[Vernon Purcell]

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.

[Adam P]

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.

[Mike Halliday]

what's off site promotion??

[Adam P]

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.

[wynne jones]

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?

[Adam P]

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.

[JandS]

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

[garry22]

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

[JandS]

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

[Vernon Purcell]

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.

[Vernon Purcell]

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?

[Vernon Purcell]

Yes organic are free, PPC means pay per click.

[Phild]

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

[Des Drec]

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 

[garry22]

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

[Des Drec]

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.

[JandS]

You mean you don't know what keywords to target
for a carpet cleaning site???
Would have thought it was pretty obvious.

John

[clarkson]

 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

[garry22]

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.

[JandS]

£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