Help to get more clients.

[robchops20]

Hi everyone.

thanks you for reading this post. For the last few months I have been very busy with big projects and I never had time do any advertising or marketing. All my big projects are coming to an end now and I haven't booked new jobs in and the phone is not ringing as much as it use to. I am looking for someone or company to help me with getting my name out and the phone ringing again I have a very basic website and have had some success with ppc in the past, but very expensive.

Thanks
Robby

 

[AllUpHere]

What business are you in?

 

[robchops20]

Hi.
Completely forgot to mention. I am doing property maintenance and refurbishments.

 

[neils3]

Hey Robby,

Have you tried contacting lettings agents or previous clients for referrals?

In terms of online marketing, happy to have an initial chat to see if we're a good fit.

 

[AllUpHere]

Hey Robby,

Have you tried contacting lettings agents or previous clients for referrals?

In terms of online marketing, happy to have an initial chat to see if we're a good fit.

Letting agents are the worst possible client for this type of business. They usually make decisions based purely on price and are generally a pain in the backside.

 

[neils3]

Yes, that type of customer may not be ideal, guess it depends on the lettings agent you're dealing with.

 

[Paul J Morris]

Hi Robby
PPC can be an expensive way to promote yourself, and getting ever more expensive. You say you have a very simple website, can we see it? Best practice for PPC is to drive traffic to a dedicated landing page kitted out with information about you, your previous projects (nice photos etc) and some kind of data exchange, either a download behind a form or straight enquiry form.

I've worked with a few trades in the past and local SEO has always suited quite well. Most customers will gravitate toward a local contractor. Unless you service quite a specialist niche and are one of only a few in the country. Downside to this over PPC is that it can take sometime to start showing results (dependant on your current rankings).

Potentially a mix of both might be beneficial, if budget allows...and reduce the PPC as the organic rankings pick up.

I'd happily talk through your requirements in more detail. PM me your details or you can find ours on our website.

 

[astoller]

As a local provider you have an opportunity to rank well for local search terms i.e. those with your town or city in the search string. On top of that you can add all the variations of your keywords or phrases in order to set up a wide net that catches them all. You are very suitable for a local search term campaign. It will make your phone ring again.

 

[StevePoster]

It is important that your are consistent in reaching your target audience as well as using different platforms to establish your site is a great way to widen the influence of the website. Provide new, trendy, interesting, and beneficial information to the users. Invest first then conversions will follow.

 

[rmmfree]

I would post some advertisements in local newspapers and magazines.

 

[justinaldridge]

Robby, you really need to focus on getting your local search profile sorted. Have you done this? If you search for "property maintenance + your geo" do you come up?

Set up your Google business listing here:

www.google.com/business/

Make it as thorough as possible.

Then submit your business to business listing sites such as:

https://www.yelp.co.uk/signup
http://www.yell.com/free-listing/
http://www.infoserve.com/
http://www.thomsonlocal.com/free-listing.aspx?
http://listings.touchlocal.com/touch/
http://www.manta.com/profile/my-companies/
http://www.scoot.co.uk/advertise/free-listing.html
https://foursquare.com/add_venue

Just use the free option on each one and make sure your information is completely consistent across the submissions to these sites.

This is a start to getting your local rankings up and running.

Best of luck.

 

[webgeek]

If the phone isn't ringing as much as it used to, then before throwing time/effort/money at more advertising to drive in more of the same, make sure you fully understand WHY the phone isn't ringing as much. Perhaps your website is dated, inaccurate, penalised. Perhaps you've not kept your pricing competitive or responded to some complaints/reviews on social media or review sites. Diagnose the problem before you try to implement a solution. The approach works for everything from medicine to machinery.

From your post, I'd bet that your 'very basic website' is not putting your best foot forward and making you stand out as remarkable amid a sea of alternative choices.

You're wrapping up some big projects. Get testimonials, get approval to use some photographs of the work, write up a case study on each showing how you did it in less time, at higher quality standards and for a competitive price versus what is the industry standard.

