[Mike Halliday]

considering the biggest percentage of us have said they get less than a job a week, I don't understand why we spend so much time talking about it .... it seams every day we get a post on websites or seo.

we should be finding out what does work and start asking questions on that

Mike maybe you could moderate peoples posts beforehand to see if they are in keeping with what you think is interesting?

or we could ignore all the waffle you write, each would keep the board more 'interesting'

I never said websites and seo question are not interesting, only that based on the figures above we should search out what really works and discuss that as well

[Steve Barnett (Carpet Care Plus)]

considering the biggest percentage of us have said they get less than a job a week, I don't understand why we spend so much time talking about it .... it seams every day we get a post on websites or seo.

we should be finding out what does work and start asking questions on that

Mike maybe you could moderate peoples posts beforehand to see if they are in keeping with what you think is interesting?

or we could ignore all the waffle you write, each would keep the board more 'interesting'

I never said websites and seo question are not interesting, only that based on the figures above we should search out what really works and discuss that as well

Alternatively based on the figures above we should carry on talking about SEO, because clearly some of your sites are not working.

PS: I voted at least 2 a day

[wynne jones]

To be honest like Shaun thought the other day there didn't seem many new threads so I thought I'd start one, it's all I could think of. I know it's waffle and hardly anyone is interested but the odd one may find it useful I hope.

[Mike Halliday]

Wynne my comment above was not aimed at this post, but generally about the last few months were website & seo have become a very hot topic.

steve are you saying 65% of the people who responded have sites that are not working because they don't have effective seo, bit of a generalistion I think,

[Steve Barnett (Carpet Care Plus)]

Wynne my comment above was not aimed at this post, but generally about the last few months were website & seo have become a very hot topic.

steve are you saying 65% of the people who responded have sites that are not working because they don't have effective seo, bit of a generalistion I think,

That's exactly what I am saying Mike and the sooner people realise that SEO is more than simply "carpet cleaning anytown" the better.

[wynne jones]

I think it all goes in cycles Mike. Wasn't long ago everyone was very interested in LM, before that something else, then it all come back round again.

Steve

I agree with you there. I must admit though, compared to a lot of other markets carpet cleaners are far more clued up. 

[Doctor Carpet (Ret'd)]

Web enquiries are just part of the marketing mix along with YP, repeats and referrals and, amazingly, a steady stream of enquireis from my free, one-line entry in Thompsons.

The fact that enquirers can send the same email to multiple cc firms without too much trouble-and which is far easier than telephoning multiple companies (usually during working hours) means that there is far more price shopping.

So yes I have far fewer clients who take me up having sent an email, but I'm expecting that. Those who ring me having seen the website I get a better conversion rate  but not quite as good as those who have rung me having read either YP or Thompsons. Conversion rate obviously increases again when it is a referral.

Having reviewed my stats I've done at least one job a day on average which has come from my web site albeit I was looking back at my busiest 4 months of the year.

Perhaps because it seems to work I've never really bothered about the SEO, stats, visitors thing. Perhaps I should and get even more work.

By far the biggest part of my marketing effort goes into telephoning my top 20% of clients on a regular, agreed basis to tell them that's it's time I came and cleaned their carpet(s) again.

Shaun, Clinton; I can't possibly imagine who you may have been talking about

Rog

[Mike Halliday]

Wynne my comment above was not aimed at this post, but generally about the last few months were website & seo have become a very hot topic.

steve are you saying 65% of the people who responded have sites that are not working because they don't have effective seo, bit of a generalistion I think,

That's exactly what I am saying Mike and the sooner people realise that SEO is more than simply "carpet cleaning anytown" the better.

on that basis it would interesting to find out of those 65% whose website  is already on the first page of google, as that is what seo is really about..... get that elusive page one position, because in my case I'm there but still get less than a call a week ( not an actual job, just a call)

if they are on page 54 then ok they need help, but I bet this isn't the case

[Steve Barnett (Carpet Care Plus)]

Getting on page 1 Mike is just the start, then you've got to engage the prospect to actually stay on the site for longer than 10 seconds and bait them enough to pick up the phone.

SEO is a minefield, the guys on here with a bit of knowledge on the subject will vouch for that.

