internet advertising

[andy_art_trigg]

Re: internet advertising

petalpop wrote:just to buck the trend i have a web site
am on yell.com used a company to get on the 1st page of google
calls from them over 3 month period 0 😥
yellow pages 5-6 calls a day 😀
go figure 😕

It depends on what search you were on the first page for, and whether others above you had more tempting details quoted at the side of the link or not. If someone decided to search for a repairer in your area what phrase would you guess they’d use, was this the phrase you were on the first page for?

[petalpop]

Re: internet advertising

one line was “washing machine repairs in chelmsford”
i moaned when no calls so they made it so i was 1st page if someone put
washing machine repairs in chelmsford or any of
washing, machine and repairs or in chelmsford
then i had 23 views on the web site but no phone calls
presumably because someone was looking for car repair in chelmsford
so i would show because of the in chelmsford

[kwatt]

Re: internet advertising

bzz67 wrote: new people to your area are sure to use the web to search for loacal buisness. my 10 page website can give much more info than any other type of advertising.

Which is exactly the point. 🙂

You can give a lot more detail about what you do, where and all that sort of malarky as well as Toni has done, use things like PayPal to take payments.

For all the cost, even to have someone to do it for you if you don’t want to do loads of funky stuff, it’s definitely worth investing the time or a couple hundred quid in.

And, once it’s done it’s the gift that keeps on giving as it’s very low cost to maintain if not free. That you cannot say about almost any other form of promotion.

K.

[petalpop]

Re: internet advertising

but unless you want to be on page 102876 of 283736353 on google you have to pay

[kwatt]

Not so.

You have to work at it or pay. 😉

K.

[petalpop]

Re: internet advertising

tell me more
no one else will ever know 😉

[andy_art_trigg]

Re: internet advertising

petalpop wrote:but unless you want to be on page 102876 of 283736353 on google you have to pay

Or learn how to do it yourself, which is the best way but very time consuming.

[andy_art_trigg]

Re: internet advertising

petalpop wrote:one line was “washing machine repairs in chelmsford”
i moaned when no calls so they made it so i was 1st page if someone put
washing machine repairs in chelmsford or any of
washing, machine and repairs or in chelmsford
then i had 23 views on the web site but no phone calls
presumably because someone was looking for car repair in chelmsford
so i would show because of the in chelmsford

Which is your site?

[petalpop]

Re: internet advertising

not on there anymore as no results

[andy_art_trigg]

Re: internet advertising

petalpop wrote:not on there anymore as no results

Oh I was hoping to have a look and advise.

Promoting a business on the web is no different to being in Yellow pages or Thompson local or the local paper in that just having a presence doesn’t guarantee any results.

If there are other people offering the same services people may chose them over us if our presence doesn’t impress enough, or say the right things or many other reasons. We’ve all searched for something and clicked a link only to just click the back button and try something else almost straight away. Research shows people make very instant judgements about any web page they arrive on and we have less than a couple of seconds to impress them that the page is worth spending any time on never mind that we are the right people to call.

Even if a web page is number 1 it may not perform well if it doesn’t convince people. I’m not saying the page wasn’t any good because I can’t know I haven’t seen it but I’m just exploring some of the possible reasons it might not have converted enquiries.

There’s not much chance your page would have come up for car repairs in chelmsford at all. People finding you will have found you because of the content of your page and/or the text surrounding any links to it from elsewhere.

If you still had the pages up you could try to improve things. As I said before, it’s great to have a page just for your existing customers or for prospective new customers to look at from your normal advertising and business cards.

[bagman]

Re: internet advertising

Here’s something a friend who does optimisation for a living advised me on. I’ve left my company name in there, but obviously just change it to yours.

HTH

Trev

P.S. I’m still working on mine, but it is getting better 🙂

To get a good placement in the search engines it is all about content.

First start with the head of the page.

Make sure you have a well written, keyword prominent . Then on another page you use a couple of other key terms. Try to keep key terms near the beginning rather than the end. If they are important then logically they should appear sooner and the search engines think the same way.

Your Meta Tag for description will likely be used by the search engines as the descriptive text that appears under the blue link when returning results. Again make sure to keep a couple of key terms prominent but as the Meta Tags are no longer valued by the search engines optimise this for human consumption. Make it super relevant and try to lead them into your site.

After the head of the page you move on to the contents.

Your Header Tags are important and add weight to how the search engines rank your site against others. There should only be 1

tag. Again make sure to keep key terms relevant. Every single header tag should include key terms but remember to keep the terms used to a theme, don’t mix and match too great a variation on a single page or you will confuse the search engine as to what that page is really about and what it should be filed under. For example Washing Machine Repairs, Washing Machine Maintenance, Washing Machine Servicing, Washing Machine Sales etc are all good. If you then add Dishwasher to everything too throughout the whole page that one page has to compete against all other competition for both terms.

