Clean It Up
UK Floor Cleaning Forum => Carpet Cleaning Forum => Topic started by: kinder clean on August 18, 2010, 06:38:36 pm
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Hi guys
I'm dabbling with building a website and wanted those with some experience to suggest some keywords and phrases.
I've made a list and so far have:
carpet cleaner
carpet cleaning
upholstery cleaner
upholstery cleaning
stain removal
rug cleaner
rug cleaning
leather upholstery cleaner
leather upholstery cleaning
All the above will be used with the name of the town / towns I'm aiming the site at.
Is there anything else I need to consider ?
Cheers
Paul
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Hi Paul.
Anyone serious about doing their own site should go to Linda.com and sign up for a £25 a month
subscription.
Then spend a serious amount time and head space going through all the tutorials.
Warning. This action could is counter productive unless you are really into it.
Rab.
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Depending on your website builder you may have too many characters if you submitted all that.
As carpet is one key word and cleaning is another etc etc i don't think you need to keep repeating them as you have listed here.
Why not
Carpet, cleaning, cleaner, upholstery, suite, leather, town (1), town (2) etc
Each keyword must appear in your body text at least 3 times
Your site description can also benefit by writing it as 'town' carpet cleaning by 'business name'
Put it this way, it works for me ;)
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I'll keep it zipped.... ;D
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I'll keep it zipped....
Awh.. I thought we were in for some entertainment :D
Paul,
I'm not sure I understand your question. Do you mean keywords in general or for use in the "keywords" meta tag? If it's the latter, you don't need to worry as they are pretty much redundant nowadays as a ranking factor.
Is that what you meant?
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As this topic about SEO was recently bashed about perhaps one of you experts would like to tell me how I've got the top 3 places for carpet cleaning basingstoke when I apparently have no idea ;D
I'm of the opinion that there aren't any set rules, or if there are then they change on a weekly basis.
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^ Easy/no compition :-X
basingstokecarpetcleaners.co.uk is that your site Neil? Thats whos No1 for my search.
Willclean has the most backlinks in the top 20. Sort out your title, discription and H1 tag and you should be golden.... :-X
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basingstokecarpetcleaners.co.uk is that your site Neil? Thats whos No1 for my search.
No it's not, so different operating systems must give slightly different results
Sort out your title, discription and H1 tag and you should be golden.... :-X
I'll have a dabble, not quite sure what to do but I'll figure it out
Thanks
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basingstokecarpetcleaners.co.uk is that your site Neil? Thats whos No1 for my search.
No it's not, so different operating systems must give slightly different results
Sort out your title, discription and H1 tag and you should be golden.... :-X
I'll have a dabble, not quite sure what to do but I'll figure it out
Thanks
the different results is most likely because you keep clicking your own site so google will then automatically place it higher just for you as they'll think you want to view it more. to ensure you get accurate results make sure if you're logged in that you have custom web results (or something along those lines) switched off in your account settings.
as tony has said you're getting good results simply because of lack of competition, which is also true for pretty much all sites made by i think mark on these forums. lack of competition is the sole reason his porely "made" (perhaps made is too nice of a word for them) sites give any results.
kinder clean: understanding your keywords is great but don't focus on them too much on your own site. make sure your site has them but not in an un-natural way, but also make sure the sites that link to your site have them in the anchor text, e.g. this is anchor text (http://www.greencleansolution.co.uk/). do that and you'll be golden ;)
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Neil,
As the others have said, you are getting skewed results. You need to clear your browsing history.
If you are signed into Google, sign out (if you have web history activated, Google will serve you personalised results ie the ones you click on.
If using Internet Explorer, go to TOOLS > Internet Options > General Then check the box "delete browsing history on exit"
If using Firefox go to TOOLS > Clear recent history.
This should give you some more accurate results.
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Neil,
As the others have said, you are getting skewed results. You need to clear your browsing history.
If you are signed into Google, sign out (if you have web history activated, Google will serve you personalised results ie the ones you click on.
If using Internet Explorer, go to TOOLS > Internet Options > General Then check the box "delete browsing history on exit"
If using Firefox go to TOOLS > Clear recent history.
This should give you some more accurate results.
Done all that so it now shows....
1. www.basingstokecarpetcleaning.co.uk/ - Cached - Similar (one page wonder-mine)
2. www.willclean.eu/ - Cached - Similar (main site-mine)
3. www.basingstoke-carpet-cleaning.co.uk/ - Cached - Similar (one page wonder-mine)
I'm sure like myself, the rest wouldn't say there no competition in this area. There's more than enough with numerous being from 20 or so miles away.
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first i can find of your site is on page 2 neil but then it does depend on the exact words being used. do you know your most common search term used to find your site?
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first i can find of your site is on page 2 neil but then it does depend on the exact words being used. do you know your most common search term used to find your site?
'carpet cleaning basingstoke' produced the above results.
