[wayne zabel]

Im always about 3rd to 4th top on page 1 of Google through natural sources.The ones above me are paying I presume.Is this called sponsored links?

The companies above me are not always the same and will differ at various times of the day from hour to hour.

My question is when you are paying for these listings are you told that you wont always appear all the time?It all seems a bit random.

Basically how does this work,if 5 or 6 are paying they cant always be at the top.

Im a bit of a dinosaur about thhses things.

[Fran84]

Wayne,
 
You are number one for 'bury carpet cleaning' and 'bury carpet cleaners'.

The one above you in the orange are all sponsored 'paid' listings.

You can't get a better placing for organic 'without paying' listings.

Fran

[wayne zabel]

Its when you put in say Carpet cleaners/ing in Bury that it drops down at touch.I dont want to start paying its just that Im a bit curious as to the changes of companies who are above me.They change from hour to hour.Just wondering why this happens,if you pay more do you appear more?

[CraigHaycock]

It's all based on highest bids for the top position, you can set a fiqure of how much you want to spend each month or day, and most of the time you will end up on the right hand side of page, but you can also set a price for how much you want to pay for someone to click on your ad which can sometimes be up to £30 per click and if your bid is highest you will end up as the 1st sponsored listing. my opinion its a total waste of money. I spent over £80 in 3 days and did not get 1 enquiry not 1, so stopped it straight away.

[Fran84]

Basically there is a lot behind it.

Best person to explain is Ash White.

Do you have someone to take care of your SEO?

[wayne zabel]

Its all done by the guy who designed my site.I have been on P1 for almost 3 years now.

[garry22]

Wayne.

Positions in the paid ads can vary as some companies will vary their bid prices or even switch the ads off at various times of the day.

[Paul Moss]

Is it just me or has the internet slowed of late, in terms of calls

[james roffey]

Is it just me or has the internet slowed of late, in terms of calls

It's just you Paul

No it's not i have noticed it slowing over the last few weeks too

[Paul Moss]

Thank god you answered James, i also thought i had  major salelite delay also on the internet 

[AshWhite]

Wayne, when someone creates an Adwords campaign, they specify which keywords or phrases they want to be found under, and set their bids accordingly. Their 'quality score' (how relevant their website/ad is to the keyword) and maximum bid will have an effect on how high they rank for a term - so one company could rank higher for 'carpet cleaners bury', while another might rank higher for 'bury carpet cleaners'.

[AshWhite]

It's all based on highest bids for the top position, you can set a fiqure of how much you want to spend each month or day, and most of the time you will end up on the right hand side of page, but you can also set a price for how much you want to pay for someone to click on your ad which can sometimes be up to £30 per click and if your bid is highest you will end up as the 1st sponsored listing. my opinion its a total waste of money. I spent over £80 in 3 days and did not get 1 enquiry not 1, so stopped it straight away.

Craig, your website is VERY text heavy - it might be my tired eyes, but I found it quite difficult to read. My first inclination was to close it down almost immediately. Do you have analytics to see what happens when people land on your page, or does it perform well otherwise?

I can categorically say that Adwords is not a waste of money - but it's easy to waste money on it

[CraigHaycock]

Hi Ash, yeah I know, ive tried cutting it back but end up adding more, trouble is I have done website totally by myself got good rankings for most areas i work and bit worried about removing some of the text as don't want to be deranked by google, I have been climbing every week. Also problem is that i'm seeing it from my view and not the searchers view.
Got analytics and the bounce rate is low, page views are good, except the worst being, believe it or not reviews & before after photos.
I get the calls through organic searches but never from adwords, strange. (its probably the competition clicking on it to use up my budget)

[AshWhite]

Competition clicks is not as much of a problem as you'd expect (Google is quite good at detecting invalid clicks). £80 in 3 days is a LOT of money - most of the campaigns I deal with (for CC'ing) are based on less than £10/day (sometimes less than half that, but it depends how much you want to spend of course).

[Barry Livingstone]

Paul in Jan one of my sites was down 20% on hits from Jan 2012 but its better ranked now.

[Mike Halliday]

I was spending £40 a month showing 8am-8pm within a 15 mile radias average clicks Was 30

[cleantech]

I am top of the list on google, for the search phrases i choose. cost: 120 for 38 days

[davep]

But for how many phrases?

[AshWhite]

And what phrases, over what area?

'Carpet cleaners' and 'carpet cleaners in placename' are 2 very different things.

[cleantech]

I have a choice of 5. Granted i am located in southern Ireland