Your website doesn't have to rank for anything and yet still can have the ability to drive customers to call you or run away screaming... Remember the website is like a business card that people will refer to before deciding on who to call. They may find it via paid search, organic SEO, referrals from other satisfied clients, mentions on social media or newspapers, etc. But whatever the method of landing on it, the website will be your chance to be remarkable and be a contender in the race to win their business (or win their custom - sorry that one has never sounded right to me even after being in the UK for more than a decade).

 

[ethical PR]

If you work in the domestic market a lot of your work will be through word of mouth recommendations and then people will go to your website to check you out.

Make sure your website has a tip top portfolio and client recommendations and is easy to find your way around. Simple is best.
Contact existing clients and see if they have additional work (offer them a discount)
Provide clients with an incentive to recommend you (a lot of your work will come from word of mouth recommendations).
Keep in touch with tips and advice on keeping their home up to scratch - it's good to give as well as ask.
If you have big projects - give clients a bunch of flowers or bottle of bubbly at Christmas/birthdays - will make you memorable.

 

[SEO Lady]

You could get a thousand hits a day to your website but if it's basic and lasks the 'wow' factor, people will chosee other people's websites in preference.

Often it's not the volume of traffic that needs to be increased, it's converting the traffic that's already there - with a clear marketing call to action, features and benefits and well-written marketing text with a sales slant.

Then submit your business to business listing sites such as:
http://www.scoot.co.uk/advertise/free-listing.html

Scoot are the worst group of companies to advertise with, you get so many marketing calls as they sell your company's contact details to other directories (The Sun) etc always trying to convert you to be a paid customer. Drives me boggle eyed. I definitely do NOT recommend Scoot.

 

[justinaldridge]

Scoot are the worst group of companies to advertise with, you get so many marketing calls as they sell your company's contact details to other directories (The Sun) etc always trying to convert you to be a paid customer. Drives me boggle eyed. I definitely do NOT recommend Scoot.

It is worth doing though for citation building to reinforce local rankings.

 

[SEO Lady]

It is worth doing though for citation building to reinforce local rankings.

I'm not saying it's an SEO negative, I'm talking about the annoying marketing tactics and passing on of my business information.

My domain is nearly 6 years old (I think I joined Scoot 4-5 years ago?) and Scoot isn't picked up in Google Search Console as a backlink so the citation is very poor - and not worth it for the hassle it brings over the years IMHO

 

[justinaldridge]

But citations for local search are not about backlinks. It's about consistent NAP listings across a range of authority websites, and scoot is one of them.

Backlinks aren't the reason for submitting to Scoot.

 

[webgeek]

If you have name address phone and no website URL (aka no link) then you have not achieved the objective. Remember the idea is to link NAP information with the website URL. You must have the BACKLINK in order for this to work. Sorry @justinaldridge but you've got a piece of this puzzle missing...

 

[webgeek]

My domain is nearly 6 years old (I think I joined Scoot 4-5 years ago?) and Scoot isn't picked up in Google Search Console as a backlink so the citation is very poor - and not worth it for the hassle it brings over the years IMHO

This is where Google Search Console is biting you on the backside.

The fact that Search Console doesn't report NAP links to site owners via the console is one that's been around for ages. These links, and entries on the citation sites, are important to the Google trustrank formula, but are not revealed publicly in the console.

This is just one example of rarely documented "features" in search console. Another one would be the fact that if you have a .com and a .co.uk, with different backlinks to each, sometimes the backlinks from one will appear in the backlink reports of the other, even when no such backlinks to the other actually exist. This is because Google has interlinked the two, behind the scenes.

There's a lot of these types of behind the scenes things going on, whereby Google scores something, doesn't reveal the true value of such and instead gives you bogus information - just like the Google Rank Modifying Spammers Patent - http://www.seobythesea.com/2012/08/google-rank-modifying-spammers-patent/

 

[justinaldridge]

If you have name address phone and no website URL (aka no link) then you have not achieved the objective. Remember the idea is to link NAP information with the website URL. You must have the BACKLINK in order for this to work. Sorry @justinaldridge but you've got a piece of this puzzle missing...

