use Yelp as part of their overall online advertising campaign.
From what we’ve learned of Yelp’s review filtering policies, we can tell you that it primarily filters out reviews posted by brand-new accounts. In other words, if a user created a brand-new account to leave you a review or just didn’t leave many other reviews before leaving one on your page, Yelp will likely filter it out of your list of reviews. The filter system is intended to prevent potential spamming, but the result is that it also affects new, honest users.
While Prospect Genius doesn’t have the power to change Yelp’s policies, we do have recommendations for getting around them. For starters, only ask customers to leave you a review on Yelp if they have a well established account. Additionally, we’re fortunate to have several other prominent online platforms that also show ratings and reviews. Facebook and Google+ pages are both great alternatives to Yelp, so take advantage of them.
As always, if you have any campaign concerns that you’d like to address, call your campaign coordinator or account manager. We’ll listen carefully and accommodate whatever needs you have.

Make These Resolutions for Smarter Advertising in 2014

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

As you dip your toes into all of the new beginnings and clean slates that come with the New Year, why not make a few resolutions that you can actually keep?
Prospect Genius has compiled a list of some of the best things you can do for your company’s online advertising campaign in the coming year. By putting into practice even a few of these suggestions for smarter advertising, you’ll see a greater return on your efforts over last year.

Resolutions to Improve Your PG Campaign

Include your business name in your voice mail greeting. When matched with a friendly tone, it’s a professional touch that makes a strong first impression on prospective customers.
Send us your company photos. We’ll add them to your LeadTrax™ site for a personal touch that appeals to prospects.
- Pictures should reflect your industry’s expected level of professionalism. For example, appliance repairmen can pose next to their toolbox or truck, but tax attorneys should have a professional head shot.
Do what you can to make sure your directory listings are populated with recent reviews. While this is somewhat out of your control, it’s important to keep in mind since prospective customers pay closer attention to reviews from the last few months.
Remember Prospect Genius’s package options:
- Add PPC to strengthen your campaign.
- Use Boost to promote a seasonal offering.
- Sign up for a local AdBlast to promote a special discount.
Don’t let calls go to voice mail. There’s no excuse. Use your phone package options:
- Send calls to your cell phone while you’re on the job. You can change the number yourself in the Client Portal.
- Reroute calls so that they go to a different line after a few rings.
- Hire an outside answering service as a last resort.
Use the Client Portal. Our most successful clients regularly check the Portal to:
- See their lead stats (calls and e-mails).
- Listen to their call recordings.
- Harvest client e-mail addresses by copying and pasting the log from the Portal into a separate spreadsheet.
Check your e-mail. No matter what.
- Set up the e-mail-to-call feature so you can keep track of your missed leads electronically and receive notification on your smartphone when your business misses a call.
- Forward e-mails to multiple addresses so there’s a better chance of someone responding promptly to a lead.
Periodically monitor your Google+ Local listing to ensure that information doesn’t change or disappear (which is known to happen as Google makes updates). Get a jump on inaccurate information before it affects your rankings.

One Big “Don’t”

Don’t provide fake information to anyone, ever. This particularly refers to Google+ Local. When they call to verify certain information about your company, be accurate and honest. If they find out that you’ve falsified information—and they will—your company’s listing will be severely penalized for a substantial amount of time. Trust us: Honesty is the best policy.

A New Year of Online Advertising

To sum it all up: If you resolve to pay more attention to your campaign and become a more active participant in it, your extra efforts will pay dividends as the year goes on. Start off 2014 by following the above suggestions and be prepared to get a whole lot busier!
As always, don’t hesitate to contact us if you need assistance logging into the Client Portal or using any of its features. We’re here to help!

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