Speak to an SEO "expert" and then you begin to appreciate just how deep it goes.

[Matt Seymour]

From a pretty good stream of web enquiries in July and August mine dramatically decreased on a monthly basis in the last part of 2010 to the point of just 2 in the whole of December.

This is despite my site steadily climbing the rankings on google during that period.

[ianharper]

Guys

anything where you dont have control is a risk but lucky with google for most its only time. but for those that spend out getting others doing the work its a bigger problem

SEO is dead. mark my words, putting most my eggs in one basket nearly wiped me out. I still recovering from it today. 

one interesting point is that most cleaners have the town name in their main keyword. its my view that this puts you behind from the start, why? well type in carpet cleaning into google and you will get the real top slot for seo and whats above them ppc and they will be local. the results you get with the town name will be different from a prospects.

plus lets not forget your ip. i live in Southend and my local google is ipswich. thats BT for you. if i changed my phone supplier it would be somewhere different. factor this in for prospects and you get a different picture.

The only way to insure you hit prospects in your town is ppc or the maps

respect

Ian Harper

[Steve Barnett (Carpet Care Plus)]

SEO is dead. mark my words

Really ? I must tell all my SEO mates they will be disappointed  :

[Shaun_Ashmore]

Must admit I follow Ian's posts (if that's possible) and he is usually right, about 12 months ago he was on about companies keeping your browser history now everytime I search for a holiday then go onto my emails in the advertising box there's a Thompson advert or something like, SEO may not go out of business but will probably mutate into something else I think the ever changing Google will see to that!

Shaun

[garry22]

SEO is dead. mark my words, putting most my eggs in one basket nearly wiped me out. I still recovering from it today.

Sorry Ian, I strongly disagree with that. Even on a local level online marketing is still vital.

For example, in Birmingham, there is a new (Dec 2010) site that is racing up the results. It looks like all of their links are paid ones (from a private blog network). OK it may be violating Google's guidelines but it shows that good old backlinking still works well.

[wynne jones]

If you had a strong position in the SERPs Ian for your website then it should be fairly easy to sort out your Places entry to get in the pack. If you don't have a local adde for going further afield this does present a problem.

With every change there is an opportunity.

Garry, can't see anyone knocking you off that spot for quite some time, and that's assuming you do nothing. I think you need a bit of healthy competition stop you getting lazy. 

[garry22]

It's not the top one I'm worried about, it's my second site that is propping up the Places entries (waiting to jump into second place above Doug!).

Or maybe it's the fact that I'm annoyed that someone else in my area is getting backlinks  Shouldn't be allowed

[wynne jones]

I sometimes see graphs of competitors rankinga and link and think Christ if they carry on like that then...  but usually what happens is it suddenly levels out. Either they run out of money, get bored with it or run out of ideas.

[Neil Williams]

This is despite my site steadily climbing the rankings on google during that period.

I'd guess this will have something to do with the increase in the number of telesales organisations in our area.
Enterprise aren't alone so it appears in the mass telephone calling market, there's one in Southampton also doing it, although they do give set prices.
This method is clearly going to scoop more customers in much the same way as trawlers scooping up tons of fish as opposed to an angler with one rod & line.

[Neil Williams]

plus lets not forget your ip. i live in Southend and my local google is ipswich. thats BT for you. if i changed my phone supplier it would be somewhere different. factor this in for prospects and you get a different picture.

I'm with ntl/virgin and when I tried that (just putting 'carpet cleaning' into google) it brought up Reading which isn't much use when I live and work an area 20 miles away.
I can only hope that searchers would have a bit of common sense and move the map closer to Basingstoke so it picks up more local businesses.

[garry22]

I sometimes see graphs of competitors rankinga and link and think Christ if they carry on like that then...  but usually what happens is it suddenly levels out. Either they run out of money, get bored with it or run out of ideas. 

If it's the sort of network I think it is, it will be on auto pilot. They normally scrape related content and then auto post to PR2 + blogs.

It may however, show up in a way that you mentioned a while ago. A whole load of just one way links from blogs would look a bit suspicious. 64 One way links from blogs to a new carpet cleaning site (6-7 weeks old!) ain't exactly natural looking!