As more and more users turn to Google Local, Yelp, and related sites, the yellow pages industry continues to suffer. 406strategies recently explored what’s really happening in the industry.

To start off, the lack of usage is occurring primarily in the younger demographic. Nearly 100% of this age group completely ignores the yellow pages, while the older demographic still occasionally uses them.

At the same time, the industry is experiencing a lower sales volume because of search localization. This opens up many doors for the SEO industry, as budgets are transitioning from yellow pages to online marketing.

Two recent filings of public companies were especially helpful in getting an inside look at what’s happening in the industry:

Super Pages – Known as one of the largest yellow page companies, Super Pages experienced a 61.3% decrease in revenue from 2009 to 2010. Additionally, their net profit/loss went from breakeven in 2009 to a loss of $16.83 million in 2010.

Dex One – Producer of dex and dex plus yellow pages, the company experienced a 63% drop in revenue from 2009 to 2010. Additionally, their net loss increased from $435 million in 2009 to $903 million in 2010; they defaulted on $6.9 billion in loans, and they have $6.3 billion in debt.

For more details about the decline of the yellow pages, take a look at 406strategies’ article titled, ”State of the Yellow Pages Industry.”

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As the importance of online marketing campaigns grow, users find themselves with endless tools at their disposal. A recent article from Yoast outlined the some of the best tools available today. Here are just a few of their highlights:

Google Analytics – Google Analytics is constantly adding new features that can help you enhance your SEO and SEM campaigns. The service helps you track the number of visitors, clicks, Adwords spend, and more on your businesses’ website. You can also use it to track the effectiveness of certain elements that change over time including email blasts and advertisements.

Clicktale – Clicktale takes website tracking up a notch by providing you with an actual video of customers surfing on your site. You can see your site’s “hot spots” and “cold spots” by seeing exactly where your customers click. It also shows you when readers don’t particularly like certain content and hit the “back button.”

Google Website Optimizer – For split-testing, check out Google Website Optimizer. The tool lets you test multiple versions of a page to see which version gets more clicks and closes more sales. You can test several pages of your website at once and generate a report that shows the results of the testing.

These three tools will give you a great start in enhancing your online marketing campaign. For even more ideas, check out Yoast’s article called, “Tools to Improve Your Online Marketing Campaign”

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It’s a common misconception among marketing and advertising professionals that writing PPC advertisements is easy – after all, there are boundaries under which to work, like a strict text length. A recent post on Deep Foot Prints, however, claims it may not be that straight forward. Here are a few tips to help you create successful PPC advertisements for your business:

Understand the business you’re writing for – If you’re not writing for your own business, spend time getting to know the business you’re writing for. Talk with key decision makers, learn about their products and services, speak with a customer services manager, research the target demographic and main competitor, and more.

Maintain a clear theme – Ensure your ad groups are closely aligned to one another. To do this, try for no more than 20 to 30 keywords per ad group, and aim your ads to only certain pages on the website.

Write a Strong Ad Headline – The headline if your hook and the biggest attention grabber. Fail here and there’s no turning it around. With only 25 characters, you have to make each character count. It’s usually a good idea to use a keyword here and use questions to entice the reader into looking at your ad.

Write Strong Descriptions – this part of the ad allows you to include more detail than the headline. You’ll want to tie this into the headline. So, if you asked a question in your headline, you’ll want to use the description to either answer the question or insert a call-to-action.

Create an attractive display URL – This is often overlooked when creating an ad, and that’s simply a wasted opportunity. The display URL needs to contain the same domain as the domain in the ad/keyword destination URL, so the shorter your domain, the higher your freedom. Try using the core keyword or the name of your current promotion.

These tips and more can be found in the Deep Foot Print’s article titled, How to Write the Best PPC Adverts.

What are your thoughts? Do you have any great tips for writing killer PPC ads? If so, please join the conversation and comment below.