You need to do your homework...

Read this...

https://moz.com/learn/local/citations

"Citations can also be found on local chamber of commerce pages, or on a local business association page that includes your business information, even if they are not linking at all to your website."

Local ranking factors ARE NOT the same as organic ranking factors.

 

[Marek Skoczylas]

Local ranking factors ARE NOT the same as organic ranking factors.

Finally among the mud, someone give one brilliant, short and valuable sentence how to distinguish local and organic factors. Very true

 

[webgeek]

I've done my homework and know when to follow the preachings of fishface and his cronies, and when not to.

Yes, citations can come from many sources, but the top citation sites are the ones WhiteSpark have listed.

If you can, please name me 20 citation sites that are better than those top 20 that they list.... G'head...

Speaking in generalities such as 'local business association page' means nothing to a business owner or SEO practitioner. What has value? Specific actionable items, such as a list of real sites with proven worth. Admittedly, I've only used about 2,000 test sites for various SEO activities in the past 5 years, but I'd bet a fair sum that you can't beat the WhiteSpark list.

-------------------------

Local ranking factors <> organic ranking factors?

To quote the gospel of Moz...
https://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors

Take a look at that list of local factors, then examine the general factors, of which local play a significant part...

The two are not synonymous, but rather overall organic search rankings have, as one key component, local ranking factors.

Improving local search rankings will almost always contribute to improvements in traffic, conversions and overall site performance via organic search rankings. The only exception would be trying to move position #2 to #1 for a short tail phrase in general, and hoping it would happen by improving local search rankings for a related phrase. It's a bit like every action has an equal and opposite reaction, then exerting all your strength in trying to push over a 100 Ton block of granite. It'd take more than just you to push it over, unless you employee the help of others, leverage, technology or some serious Houdini moves.

---------------------------

Non-linked mentions have value, not just with NAP, but with brand popularity overall. It's the "new black" and will be a hot topic in 2016/2017++ as Google comes to grips with how to rank without relying on backlinks and on-page wizardry.

Non-linked mentions have some value. Linked mentions crush them in terms of potential benefit to a site owner. Try ranking two sites for 'purple whatchamagigglets', one using linked NAP and one using non, with equivalent text and no other backlinks. You'd LEARN that by testing, instead of reciting the rubbish of Rand, that linked NAP has exponentially more SEO value.

 

[justinaldridge]

preachings of fishface and his cronies

Not sure why you deem it necessary to insult people you don't know. I'm not a Moz fan but I respect what they've achieved.

You carry on doing what you're doing, I don't need to argue it with you, I know what works.

 

[webgeek]

Not sure why you deem it necessary to insult people you don't know. I'm not a Moz fan but I respect what they've achieved.

You carry on doing what you're doing, I don't need to argue it with you, I know what works.

What major contributions has Moz made to the field? I must have missed their revelations.


As far as insults go - sorry, but if you pee on my breakfast cereal, I don't need to know your name in order to insult you - and you'd better believe there would be some expletives to bleep out of a transcript of that conversation.

In the case of SEOMoz, Rand and his staff have made a point of controlling the editorial content of the site which is largely just a rehashing of the world according to Matt C.

For those who contribute with thought leadership, like Bill Slawski at SEO By The Sea, Neil Patel, the gang at Distilled, to name but a few, I salute them for their efforts. But they're not regurgitating whatever Matt Cutts has preached, day in and day out. Instead, they're researching, testing, analysing and making wickedly detailed and meaningful contributions to the SEO community.

They've lined his pockets with gold for Rand Fishkin as the yes-men (readership of Moz) nod in agreement to whatever pro-Google BS they've expounded.

 

[justinaldridge]

Sorry but you just come across as bitter and jealous.

I'm no Moz fan but they have a great community going and I know a lot of businesses and entrepreneurs benefit from it, whether you like it or not.

 

[Digital Resellers]

Every business needs an online strategy, depending on your monthly advertising budget this will dictate what can be done.