'carpet cleaner basingstoke' produces slightly different results having positions 4,9 and 10 although why my window cleaning site should appear as No2 is beyond me within that search :o
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Have you checked how much traffic you are chasing, keywords in your domain will help
Chasing longtailed keywords will be easy but with less traffic, however if you are chasing 100 longtailed keywords then the traffic will increase, you will be targeting customers that want your services ie.
someone who wants their carpets cleaned in Basingstoke, may type in those exact the keywords carpets cleaned in Basingstoke, so if you have the domain name www.carpetcleaningbasingstoke.co.uk or com, with very little effot you can be number one, but you are chasing 260 searches a month, and only probable get 2-4 bookings a month times this by a hundred then you get a lot of work
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I guess the message here is that if you want a domain name name containing keywords, then make sure you spell it right! (no offence intended Vernon :))
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and make sure the hyperlink works :D
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Is there some where where you can find out for sure? Surely just asking carpet cleaners is a bit hit and miss.
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but we aren't just carpet cleaners, we are business owners, and oddly enough there is a few who are experienced in this field anyway. understanding your keywords isn't rocket science (removed as to be fair comment was called for in this occasion) so something people on here can easily help with. if you wan you can try places like v7n.com which has some experienced users and some not so experienced users.
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That was a typo, corrected it.
But yes
I have got www.carpetcleaningcrawley.com, its always near the top without much seo, and www.carpetcleaningcroydon.com is normally around page 2 without any seo
Just shout if we can point you in the right direction
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its always near the top without much seo
Vernon,
In my humble opimion, you are doing a good job, particularly off site.
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I have so much to do and such little time to do it, but thats my own fault spreeding myself thin
Its the off page seo that takes the time onsite is just a few hours depending on how many keyword ypou want to rank for, the guy who listed anout 9 top keywords will have a big job to rank well for them, its best to start with 2 keywords (I think) carpet cleaning and your town and upholstery cleaning and your town, so carpet cleaning andover, once you have those ranking well go on to the next one carpet cleaning basingstoke, if you travel that far.
These are long tail keywords and people are more likely to buy as these match their needs better than the keyword carpet cleaning, because people from all over the uk who type in carpet cleaning will not be able to use your service as you cannot service their needs.
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true but google is only getting better at understanding that when someone types in carpet cleaner they're more likely looking for a company in their area so google will give custom results based on what google think is the users location if they have access to this. of course the customisation will be minimal without the location in the search query.
as you say off site promotion is the lengthiest bit but the most rewarding when you get good at it.
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what's off site promotion??
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what's off site promotion??
anything that promotes your site whilst not being on it, e.g. a link from this site my site www.greencleansolution.co.uk is off site and promotes my site.
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I have a question about this SEO mullarky.
If you are in an area wher you have one of those maps with a load of entries, is there any point in doing SEO?
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yes if it's earning you enough to justify paying for the services, or you are lucky to have fairly small amount of competition which is the case with carpet cleaning sites. why wouldn't you want to be listed 100 times over on the most used way to get new business? so many people will turn to google to find your services, make sure you're there on the first page, and that you are there 4 times (maps, adwords, and 2 listings on google search results is what you're given for each site) and you will do well.
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Think Google is really a bit of a lottery.
Only last week I was asked for a quote
in Ellesmere Port about 100 miles away,
woman said I was top of the list on Google.
Had similiar calls before from far flung places.
John
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make sure you're there on the first page, and that you are there 4 times (maps, adwords, and 2 listings on google search results is what you're given for each site) and you will do well
I have been trying to persuade a friend of mine to go for multiple SERP rankings but he is really reluctant. He feels that it's kind of against the spirit of fair play.
I keep telling him that his rivals would not have the same scruples if they knew how to do it but it goes against his sense of "fair play" :)
John,
Just out of interest, where those calls from your organic (normal, free) listings or from adwords adverts?
Garry
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Is adwords the one you pay for?
If it is it isn't from that because I
don't pay anything so must be the free one.
John
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I have a question about this SEO mullarky.
If you are in an area wher you have one of those maps with a load of entries, is there any point in doing SEO?
Yes you can do onsite seo for google local, google is pushing this now to make only three position above the local searches, so if you cannot get above these then you will have to do PPC. So when you seo for google local
make sure your phone number and address, with your post code, is on your index page.
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Think Google is really a bit of a lottery.
Only last week I was asked for a quote
in Ellesmere Port about 100 miles away,
woman said I was top of the list on Google.
Had similiar calls before from far flung places.
John
Did you ask her what she typed in to get you?
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Yes organic are free, PPC means pay per click.
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When I read this thread the message I get is that there is a lot of confusion about the whole subject of web marketing
As a company we have moved from 'shiny shoe'd, pin-stripped sales 'consultants' and tele-sales to generating the majority of our sales leads from the web. these are then followed up by Operational people who walk the talk as they are going to do the job and they speak in the same language as our customers without hard-sell as we simply sell solutions to our customers cleaning problems.
We aren't perfect. We are not world specialists. We aren't selling computers / software / SEO / AdWords or anything like that but we are generating interesting business, taking on extra hands and keeping our heads above water.
