[clarkson]

  Hi
  I was paying a subscription to a company 50 plus vat for seo organic  and 50 plus vat for adword campaign.

  Then google ppc charge running around 160 -180 on a 7 pound a day limit.

  In there defence please remember i operate in most cleaning sectors so they where trying to promote on carpets window and pressure washing.

Iam also in leicester so iam not only competing with a lot of leicester companies, but derby coventry nottingham and birmingham are all half an hour away so are commutable they are competing for the leicester business as well.
 
  so this spread the pot quite thin. however the presence and certainly the results have been very poor, hasnt justified the expense.

  iam now looking at microsiites for each sector within my mainsite to act as landing pages.

  www.leicestercleaners.com

 if anyone can get me any stats would be very interested to see the results. Although every company i ever deal with loves to qoute stats especially 'impressions' which i think are meaningless, you could get one million impressions a day and still not get a pound of work from it.

cheers

john

[wynne jones]

All I can say is they must have a big telescope.

[clarkson]

Hi JandS

 Yes for now, but in a few days you will be of on site working and a hundred seo companies will be working full time to promote there clients above you. Within a week you could be down on page five of google and paying for your website which will now be bringing you nothing.

 out of interest how many definite leads have you had say in the last month that you atribute directly to your website presence.

  I ask this because iam not convinced after my bad experiences that internet presence is as important to us as its made out to be.

  I think if you are after big commercial stuff then there is a need, but for domestic its only worth it if you are just paying for hosting like you, beyond that iam not sure.  

  of course having your url on your flyers and cards gives custies a chance to check you out and gives more info but you dont need seo for that obviously.

cheers

john

[JandS]

clarkson

Have been there or thereabouts for the last year.
I get quite a few from my website but not as many as from my paper ads.
Find the opposite with commercial, all domestic off my site, most commercial
I get through word of mouth.
Personally I think the way to get good rankings is to have good content on
your website and to keep altering it from time to time, adwords to me are
a waste of money. Or do I mean PPC? Or are they one and the same?

John

[clarkson]

 Hi
 I agree i think content is key for natural listing, although i here links from other sites seems to make you google friendly.

 suprised you have stayed so high without any optomisation over that period.

 iam undecided about adwords i think its a real art to pitch bids and develop the keywords to get the profile without the spend. iam not sure if i have had a bad campaign or its just a waste of time. might try a few punts just to test things out like has been suggested put a really obvious keyword in at 1.50 per click so you are top on google for a few days. see if the leads pick up.

 The other problem is with adwords is you get third parties trying to sell you stuff or applying for jobs surfing the net. you end up paying for clicks from reps you dont want to speak to.

its ok at 10 pence but at 1.50 a click your beer money soon dissapears.


there doesnt seem to be anyway of getting leads easily.

cheers

john

[Adam P]

 Hi
 I agree i think content is key for natural listing, although i here links from other sites seems to make you google friendly.

 suprised you have stayed so high without any optomisation over that period.

 iam undecided about adwords i think its a real art to pitch bids and develop the keywords to get the profile without the spend. iam not sure if i have had a bad campaign or its just a waste of time. might try a few punts just to test things out like has been suggested put a really obvious keyword in at 1.50 per click so you are top on google for a few days. see if the leads pick up.

 The other problem is with adwords is you get third parties trying to sell you stuff or applying for jobs surfing the net. you end up paying for clicks from reps you dont want to speak to.

its ok at 10 pence but at 1.50 a click your beer money soon dissapears.


there doesnt seem to be anyway of getting leads easily.

cheers

john

yeah carpet cleaning clicks are expensive on google, but then they're expensive because of the competition pushing up the price. it's simialr to leafletting though, you may drop 1000 leaflets, but how many will actually read them and book a clean. most will get wasted by people who don't want a carpet cleaner. at least with adwords most of the people clicking are actually looking to hire a carpet cleaner

[wynne jones]

If you get a company to do adwords for you do you get all the info they have collected. Surely from that you can find stuff that people are searching on and is cheaper.

[Adam P]

you possibly don't get the information as they'll be doing all the research and then you'll ditch them once they hand it over for free. you can always try but imo it's easy enough to do it yourself. google want to make anyone able to run an adwords campaign with at least some success

[clarkson]

 Hi
 i have packed leafleting in, the results are to poor for the return. I use leaflets when canvassing but blanket distribution they get binned, maybe not as bad in cc but on window cleaning one call in a thousand i think.

