[clinton]

Cheers wynne well itwas a wise person who gave me that tip,not a web designer either ::)Il stick to cleaning carpets for another 20 years i think

[wynne jones]

Hi Steve

When you do any marketing piece the final bit of the jigsaw is getting someone to take action. That could be picking up the phone, filling in a form, joining a webinar, a facebook page etc etc.

So everthing on that page should  stear them to take one call to action. The instant someone looks at a page the thing you want them to do should stand out like a bulldogs dagglies and also you give them a VERY good reason to take action NOW.

Create an optin box which offers a coupon code for a tenner. Just get email address nothing else. You now have the ability to follow up on someone who may have just surfed off to the next site, you know where they have come from when they present the coupon and if they don't come to you, you still build a relationship with automated emails until they do (seven points of contact theory).

Email campaigns deliver a 1-50 return on investment on average.

So the next thing is to prove it to yourself. Test it. Set it up so you always have two versions of your site alternating between visitors. Which is your next biggest bang for your buck, split testing.

Now, as you begin to see how much more revenue can be delivered for not much money you can start to implement bigger ideas that essentially cost you nothing because they are paid for with money you didn't have before.

   

[garry22]

Clinton I notice you have three sites and one of the links has your main keyword phrase rather than the domain name. That's a smart move that I rarely see even on links from people who should know better.

It may be a waste of time here, Wynne.

There is a "no follow" mod that can be inserted into one of the folders on a SMF site (that does not show up on the page coding). I suspect it is in operation here (maybe the owners could let us know?). I'll stand corrected if someone can find links from here in their backlinks reports.

[clarkson]

  Hi mate
  try digieyedesign.co.uk they host for a couple of quid and good on design and seo reasonable to.

  cheers john

  a2z cleaning

[Adam P]

Clinton I notice you have three sites and one of the links has your main keyword phrase rather than the domain name. That's a smart move that I rarely see even on links from people who should know better.

It may be a waste of time here, Wynne.

There is a "no follow" mod that can be inserted into one of the folders on a SMF site (that does not show up on the page coding). I suspect it is in operation here (maybe the owners could let us know?). I'll stand corrected if someone can find links from here in their backlinks reports.

as well the site is not accessible to google as is (afaik any way). from what i understand they see a basic version with the signatures removed which is why you see people doing things like posting links after each post as well as in signatures such as...

http://www.cleansurrey.co.uk/

[wynne jones]

You are spot on Garry as usual. It maybe a waste of time on here now (it didn't use to be), I'm talking about the principle of 100% keyword density.

I keep reading different viewpoints on no follow. And change my mind depending how I feel at the time. 

To be honest a lot of areas could be easy to get top position with some very crummy links.

There are a few places in the UK that would be hard to crack but generally the local keywords for most no1 slots are nearly all pr 0s ranging from 5-100 backlinks. That means everything else being equal you could out rank a site in a month or two, if not sooner. You now have new factors creeping in to local that mean it's even easier to topple long standing no1 slots.

[wynne jones]

Hi Guys & Girls

I have a website but it needs seriously modenising, can anyone recommend a good web designer?

Anyway Wayne, sorry if we have gone off topic.

Can we have a look and see where you are with it? What do you want to get from it?

How much do you want to invest in your web marketing? What do you do offline that works really well?

I'm only a carpet cleaner but happy to help as are lots of people on here who are more experienced than me.   

[Mike Halliday]

Wynne his site was posted earlier

http://www.apluscleaningservices.co.uk/

although Wayne was asking about a revamp of his website I think it looks OK, not a really flashy website but good relevant photos and understandable text.

I don't know how well it is optimised but as I was reading it i didn't think it reflected badly on his company.

[garry22]

Wayne,

Mike has a point.

If it is attracting customers and making money, maybe it's a case of "if it ain't broke don't fix it"?

I tend to see things in the same way Wynne does. I got into online marketing via writing website copy so both of us tend to look, first and foremost, whether a site does a selling job.

A couple of the other lads are looking at stuff from a pure design or coding point of view. There's no real right or wrong, it just depends on what you are looking for.

Garry

[wynne jones]

Cheers Mike didn't spot that.

Yeah Garry I agree. I guess whats most important is knowing what Waynes gunning for. It would appear it's cleaning services southampton yet he has not brilliant on page optimisation and zilch backlinks.

Having said that, there is no one phrase that really stands out that delivers 20+ searches a day. Therfore you have to find all the little long tail key phrases that all add up in the end.

I do differ slightly with you Garry in that I start getting traffic before worrying about conversion. You can't really know whats working and what isn't untill you get a reasonable amount of traffic.

If I'm completely wrong though and wayne is getting a ton of calls of his site then I would do several things on the site to increase conversion then split test it with his current site. I would also optimise each page for a single keyword phrase.

And today my feeling on no follow links is just get them. You may not get PR from them but most people on here just need links full stop, even pooty little no follow PR0s. One thing I do know is if you ain't got any at all you will one day find your site at postion 890! and will stay there whatever you do.