If your interested in having a real look at how we do it and talking with my Geek and Adwords man and seeing our operation (which isn't just carpet cleaning!) I am happy to arrange that as long as I can get at least 4-6 people together on the same workday (Mon - Fri so you can see the full operation but if it goes onto Sat, no problem) as otherwise it's too expensive in time and money terms to give such a freebie away.
What's in it for Newlife? If we end up with an ongoing working relationship with just one company which mirrors what we are about, that's fine. We look to the longterm.
Anyone interested please e-mail shaun.causer@newlifecleaning.com. and let him know. Shaun will get a conversation going with interested people to agree a date and stuff. If anyone needs digs / camping site as we have space, whatever, he will be try to help out with advice etc.
Look up NE34 9PZ on Google maps.
PhilD
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My first post and hopefully it's informative.
I'm not an expert but have dabbled a little.
The best place to find out which keywords to use are from your own customers, let me show you how.....
To get the most accurate results you'll need:
1. Google adwords account
2. Bid for the keywords you originally suggested with the towns you're trying to target, i.e. Derby carpet cleaning, derbyshire carpet cleaners etc etc
3. Bid £1 per keyword and set your daily budget to £250 (don't worry it'll never reach that amount).
4. Run campaign for 2 days
5. After a couple of days you'll get cast iron results as to which keywords to target and which ones to target less. - These are your potential clients typing keywords into Google (basically telling you what they're searching for).
6. Disable adwords campaign (if you don't want to carry on using)
Yes, it's going to cost you some money initially, but you'll get the better results than using any software.
Financial Warning - This will cost you bucks initially, but will give you cast iron keywords without the guess work.
Hope that helps?
Send me a pm if you don't understand the procedure.
Des.
P.s. Anything else is pure guess work ;D
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I agree with you Des (although I would rather let it run for a couple of weeks to be sure.
The only trouble may be that unless you build specific landing pages the quality score may be low which may skew the results.
I am amazed at the amount of people who optimise a whole site for a certain keyword/phrase without testing it in Adwords first
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I agree with you Des (although I would rather let it run for a couple of weeks to be sure.
The only trouble may be that unless you build specific landing pages the quality score may be low which may skew the results.
I am amazed at the amount of people who optimise a whole site for a certain keyword/phrase without testing it in Adwords first
Thanks garry22, I only suggested 2 days from a cost point of view. To be fair, the longer you can leave the campaign the better.
With reference to quality score, if the campaign is only being set up to find out which keywords are searched for the most, shouldn't hurt too much in the short term. Though, if he's to start running proper adwords campaigns then he'd definately need to optimise each landing page per keyword. ;)
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You mean you don't know what keywords to target
for a carpet cleaning site???
Would have thought it was pretty obvious.
John
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Hi
I have done quite a bit with my seo but doesnt seem to be getting me first page much. have tried several companies but unless you spend a lot it doesnt seem to work well.
I am not an expert but my understanding thus far is that keywords are only part of the equation. Google looks at a lot of things where you are based what relevance your site has to the custies request, there are loads of things then it gives you a quality score.
it then ranks you, so you could have loads of keywords but a poor score and get nowhere. Also there is what some call proliferation
say you have carpet cleaning but someone might put carpet cleaner or cleaners, maybe cleaning carpets etc. etc.
so especially in adwords they try to cover them all.
Please understand this is all second hand from different companies and contacts. i do not know how reliable it is. I have heard that there are 267 ways to promote your site on the search engines. Also there are some dodgy companies who use tactics that arent allowed and google can start ignoring your site as punishment?
I have been paying a bout 300 pounds per month for about a year now, just cancelled as cannot justify the expense for the results.
They can get me first page sometimes on some searches but what we all need is first page as much as possible.
several people have told me though that this will cost thousands, one company quoted me 7000 pounds.
SEO is important its a waste of time having a website without it, but how one man bands like us are supposed to achieve this is an answer i am still looking for.
It is to complex i think for us to do ourselves but its to expensive, and to easy to get ripped off to bring in the specialists.
cheers
john
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John,
Could you clarify a couple of things please?
Is that monthly cost for Adwords or for promotion of your site?
For most carpet cleaning terms, should be paying nearer pennies per click than pounds.
What is your site URL? If you like, I'll run an analysis for you and see what they are doing for that money.
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£300 per month.
I pay nothing only the cost of my website
and I come up @ 1 in 2 areas and in the top 10
in 4 others.
Like I said I came up @ 1 in Ellesmere Port for
carpets cleaned E P so where does that put
SEO.
John
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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
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All I can say is they must have a big telescope.
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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http://blog.kissmetrics.com/seo-guide/
For anyone interest in SEO
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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.
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A couple of years ago I had a web site through a company " Easyspace "that got hammered on here, but gave me regular traffic.............
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Garry
Is something inside telling you your heart is in something other than carpet cleaning? :-\
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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 ;)
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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.
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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