How do you guys advertise... Part 2

[grumpygit]

After many years/decades I have finally rid myself of the nightmare that is Yell.com, well mostly I still have a small add enhanced listing with them.

A few years ago I posted on this same subject, it seems the world has changed fast and a lot of advertising is done online these days. Well I took a little trouble for the first time in years(well ever if truth be told) to try and get a better understanding of marketing for small business such as myself.

What an eye opener, even went to a few free marketing shows in London. It is amazing what you can achieve with a little effort and trying to be a little more creative and shake a few more hands in the right places,
rather than just throwing thousands of £'s at the likes of Yell and Thompson.

I still get roughly 40% to 50% of my work through word of mouth and existing customers, and the rest by other means. The next step is doing a little better online/internet, I have dabbled with a few websites over the years and with guys claiming to be SEO experts that more often than not led to nothing, waste of money in most cases. I also have tried Google add campaigns, which do work, but be very very careful, one wrong press of a button and you have a huge bill.

So today I have published a crappy old website I have done myself for peanuts, which I will just put on my advertising newsletters for customers to find out a little more about me for now.. Domestic Electrician.. Huntingdon, St Ives, St Neots, Riseley what do you think?

Next step is to get it found by others, I cannot even find it myself at the moment, and I know what I am looking for, company name etc
So if any of you guys know anything about SEO or can give me any advice I will grateful.

 

[Tidy Max]

Are you sure your site is online? because all i get is a blank white page.

i am using an up to date version of chrome.

Next up, how did you build the site? Wordpress by any chance? as that has some great S.E.O plug ins!

 

[Loki]

Woorank.com has given your homepage a 51.9 score.

report says to look at:

Text to html ratio 0% should be between 25-75%
Google+ Publisher missing
Robots.txt missing
as your domain was registered a day ago it will take awhile for it to be seen in search engines
No mobile version or mobile optimization ie css & mobile redirection
No conversion form
launuage not declared
no print css
Wc3 validity 7 errors 2 warnings
no Twitter, Facebook or Google+
Missing profile on yelp & foursquare
hosting does not make use of gzip


The more you sort the above the better score you get which means better seo

if you pay for a months woorank you can also check your competitors websites, it will also show you if they are using Google adwords etc.


All in though not a bad start.


michael

 

[grumpygit]

Hi Tidy

Using something called wix.com, they are website builder and have a pretty good name.

 

[Tidy Max]

Yeah the site loaded

Non of the images are optmised for sites from the looks of things so the browser is downloading the whole site in one go then displaying it.

The site looks good though!

Have you signed up to google analytics? Its free and really good (and addictive)

 

[Octopus]

You need to include you address. IMHO

People like to know where you live as I'm finding that "local" is best when people look to select a trades person

 

[infinity]

I'm pretty sure it's a legal requirement on a website to publish your address? (Legal of some kind)
I have thrown thousands away on SEO I was paying £500/ month for over a year! Waste of money
I have now found a company who have rebuilt me a complete new site www.electriciansfareham.co.uk as my other domain is blacklisted due to bad SEO practices! This new site was £500 all in including an excellent CMS so I can edit everything easily! And.. They are doing SEO but I don't pay a penny until the keyword is on page 1 google then it's £10/ month for each keyword on page 1! That's an amazing deal in my opinion only paying for results! It's inly bern live a couple weeks and doing really well!

Your site looks fine all basic info on it, but as you know, of your not page 1 nobody will ever see it! It's just s fact, how often to you go past page 1...

 

[TJ Anderson]

After many years/decades I have finally rid myself of the nightmare that is Yell.com, well mostly I still have a small add enhanced listing with them.

A few years ago I posted on this same subject, it seems the world has changed fast and a lot of advertising is done online these days. Well I took a little trouble for the first time in years(well ever if truth be told) to try and get a better understanding of marketing for small business such as myself.

