A Word about Google, SEO, Marketing, and so Forth

[accordfire]

Hi to all.

I've uncovered something which I think any of you with websites, Google advertising, or an interest in the SEO mechanics of your sites will find interesting.

I am spending a fair amount of time on our website at present, to the point of analysing where we come in search, and how our PPC campaigns are running, and so on.

There's been a bit of buzz about Google and their "new" Instant Preview feature - which essentially uses a screengrab from their database to preview the site of interest. It doesn't work on all sites or pages as yet, and it relies on a cached version, so not necessarily exactly what you're showing right now.

However, one thing of note that some of my research has revealed is that every post we make on this forum will come up in results when you search for your business name - or at least, that's been the case for us.

By and large, that's a good thing as has been said often - the more links, the better we do.

What it make you stop and think though, is that there is another dimension to all of us who post using business credentials here - potential customers can see us without ever coming near the forum necessarily.

That's an extra dimension in protecting reputations, behaviours, and so on, as well as an "extra" dimension to the marketing we're generally all doing on any site we go on.

Maybe it is worth considering when you post - I don't mean littering posts with keywords and other SEO "tricks" - Electricians forum posts already seem to rank quite highly, but I do mean in terms of what and how we post - people are reading us long before they ever make contact with any of us!!!

I guess it is true what they say - your words can come back to haunt you!

 

[mattyevz]

have you tried google adwords? I had a free £75 voucher. To get to number 1 i had to put it up to £2.50 per click. needless to say the voucher ran out in 10 days and i shut it down. Had no jobs just people clicking. I wouldnt bother if it was my own £££.

 

[accordfire]

have you tried google adwords? I had a free £75 voucher. To get to number 1 i had to put it up to £2.50 per click. needless to say the voucher ran out in 10 days and i shut it down. Had no jobs just people clicking. I wouldnt bother if it was my own £££.

Yeah - we use Ad words, Bing, and Yahoo. To be fair, it give us a return.

There is a thing about this though. Getting the clicks is only one part of it all.

Once you've got someone to click through to your site, you need to give them a reason to carry on once they get there. A call to action, they term it these days - a reason to want to buy from you, or contact you. That's the bit we're trying to get (more) sorted now.

The free vouchers are all well and good - and they are really just for show - you're never going to get anywhere is £75 I don't think - shame, I wish we could too.

They do reckon that organic listings are worth more - getting on the first page of the non-paid links. It does take work, and we've just outsourced most of it.

I haven't got time any longer (he says spending time on here!!!!!!) to play around with the site, and I have pretty well reached my limits with knowing what to do to improve things. Same mentality really - I wouldn't call out a plumber to rewire my house - and so it is with the site - it needs a metaphoric rewire! Ergo, called in the professionals.

Cheers.

 

[mattyevz]

Im on the first or second page for most searches electrician swansea etc in my area on google. I am also number 1 on yahoo for all searches.google local I'm typically at D but working to try to get higher.iv done it on my own took about 3 months . I was just wondering if the ad words word be better as I have alot of sales calls promising the world. What are you ranking at the mo mate?

 

[accordfire]

Im on the first or second page for most searches electrician swansea etc in my area on google. I am also number 1 on yahoo for all searches.google local I'm typically at D but working to try to get higher.iv done it on my own took about 3 months . I was just wondering if the ad words word be better as I have alot of sales calls promising the world. What are you ranking at the mo mate?

By and large, the word is that organic listings are far and away the best for attracting potential visitors, to be honest.

Ad Words is good for specific campaigns, or to reinforce organic listings - we've got the other problem to you at present, in that we tend to rank fairly low on organic (about page 4 on most searches we try), but we score highly on Ad Words, and consequently, gain most leads from adwords right now. We budget broadly £300 a month on that.

Ideally, we'd get to page one on most searches, and reduce the cost per click on our ad words campaigns, to end up with results similar to now at far lower cost. At least, that's the plan.

The trick really is to get the right people to click on the ads, or on organic listings - I've said before, I'd rather only have ten folk click on the site, if they're all going to buy, than a million who don't buy. Key to that is content and copy I guess.

The other issue we face, I suppose, is that being national to one extent of another, our area is much wider and hence it is harder to get to the top of listings - we're not just looking for one area, but we also trade that off by looking for only commercial customers.

It gives us the issue that simply searching for say "electrician" doesn't necessarily hit our target audience - as the person putting that term in may not be another business.

To be sure, it's a lot of work, and for us, they're problems best solved out of house - we also found that the keywords and descriptions we used were very "industry" - terms that you and I would use for things, that our customers may not.... We'd say something like "FCU" for example - a customer will probably call that a fused spur, or a connection box.

And that's pretty relevant too - we found we were too close to what we do to be able to explain it all in a way customers would.

That's actually very good advice for anyone trying to up rank their sites - get neighbours, relatives, kids, and anyone who doesn't do what you do, to describe what you offer to you. You will be amazed at the keywords you might get out of this, and even more amazed that most of them will work!

 

[mattyevz]

Thanks for the advice cheers!

 

[BLBelfast]

great thread. Much do you spend weekly on local ad words?

 

[BLBelfast]

set up a basic site about two weeks ago. Thing is I am appearing on the front page on most keyword searchs relevant, but it is to my link from a directory that is appearing.

As the same text (description of services) is on both that listing and my website is it simply because my website is only up a week that google is ranking the listing high up and not my actual page? How do i move the page up above the listing.

What i mean is the more hits i recieve does the ranking go up?

 

[Dan]

http://www.electriciansforums.co.uk...m/82334-free-75-adwords-get-your-website.html