Wynne you get no chance of seeing the data from most seo/adwords companies they guard what they do and they hide what they find. they may give you an overview report but they can skew that to look how they want(statistics again).

I agree this should be your intellectual property as you commissioned the campaign. No chance! Most dont even let you see the campaign that is running they keep it on there server so you cant see what they have done and how they did it. (or how little they have done)

 Some even mirror your website on there server so when people click through they are looking at a site on the seo companies computer network, this is  so the true stats cant be seen by the punter.

 As has been said it isnt rocket science, but from my own research i think there is more to it than some think there is, there are obviously a few on here  who really know what they are talking about. Many though have started a campaign typed in a dozen keywords set them at 10 pence, and thought isnt adwords easy. i could do that in 5 minutes, but for whatever reasons this wouldnt get me on page 10. i might as well shut my site down.

I am still amazed that a few have done that like the above and got high rankings for a sustained period with minimal input, fair play to them!

What i would love is a one on one with a freelancer who REALLY knows the score and hasnt got a vested interest.

cheers

john

[Ian Gourlay]

http://blog.kissmetrics.com/seo-guide/

For anyone interest in SEO

[garry22]

John (clarkson),

I don't know how anyone can do on going web marketing (organic results) for as little as £50.00 per month.

With your site, you may be paying £ 50.00 too much,  as I cannot see what they are doing at all. I cannot even see any tracking code on the pages 9unless they are using Astats on the server). Sorry.

[robert meldrum]

A couple of years ago I had a web site through a company " Easyspace "that got hammered on here, but gave me  regular traffic.............

[wynne jones]

Garry

Is something inside telling you your heart is in something other than carpet cleaning?

[Adam P]

I cannot even see any tracking code on the pages 9unless they are using Astats on the server). Sorry.

no tracking code would be needed if done well enough. i have one for google but use my own made one which you can't see as it's all server side as it should be

[clarkson]

 gary hi i agree 50 is cheap and probably isnt enough to allow the time to be constantly tweaking the site. Like all companies they thought first page  would be a doddle but never managed to achieve this. funny how people see it  wynne thought it was a lot, you and i think its not enough.

I have posted an add on peopleper hour a freelance search board. The prices seem to be coming in around 150-200 per month. with an initial fee of around 400 to get the website polished up. sounds a lot but if you can get mid page one on google you would not need adwords.

I dont know about tracking code bit beyond me. Thats the problem for a lot of us we have to trust someone todo it for us but there arent really that many who can do it well.

I think ians link proves my point look how much work is mentioned in there you would never get any work (cleaning) actualy done if you tried to do all that yourself.

cheers

john

[Adam P]

clarkson: look into google analytics. i use it for basic stuff and it can be useful, especially when paired with google webmaster tools. it will get you started and is 100% free so worth a look into

[garry22]

Is something inside telling you your heart is in something other than carpet cleaning? 

Wynne,

It's not the heart, it's the body that's falling apart!

Seriously, I had a very serious back injury a few years ago and carpet and (especially) upholstery cleaning does not help. I made a conscious decision to find an alternative before everything stops working. To date that has meant expensive training in copywriting and internet marketing. The irony is that the carpet cleaning is paying for the training!

I love the dealing with varied interesting people each day. It's just the physical stuff that kills me.

[Robert Watson]

Good on you Garry.
Its not mentally easy juggling two different businesses.
Garry has helped me out a few times and knows his stuff.
Respect and good luck with your endeavors, 
Rab

[wynne jones]

Yes well done Garry, it takes guts to move into something new although it would be a living hell to have to work to pay the bills when you are in serious pain.

I think there is a big market in local because most small businesses haven't got a clue nor the time. It will hekp if you can relate to them as a local business too.

[Adam P]

I think there is a big market in local because most small businesses haven't got a clue nor the time. It will hekp if you can relate to them as a local business too.

very true. a carpet cleaner building a carpet cleaners website is going to make a far better and more personal site then someone just picking from a list of free to use templates. As you say though most people don't know what it is they want from a site which is leaving a huge gap in the market