[Harry Robins]

 Not sure I've placed this in the right section, so apologies if  I havn't.  Anyway, I've been given a free £50 voucher from Adwords, i'm going to use it but don't know how much to bid for each word.  Has anyone had much success with this ?  Could you give me some advice ?   Thanks

[Paul W Jones]

If it's your first time you can let Google do 'auto bids' for you.  The advantage of this is that you should get your ad into a good position but you'll use your money up quicker as you'll pay more per click.  One thing I would do though is not allow your ad to be displayed on 'partner sites', just stick to Google.  This is easy to do in the settings.  Best of luck.

[Harry Robins]

Thanks Jonesboy, I'll set it up tonight.  Will repost if there is any positive results.

[marcus stacks]

The problem with adwords is they can be very expensive, have you considerd adding SEO to maximise you organic results (free)?

[Harry Robins]

 The organic results for my site are doing well . The problem is google local, after lots of work on it I'm

getting  absolutely nowhere.  I think the problem is, I have a google local site for my window cleaning and

it uses the same address and phone number.

[marcus stacks]

Hi there, what organic searches does your site do well for, I assumed "carpet cleaning in colchester" would be a business critical one but I couldnt spot you there?

[Harry Robins]

 I'm top of the first page for " carpet cleaning Brightlingsea", near the top for "carpet cleaning Wivenhoe"

and near the top for Great Bentley and Frating.  For the first couple of weeks the site was up, I ranked

well for Colchester, that didn't last and I feel it was probably bumped up artificially by the people who did

SEO (who knows?).    What I'd really like though, is a top rating in google local, although I'd have to drop

the window cleaning site.

[marcus stacks]

Google local is sadly not within the control of anyone other than Google so i don’t think i can suggest much, its a case of luck really,  sorry m8!

p.s check how your organic search results on yahoo.co.uk as Google will be adapting the indexing methods they use soon and the results will be more like Yahoo. At the moment Google has an annoying tendency to give a certain amount of preference to sites where the domain name has been owned the longest. Pain in the arse for the newbs without some seriouse seo but it will change some point this year to be more fair and base ranks on site content.

best of luck 

[Sarah Kirby]

The organic results for my site are doing well . The problem is google local, after lots of work on it I'm

getting  absolutely nowhere.  I think the problem is, I have a google local site for my window cleaning and

it uses the same address and phone number.

Google Local is within your control if you know what you're doing and is surprisingly easy to rank very well.

You can only operate one business per address and phone number, so your 2nd site I presume you've added the details without the authorisation phone call or postcard, in time this page will be taken off.

Gary

[marcus stacks]

>>>Google Local is within your control if you know what you're doing and is surprisingly easy to rank very well.<<<

please explain? Easy to rank well in areas where there are alot of business's already listed or sparce amounts? Your not talking about leaving fake reviews of the business to boost are you?  

[garry22]

Google local is sadly not within the control of anyone other than Google so i don’t think i can suggest much, its a case of luck really,  sorry m8!

p.s check how your organic search results on yahoo.co.uk as Google will be adapting the indexing methods they use soon and the results will be more like Yahoo. At the moment Google has an annoying tendency to give a certain amount of preference to sites where the domain name has been owned the longest. Pain in the arse for the newbs without some seriouse seo but it will change some point this year to be more fair and base ranks on site content.

Not sure I can agree with most this statement. Google favours long standing truted domains but there are so many other factors involved. Surely. if anything they are moving further away from the Yahoo model.

[marcus stacks]

Google local is sadly not within the control of anyone other than Google so i don’t think i can suggest much, its a case of luck really,  sorry m8!

p.s check how your organic search results on yahoo.co.uk as Google will be adapting the indexing methods they use soon and the results will be more like Yahoo. At the moment Google has an annoying tendency to give a certain amount of preference to sites where the domain name has been owned the longest. Pain in the arse for the newbs without some seriouse seo but it will change some point this year to be more fair and base ranks on site content.

Not sure I can agree with most this statement. Google favours long standing truted domains but there are so many other factors involved. Surely. if anything they are moving further away from the Yahoo model.

Google favours long standing domain names now (of course there are loads of other factors, involved including inlinking, SEO AND *VERY IMPORTANT* HTML CODING STANDARDS set out by the W3C http://validator.w3.org/ I just brought up this ONE tiny point that has an impact on a site when other SEO Techniques are not properly utilised in google)

But Google ARE moving away from this ONE approach, which yahoo already has. I am not saying they are adopting yahoo's full approach, sorry if this was unclear!!!

[Harry Robins]

In reply to gary:

It's really strange as they sent me the postcard with the verification code for both sites. My first site (window cleaning) comes up usually top for all my local areas.  The carpet cleaning site, which they accepted a few months ago, alternates between Page 7 (local) to can't be found. I'm thinking of combining them both, but I fear losing what I've got, as I've submitted to numerous directories for both sites using the same address and phone number.  What do I do?

Thanks