What an eye opener, even went to a few free marketing shows in London. It is amazing what you can achieve with a little effort and trying to be a little more creative and shake a few more hands in the right places,
rather than just throwing thousands of £'s at the likes of Yell and Thompson.

I still get roughly 40% to 50% of my work through word of mouth and existing customers, and the rest by other means. The next step is doing a little better online/internet, I have dabbled with a few websites over the years and with guys claiming to be SEO experts that more often than not led to nothing, waste of money in most cases. I also have tried Google add campaigns, which do work, but be very very careful, one wrong press of a button and you have a huge bill.

So today I have published a crappy old website I have done myself for peanuts, which I will just put on my advertising newsletters for customers to find out a little more about me for now.. Domestic Electrician.. Huntingdon, St Ives, St Neots, Riseley what do you think?

Next step is to get it found by others, I cannot even find it myself at the moment, and I know what I am looking for, company name etc
So if any of you guys know anything about SEO or can give me any advice I will grateful.

Just had a look over it mate and put in bold a few errors you can quickly change
I am a local friendly electrician with over 25 years experience and Part P registered who can fit you a single power point to fiiting a few light fittings to doing a complete re-wire of your home or getting electric power to that outside office or garage.

I pride myself in taking a personal interest in every job that I do, and have many customers who have now been with me for years/decades. Once I have given a quote I stick by it for better or worse, unless of course the customer during the job asks for more work to be done.

At all times through out the job the customer is kept informed... NEVER A SHOCK AT THE END OF THE JOB WITH A BIGGER BILL, you have my word on that.

I do not have massive overheads and office and staff to pay fork out for, so my work is more often than not very competitive in price comapred to the bigger firms. And the guy that comes to price yor job up will be the same guy that will be doing the job, ME!!

 

[trev]

I'm pretty sure it's a legal requirement on a website to publish your address? (Legal of some kind)
I have thrown thousands away on SEO I was paying £500/ month for over a year! Waste of money
I have now found a company who have rebuilt me a complete new site Home - Infinity Electrical as my other domain is blacklisted due to bad SEO practices! This new site was £500 all in including an excellent CMS so I can edit everything easily! And.. They are doing SEO but I don't pay a penny until the keyword is on page 1 google then it's £10/ month for each keyword on page 1! That's an amazing deal in my opinion only paying for results! It's inly bern live a couple weeks and doing really well!

Your site looks fine all basic info on it, but as you know, of your not page 1 nobody will ever see it! It's just s fact, how often to you go past page 1...

Rubbish, I don't have my address on my site and I have no intention of putting it on there until I can afford proper business premises. I'm easily traceable from certification.
As far as site cost goes, mine cost me £10 for the domain for 3 years + 15 a year for hosting. OK it's not the best site in the world but several new customers have found me through it and I'll tweak it as I have time.
You don't have to spend massive amounts of money, twitter, punchinthefacebook, google+ etc are free so use them

 

[Loki]

Rubbish, I don't have my address on my site and I have no intention of putting it on there until I can afford proper business premises. I'm easily traceable from certification.
As far as site cost goes, mine cost me £10 for the domain for 3 years + 15 a year for hosting. OK it's not the best site in the world but several new customers have found me through it and I'll tweak it as I have time.
You don't have to spend massive amounts of money, twitter, punchinthefacebook, google+ etc are free so use them

A simple whois run against your domain shows your address as you registered it when do did your domain

michael

 

[grumpygit]

Wow!!

Just looked at some of the replies after having a few beers down the local, THANKS

Putting it mildly I have plenty to work with, I will be getting back to many of you and thanking you individually, Great stuff.

 

[grumpygit]

lol


Point taken, was just rushing to get it online then tidy up later...

Just had a look over it mate and put in bold a few errors you can quickly change
I am a local friendly electrician with over 25 years experience and Part P registered who can fit you a single power point to fiiting a few light fittings to doing a complete re-wire of your home or getting electric power to that outside office or garage.