The actual content of the page is one of the largest determining factors for a search engine in how it files away that page and how it ranks that page against others in the same category. There should be an average of 200-300 words per page. It doesn’t mean instant failure if there aren’t and it doesn’t mean instant success if you have loads more. Well written text with good use of key terms in prominent places is what you want. What ever you do though, do not forget that the site will succeed or fail based on how it converts visitors into clients. You might have the best optimised content for a search engine on the web but if it doesn’t read well and drive a visitor to become a customer then it has ultimately failed. Again when you place your keywords do so sensibly, try to keep them nearer beginnings of paragraphs and sentences but do not overload the content with them. It is far better to not force a key term in than have the content read like a broken record.

Next there are a few insider tricks and tips for adding key terms to your site in the code. First any link you have in the code can be used to help with how the site ranks. Below will be two examples of the same link, the top is un-optimised, the bottom is optimised.

Dish Washers

Dish Washer Repairs

The contents of “title” will dislay if you hover over the link but it adds another opportunity to tell the search engine what the page its linking to is about. The text that displays in the link should also be a key term and descriptive.

All images have to have an “alt” value to pass standards but you can also add a “title” too. For instance the following will display an image but the second will do so and take advantage of the chance to add optimisation.

Planning can have the biggest impact. Plan your site so that you have, ideally, no more than one or two content aims on each page. Give each service you offer a page of its own and optimise that page for terms targeted around that service. Make sure that every link is descriptive of the page it is linking too and not from. Make sure your menu is clear and that the link text that is visible makes it obvious to visitors as to what it will take them too. Don’t over do images thinking they will drive sales more than text. They will but images are nothing more than huge collections of 1s and 0s to search engines, its the text that they will use to determine what you site is about, where to file the pages and ultimately whether it is more or less relevant than those already in its database. Getting the best of both is a balancing act and you will have to judge for yourself where to draw the line.

Next PPC or paid ad campaigns on search engines.

First, unless you have a fairly large advertising budget (anything between £50 and £100 per month minimum) don’t bother. The number of people that actually look at the ads let alone use them is incredibly low. In fact its a little under 3{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} of all time spent in front of search engine results is used looking at the PPC adds. Considering the volume of traffic that goes through a search engine 3{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} is still a huge number of people but it still means that 97{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} of people look at the organic results more. It can also get costly as you will have to bid against other companies, groups of companies and ad agencies that buy up and bid to the absolute limit of their budgets on all of the tastiest terms. It can work and work brilliantly well for some companies and I would always admit that it can be worth a trail but do not put a large chunk of money from any ad budget towards it as the results will likely be disappointing.

[LJDomestics]

Re: internet advertising

Internet does not work very well in my opinion, never the less a one page index with everything on there ya do and contact details is better than having nothing out there.
Had my own online shop for a while and nothing came of it!

The best way to drum up some work is get ya name around in ur local area, wether u been in that area 20 yr’s or not it still pays to advertise.

[kwatt]

Re: internet advertising

IMO…

Most of the people reading this forum will not have a grasp of the internet as such beyond using it to find out what they need so going into the world of SEO and whatnot is pretty much wasted. They will also have little idea of how to build a website, especially coding, but even in terms of design and marketing.

No offence intended to anyone.

If you want a website and, I think it’s fairly essential that you have one, the place to start is with your domain name.

Register a nice short and easy to remember domain name, it only costs a few pounds. I generally use UK Reg to do that as they’re cheap and good. Getting a good domain name that’s snappy, relevant and easy for people to remember is the first port of call.

Even if you don’t do anything with the domain for now, it is then yours. Plus you can have a more professional looking email address that can then be used for business as it’s usually free with the domain registration.

Once (if) you then decide to do something with any form of online presence it becomes a lot easier.

K.

[andy_art_trigg]

Re: internet advertising

A few years back I wrote a very basic page for Chris Ready when I had a bit more time than I do now. The page was designed to be simple and as far as I know has had no promotion and few other places link to it. Despite that it’s there for anyone to find.

Imagine someone in his area sees his van around or parked on their road while he does a job. They can go to Google and type in “Chris Ready”, or “Chris Ready Services” and immediately find him. They can then read a big advert for his services and find his telephone numbers and email address. Try it yourselves and see.

Imagine someone at the pub says they used Chris Ready and he was all right. They can even find him using their iPhone or otherweb-enabled phone and get his number there and then.

Imagine someone in Birmingham deciding to search for “dishwasher repairs in Birmingham” – guess who’s number 1 (the first non-sponsored position) – Chris Ready is.

If someone searches for “Tumble dryer repairs in Solihull” he’s half way down the page. He’s number 6 for “domestic appliance repairs in Solihull”.

He doesn’t rate for all relevant searches but then again the page hasn’t been promoted or tweaked and adjusted. It could perform much better but he’d need to invest more time and money into it.

A single page like that can still come up in Google if it’s properly designed and should cost very little.

[Author]

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