Hope this helps anyone who is interested.

 

[garry22]

I do differ slightly with you Garry in that I start getting traffic before worrying about conversion. You can't really know whats working and what isn't untill you get a reasonable amount of traffic.

No we don't differ, I agree with you. I was purely commenting on the site (after a visitor has found it). Doug said on here recently that the number one priority was to get seen and you can't argue with that.

And today my feeling on no follow links is just get them. You may not get PR from them but most people on here just need links full stop, even pooty little no follow PR0s. One thing I do know is if you ain't got any at all you will one day find your site at postion 890! and will stay there whatever you do.

Again I agree. Someone I know in the States tested some sites by deliberately only pointing no follow links at them. They got ranked.

Interestingly, when I was looking up the bit about SMF no follow, a forum owner was moaning that his no follow attributes were being ignored by Yahoo. Maybe they just do not carry quite as much weight?

[wynne jones]

This reminds me of the reciprocal link thing.

Sure they went out of favour when google caught on, but wouldn't it be perfectly natural to a carpet cleaner in one town to have a link to one another. And wouldn't it be perfectly unaturall to have 99 reciprical backlinks and one from your webdesigner?

Which brings me on to another (yes I know I'm ranting) 'trick' web design companies do to hint lots of lovely seo and that's a linking matrix of their customers, crosslinking or whatever you want to call it. Yes it can be done but usually its everyone linking to everyone else and that makes you stick out like dogs dagglies to Google.

You can't get away from topic related one way links and the problem with that is it's a pain in the A and no one wants to do it, certainly not over the long haul.

[garry22]

I always think that is a bit dumb, especially when it is expressly forbidden in Google Webmaster guidelines!

I've seen it with some using the same link text, from the same standard links page on each site and even on the same IP address. It's a lot of work to have it all ignored.

Do you realise that this is a website thread where at least two people are in agreement?   

[wynne jones]

I was thinking the same Garry, the only logical conclusion I can come to is we are both right.

[garry22]

I agree ... again   

[Adam P]

alright guys get a room

[garry22]

Enough of this...

Does anyone have any ideas on

A/ Does Wayne's site need changing?

B/ What do they think should be done to improve it?

Suggestions anyone?

[Adam P]

improve the logo so it's a better quality image, the same with the images going down the page, change the low resolution ones for high res.

use left aligned text

remove the a+ cleaning services orange box and replace with the logo and make that into a link to the homepage, then use the new space better for the call now etc text.

improve the text at least on the home page. it reads like it's been written for search engines (full of keywords) but from a visitor point of view it's not great to read. e.g. the first paragraph on he homepage "Based in Southampton & covering the South Coast. Looking for a company offering cleaning services in Southampton? Choose A+ Cleaning Services: a leading company for top quality, competitively priced Cleaning Services Southampton. Window Cleaning, Carpet Cleaning, Patio Cleaning, Caravan Cleaning, Gutter Cleaning,

^^ change that to make sense.

remove the photo of someone taking a photo on the gutter cleaning page


Conservatory Cleaning, Driveway Cleaning and UPVC Cleaning."

the links to carpet cleaning suggest it's in southampton, but when on that page it appears maybe it's not... in fact the home page is the only one which says southampton, the rest never mention it once.

remove the site made by caravanhire makes the site appear very cheap and pickey

remove all the links to caravan hiring all together. i don't know who's idea it was to put them there but it was a bad one

[Shaun_Ashmore]

Design is okay nothing wrong with it, but really he's asking the wrong people he needs to ask customers we are all lemmings, and I appreciate we need to get our sites seen but 99% of carpet cleaning companies won't get into the debate of which google term etc is best therefore you 2 garry22 and wynne may either be streets ahead and getting infront or wasting valueable time being a carpet cleaner when you should be SEO experts - the answer to that is I don't know!

Getting No1 in free generic listings IMO could become a thing of the past soon as Google are putting the sqeeze on it, just look at a search term page for your area, sponsored ads then maps then free listings, what's next? they are a billion $ business and need their fix, look at how Yell have watered down the cheap listings not worth advertising in the cheap seats and the other search engines will do the same (also lemmings)

Grab it while you can, I remember YP being the best form of advertising they got greedy and then the internet took over nothing lasts forever but the best way of gaining free buisness is through your Gob!

The point of the ramble is that you can't afford to spend too much time on one thing as it's forever changing.

Shaun

[Adam P]

i don't think google are putting a squeeze on it tbh. sponsored ads have always been there and have not changed since i can remember using google. map listings appear but that's free, but it's also linked in with organic listings such as for some of mine i'm first, then there is the map listings, then the rest of the organic results.

although adwords appears first i fnd a much larger percentage of my visitors come through organic listings even when my ad is running on the page. this could be down to a larger percentage these days having an advert blocker or just few people click them.