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Why Service Magic KILLS your clients SEO

by Rus Sells
12 replies
Some of you may be doing Google Places listings for contractors. They are a good niche to target.

I used to be a contractor myself so I know many are interested and have tried getting leads online.

The most popular service for contractors to achieve this is via Service Magic.

Service Magic has two levels of leads.

The first type is the general we want an estimate lead in which Service Magic matches the request with up to 4 contractors to bid for the project.

The second is the Exact Match program. This is the one to watch out for.

What happens here is Service Magic goes out and submits your business information to the major business directories like superpages, kudzu, etc.

Here's where the problem lies, Service Magic uses an 800 phone number that they own and control and puts it on your profiles.

That is exactly where the problem lies!

We all know how important it is to have all our information the same when it comes to citations/directory listings and having different phone numbers in your directory listing then on your site or your Google Places listing is counter productive and damaging to your clients SEO.

If your going to work for a contractor make SURE to ask them if they've ever used Service Magic and if so did they use the EXACT MATCH program.

On the other side of the coin Google picks up reviews done by those who have hired contractors through Service Magic so it is can very powerful for your client. Just keep them away from the exact match program and you can use Service Magic to build trust, authority, and reviews.
#clients #kills #magic #seo #service
  • Profile picture of the author jsherloc
    Russ, I had ZERO clue about this. How long have they been offering this second option? Thats crazy....I'm not sure why they wouldn't have thought of another way to go about things possibly knowing the whole NAP-consistency-MASSIVE-IMPORTANCE thing in local search lol. Thanks for letting us know!

    - Jim
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    • Profile picture of the author Rus Sells
      When it comes down to it, ServiceMagic only cares about ServiceMagic.

      They use the exact match system to charge more for leads and they use the unique 800 number to track those leads as they ring straight to ServiceMagic and then connect you directly to the caller who saw the profile online.

      I don't know how long exact match has been around with ServiceMagic but it was an option when I was using them back in 2006.

      Like I said, if your client is using ServiceMagic already just keep them away from the exact match program. Encourage them to either restart using ServiceMagic' regular lead system. Get some sales, ask for ratings and reviews and Google will pick those up and put them on the clients Google Places listing. I believe if you get 5, 5 star ratings you get the nifty title of certified pro contractor as well. So you can use the ServiceMagic profile to actually help your efforts.

      Originally Posted by jsherloc View Post

      Russ, I had ZERO clue about this. How long have they been offering this second option? Thats crazy....I'm not sure why they wouldn't have thought of another way to go about things possibly knowing the whole NAP-consistency-MASSIVE-IMPORTANCE thing in local search lol. Thanks for letting us know!

      - Jim
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  • Profile picture of the author AUKev
    As an contract service company owner (and internet marketer), I have experience as a customer of Service Magic. My results were horrible. The leads were EXTREMELY low quality. With my marketing, my average job size is around $2500. The leads from SM were less than $500 and it seemed like the customers were the highest maintenance.

    I never used the exact match feature. Smart move on SM. Should the customer stop using their service, they can continue to get leads and farm to other clients.

    As for the citations, that could be a problem. My first thought would be to consider making slight changes to the GP listing and then inserting your own data, that is slightly different so that they match in all the listing you enter. You could add Inc, or something to company name, and then add a Suite or 123C (added the C) to the address. The phone number will be different anyway since SM is using their 800 number.

    Thanks for mentioning this. I never thought to ask this to my offline prospects. If they have used SM Exact, I may have to increase my bid to cover the additional work it may require to overcome SM listings.
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    • Profile picture of the author Rus Sells
      I know a lot of contractors have expressed negative results with ServiceMagic yet my experience was so outstanding that by my 4th month as a SM member I was asked if I would like to be in the upcoming featured contractor of the month thingy. lol

      I used to participate on roofing.com and contractortalk.com and I finely left those forums, got tired of hearing all the "professional" contractors complain about their customers, or some lead service they hired. lol

      My current client has been instructed to contact every single SM directory listing I can find and ask for control over the listing so it can be updated.

      As a last resort we tell them to remove the listing so we can create our own on the same site. I don't like doing this because the existing listing is obviously already indexed and getting some traction from Google. Which reminds me, I need to send my client an invoice for the extra work of finding these listings and updating them. = )



      Originally Posted by AUKev View Post

      As an contract service company owner (and internet marketer), I have experience as a customer of Service Magic. My results were horrible. The leads were EXTREMELY low quality. With my marketing, my average job size is around $2500. The leads from SM were less than $500 and it seemed like the customers were the highest maintenance.