I pride myself in taking a personal interest in every job that I do, and have many customers who have now been with me for years/decades. Once I have given a quote I stick by it for better or worse, unless of course the customer during the job asks for more work to be done.

At all times through out the job the customer is kept informed... NEVER A SHOCK AT THE END OF THE JOB WITH A BIGGER BILL, you have my word on that.

I do not have massive overheads and office and staff to pay fork out for, so my work is more often than not very competitive in price comapred to the bigger firms. And the guy that comes to price yor job up will be the same guy that will be doing the job, ME!!

 

[HandySparks]

Quite a good start, but get that Contact page sorted; a San Francisco address isn't going to make for a cheap call-out!

No need to pay for expensive SEO, just make sure that your home page contains a good selection of words based on the sort of phrases you think your prospective customers will be using to search, which you have.

By the way, I find the two landline numbers confusing. Much better to have one landline and possibly one mobile.

 

[grumpygit]

Hi Handy

This is the problem, it's the SEO side that seems to be the dark art in all this effort trying to make top page on Google. Of course there is no problem when you do a google add campaign, but I am annoyed at having to pay so much for it, lets see if I can do something organic myself.

The funny thing is I can put my company name + electrician + my local town/s and you would have thought I would be top of the list, but cannot even find me at the moment.,whats happening there How many John Sinclair's are there in Huntingdon who are sparkys, something wrong there.

And another thing entered my head, did I choose the right domain name, mine ends with .com .. should I have choosen to end with .co.uk ?

But a few people have said what you did along with keep playing with your site, keep it updated, change words, do a blog etc

Anyway, like I said to the rest of the people who unselfishly give advice on here, thanks for taking the time to offer help

John

p.s Have now got free phone number which will be added to site later

 

[HandySparks]

The funny thing is I can put my company name + electrician + my local town/s and you would have thought I would be top of the list, but cannot even find me at the moment.,whats happening there How many John Sinclair's are there in Huntingdon who are sparkys, something wrong there.

And another thing entered my head, did I choose the right domain name, mine ends with .com .. should I have choosen to end with .co.uk ?

I believe it can take a few days for Google to even be aware of a new site. You can speed up the process by submitting your site url to Google:
Google

It's also worth getting some links to your site. Adding your site address to your forums footer is one way.

As for getting it ranked near the top for relevant searches, it can take months.


And yes, I would have chosen a .uk address. I take it that you're not after customers outside the UK?

 

[Loki]

Have you submitted your site to the various search engines? Ie:

google - Google
yahoo - https://search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html
Etc

it can then a few days for them to crawl your site & index it.

also having a blog & posting on other sites ie Facebook etc with your website address as a signature will help with backlinks

michael

 

[trev]

A simple whois run against your domain shows your address as you registered it when do did your domain

michael

How does that work mate? I tried "whois domain name" and got nothing then "whoisdomain name" and still got nothing.
I'm really not fussed about people finding me because if someone wants to find you badly enough then they're going to do it, but as I said, I have no intention of putting it on there until I can afford proper premises.

 

[happysteve]

How does that work mate? I tried "whois domain name" and got nothing then "whoisdomain name" and still got nothing.
I'm really not fussed about people finding me because if someone wants to find you badly enough then they're going to do it, but as I said, I have no intention of putting it on there until I can afford proper premises.

WHOIS tool | Nominet

Type in your domain name.

 

[netblindpaul]

Rubbish, I don't have my address on my site and I have no intention of putting it on there until I can afford proper business premises. I'm easily traceable from certification.
As far as site cost goes, mine cost me £10 for the domain for 3 years + 15 a year for hosting. OK it's not the best site in the world but several new customers have found me through it and I'll tweak it as I have time.
You don't have to spend massive amounts of money, twitter, punchinthefacebook, google+ etc are free so use them

It seems that some legal firms disagree with you?

http://www.business-lawfirm.co.uk/u...ers---legal-requirements-checklist-291111.pdf

 

[infinity]

As I said early, it's a requirement legally.