Website optimisation

[waz77]

Thanks for the replies guys n gals much appreciated:thumbup1:

Ive gone with Keyworld Media to design and host a new website and they guarantee it'll be in the top 3 on first page(although they not doing much so far)

Dan,my location is only a small market town with not a massive amount of work available and although i rank well there i rank poorly in surrounding towns.I will add more detail to the homepage and see if that helps.

Thanks again peeps:thumbup:

[northumbriaforestry]

What kind of response are you guys and gals getting from Google searches on a basic website?

 

I'd be more than happy if got 2 or 3 more jobs a week to price from it.

 

We get 90% of all our firewood orders online, it's a massive help to us.

[TREE-SURGEON-ESSEX]

If you wish to rank well expect to pay alot. So many companys paying alot more will always rank higher. It can get to the point your paying through the nose.

 

Watch our web designers are sneaky gits they will build you a site then offer optermization then offer to tweak it all the time and your talking thousands if you really want a good chance in a densely populated seach result.

[Steve Bullman]

Ive gone with Keyworld Media to design and host a new website and they guarantee it'll be in the top 3 on first page

 

sorry to break it to you, but no one can guarantee that

[plippy]

sorry to break it to you, but no one can guarantee that

 

:congrats:

[waz77]

Fair comment but you get your money back for that month if it does'nt show in the top 3.Some sites are always at the top so there must be some way of maintaining it and although like you say it cant be guaranteed they must be confident of a high presence

[northumbriaforestry]

Nothing to do with money, nothing to do with who you employ to do it for you. Only to do with how direct your web presence is, which is ultimatley about how easy it is to find your site.

 

This may help:

How Google Works - Google Guide

[Steve Bullman]

Fair comment but you get your money back for that month if it does'nt show in the top 3.Some sites are always at the top so there must be some way of maintaining it and although like you say it cant be guaranteed they must be confident of a high presence

 

what search words exactly are they guaranteeing you are top 3? if its search words that are contained in your url then thats easy.....but thats not going to help you get custom much.

[ferdinand2000]

I joined to debate about trees, but this is more related to part of my day job. I hope the forum doesn't mind me commenting on a non-arb point as my first post.

 

I don't think you can pay Google for promotion to a higher position in their search results than you deserve, though you can pay for all sorts of advertising which are integrated with the the various Google services.

 

I'll comment on Key World Media in a separate post - they look like scamsters to me.

 

I'd make these comments:

 

For a small site it is all about identifying and targetting very particular very tight niches, whether this is tree owners in one area of a county or particular subjects. If you are targetting small niches, ranking well is not usually that difficult if you have a regularly updated, easy to navigate, relevant, website.

 

The stats are that the vast majority of searchers will click on the first 3 results of a search. "Front page" is not usually good enough unless they are looking very carefully, unless they are really searching - though these people may be the ones you are after.

 

Ultra-focused Google Ads can be very good value. One good use I have seen was someone who targeted the name of every village in their area (Surrey), added to their target keywords. The more localised the niche, the less competitive and the less expensive it can be. A lot of effort to set up (dozens of different ads), but a good way of keeping costs down.

 

You can sometimes catch occasional promotions of free packages of ads from Google, e.g., vouchers for £50 worth of adverts. It helps to have both halves of a Google ads setup (i.e., both advertiser and publisher accounts).

 

You can buy Search Engine Optimisation services, but it can be very expensive to do and you don't *necessarily* need to do that. If you are taking that route then you probably need to spend enough time reading around the subject to understand the detail of the service you will be buying, otherwise (as with anything) you can waste a lot of money.

 

The focus is now more to how you will build a "reputation network" which people will follow find out more about your service from the website. You need three things:

 

* a good reputation/identity,

* a website to supply the information about your services when people follow up that reputation,

* routes to help them move from the one to the other.

 

An example could be high quality postings on the forum to show you know your stuff and are helpful, a sig linking back to your site as permitted by the forum, and a website which tells people about your relevant services.

 

Rgds

 

Ferdinand

[John Barleycorn]

Key search terms on front page even if you put them invisible on the background like white text on white background.

Link to and get listed on as many other sites as possible.

Have read that you also need to be near the root of directories, rather than out on some distant branch.