      I never used the exact match feature. Smart move on SM. Should the customer stop using their service, they can continue to get leads and farm to other clients.

      As for the citations, that could be a problem. My first thought would be to consider making slight changes to the GP listing and then inserting your own data, that is slightly different so that they match in all the listing you enter. You could add Inc, or something to company name, and then add a Suite or 123C (added the C) to the address. The phone number will be different anyway since SM is using their 800 number.

      Thanks for mentioning this. I never thought to ask this to my offline prospects. If they have used SM Exact, I may have to increase my bid to cover the additional work it may require to overcome SM listings.
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  • Profile picture of the author koppster
    Great info thanks jim
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  • Profile picture of the author SirThomas
    Thanks for the post Rus.

    Very often, Service Magic creates a duplicate listing and uses their own descriptions.
    Also, when the client cancels their subscription, phone numbers and website
    addresses stay on their listings producing leads... for their competition. lol

    Besides MS's 1-800 number located on YOUR directory listings, they create another
    problem for your client.

    These days, if you want to be on the top of Google Places, your business description
    has to be properly SEO's, aligned with a company website and consistent throughout
    all directories. And that is basically impossible with Service Magic.



    Thomas
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  • Profile picture of the author SirThomas
    One more thing. CitySearch's paid service also created some problems for my clients.

    They assigned their phone number to the listing and created new description, totally
    inconsistent with other directories and GPlaces... Also, their "new" content and their
    phone number is "syndicated" to the directories they are associated with.. A nightmare!

    Thomas
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    • Profile picture of the author SMSupport
      Hey Rus -

      Thank you for the great feedback about ServiceMagic. I see that there is some concern around the exact match program and wanted to clear any questions that you might have up. Here is how it works. If a service professional has Exact Match activated, ServiceMagic promotes our member's business profile online using different advertising and keyword matching methods. The point is to get the contractor's info out there. In many cases, the service professional doesn't have a website and benefits from the online exposure. Without a website and the knowledge of how to market online it can be very challenging. If you have a successful website and don't want to compete against your own website then exact match is an optional addition for your account or there are options to exclude your profile from online syndication. If you exclude it from syndication it will not hurt your own SEO but you will still be able to be found through ServiceMagic's contractor directory.

      If you have any questions, I am here to help you out.

      Thank you,

      Mandy Black
      Online Customer Liaison for ServiceMagic
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      • Profile picture of the author Rus Sells
        This is a great example of reputation management guys. Can you say google alerts for service magic?

        The fact is, ServiceMagic isn't really doing any favors for small business owners long term unless the user stays with them.

        Originally Posted by SMSupport View Post

        Hey Rus -

        Thank you for the great feedback about ServiceMagic. I see that there is some concern around the exact match program and wanted to clear any questions that you might have up. Here is how it works. If a service professional has Exact Match activated, ServiceMagic promotes our member's business profile online using different advertising and keyword matching methods. The point is to get the contractor's info out there. In many cases, the service professional doesn't have a website and benefits from the online exposure. Without a website and the knowledge of how to market online it can be very challenging. If you have a successful website and don't want to compete against your own website then exact match is an optional addition for your account or there are options to exclude your profile from online syndication. If you exclude it from syndication it will not hurt your own SEO but you will still be able to be found through ServiceMagic's contractor directory.

        If you have any questions, I am here to help you out.

        Thank you,

        Mandy Black
        Online Customer Liaison for ServiceMagic
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  • Profile picture of the author jsherloc
    Thank you Thomas for mentioning that about CitySearch's paid program as well.

    After working with these types of directory websites / citation resources for months with Local Lasso, I'm discovering a lot of them are trying to sign companies up with "featured" listings that include additional exposure. The thing is, when you read the details of EXACTLY what they are doing behind the scenes...it just makes me shake my head.

    As the response from ServiceMagic indicates, I guess this type of thing COULD benefit small contractors and the like that NEVER have any intentions of operating a web-presence that they, or their local SEO consultants, own and run. I think it is basically an attempt to "bypass" local SEOs and kind of imply to business owners that "THIS IS ALL YOU REALLY NEED TO SUCCEED ONLINE".

    While this could certainly help some, we all know that there is a bit more to increasing a business's revenue than a few additional directory submissions and some extra paid banner ads on these directory websites...so, in a way, in my opinion, these types of "featured exposure" packages could ultimately be "hurting" a businesses long-term online presence for the reasons discussed above.

    - Jim
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  • Profile picture of the author Federer123
    Once again, a huge IM company with a huge marketing budget is absolutely fleecing small business owners. Sickening.
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