Local Linkup

This has been an interesting thread as i recently took up the offer from local link up and must say the deal seemed ok . only pay for being on page one of google with any of the search terms i chose (no page one no fee) bit of a no brainer. However, some of the terms may have been on page one for a short time before dropping into page two or three. So im guessing that i would still be charged the page one fee even if i hit page one for a day, i wont know for sure till i get my first breakdown.
I have kept my own records as to which search terms have hit page one and how long they stayed there before dropping out and comming back.Although the cost is £30 month with 90 search terms mite at first look good but if im right and they all only have to hit page one once for even an hour then i still get billed the full £30.( i need clarification)
That asside,the fact ive not had a single call,email from a potencial customer/enquiry is dissapointing for a local listing although local linkup cant make people call me mores the pity.
The local link up free website and address: the address is very close to my original wed address so that was fine.the free website does look a lot like a directory listing setup and not very appealing,just standard template with my details www.dbadvancedfinishes.co.uk if you want to see how they lay them out
 
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locallinkup

For clarification: We measure four times per month and your potential exposure is therefore divided by four. In your case your risk is actually less than £7.50 per week but we bill once per month to make it easier for us and our customers. To pay that payment you would have to have your phrases on the first page of Google for all four weeks of the month. It is true that we take four samples during the month but we spread the checking of your phrases out throughout each seven day period so it is most fair to our customers. It would be extremely unlucky for each of your phrases to rank just at the time that we are checking them I think you will agree. Google simply dont show rankings just for one hour so that is very, very unlikely. Our systems check one phrase per customer, cycle through the whole customer base then come back and check your second phrase and so on.

What you need to know is that firstly phrases do move about on Google and we cannot control that. We monitor the phrases that move around and work to get them back there. Quite clearly we earn nothing from you if we don’t. This is how we differ from all other services. We put a lot of effort into keeping people on the first page and for some customers it is easier than others depending on the competition.

The PLINK is a matter of taste. I personally like them and there are lots of technology behind them to get rankings but let’s put this in perspective. There is no setup charge, no fee until you get rankings and the service includes a domain name, hosting charges and email services. It is fantastic value but we do encourage all of our customers to upgrade to our more advanced product which is a full website but with the same technology and SEO service behind the scenes. We really use the PLINK product as a starter pack and hope people will see that we get first page results, value that and want to invest more. What we don’t do is ask for that investment upfront like every other SEO service I know of. That’s quite a difference. We also have no contracts so if you find the service isn’t working for you then you cancel it. To be honest the cost is so low to most businesses they can make it pay.

You are quite correct we can’t make people phone you. Google is extremely busy and billions of pounds of business is generated for businesses on there. It’s up to you to decide how much you want to invest but clearly if you don’t like the website you should invest in a Pro Design or choose another service which will invariably want lots of money from you to design, host and optimise any other website. It’s a matter of choice of course.

We really want your business and you will find we will work really hard to keep you as a customer. Clearly the only way that is going to happen is if we keep your phrases on the first page and eventually you start to get calls from people searching for your services. Most customers usually do but as you have stated we can’t make them call. We just put you in the best place we can on the world’s largest advertising medium and don’t charge you anything if we don’t succeed. That’s a very unique offering.
In your case two people clicked to reveal your phone number, one on the 5th of April and one on the 23rd of April. We have no way of tracking if those users actually called you but a human has taken the time to look at your phone number. Hopefully this will turn into real enquiries soon but as you know we don’t supply enquiries we just get you up there.

You have had the service for less than one month and currently have 36 first page rankings (you also have 46 phrases on the second or third page). You have paid nothing for this service yet of course. I think that your risk is extremely minimal for a service that has got you on the first page for many phrases. I suspect all the jobs you do are worth a reasonable amount of money to you as they look like high quality services. When I last had a kitchen fitted it was extremely expensive! People are looking for kitchen fitters on Google, be patient and I am sure you will get some calls. What is certain is that there are people that are out there that need your services.

I really hope the service works out for you and you enjoy the benefits of being on the first page of Google. If you want to discuss any elements of the service I am always happy to receive customer feedback. Please call us on 01524 230250 and ask for me. Thank you for your comments.

Stuart Forrest
 
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Stuart - using Davezzr as and example (i hope you dont mind) you see his URL, He doesnt own it, you do.
The problem I can foresee with this is that if he decide to walk away he has then lost any money he has invested into it. Or you can actually charge him what ever price you choose pass him what essentially should be his from the offset.
There are people on here that build websites from £199 and the client actually own them.
Maybe I am misunderstanding what you offer. Initially I agree it is cheap web presence, but SEO work is 99% benefiting LocalLinkup.
For your system to work you need lots of people to link together creating a content magnet which is something that Panda was built to combat.
I could be wrong. Doubt it though
 
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locallinkup

Ali-v-8

I give up. There is always something you are not going to like. You will note that WE PAY ALL THE COSTS UP FRONT. It is perfectly reasonable to register the name to us and so long as a customer has been with us a reasonable time and paid their bills then they can take the domain for free if they choose to leave. I make no apologies for expecting a payment for the work we have done if the customer wants to take it away with them without paying us!

How much do you charge for upfront work and hosting and a domain name? I bet its not free. You can continue in your desperate quest to find fault but quite simply our service is very low cost, very fair and free until we get results. When we do, the costs have been agreed in advance and there can never be any shocks and they are for first page results on Google.

Let agree that you dont like our service because it doesnt conform to your idea of what a service should be and forget it.

Panda has had a positive effect on our rankings because what you have said is not correct in our case. Again I should worry about that not you.
 
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Not knowing anything about seo i am happy to let local link up do the work for me and at their reasonable cost.Lets face it i am paying more than what they are potencially charging using adwords and once again more clicks than calls.
Its true my market is specific and a kitchen costs are a lot more than say a site selling cheap loo roll. Leaflet drops would deliver a 1 in a 1000 enquiries,so its all just statistics.
Thank you for clearing up my initial sceptisisms about how i would be charged and for letting me know that there is another pro version (wasnt aware of that)
As for other seo's that promise the world for an upfront charge and ongoing costs local link up is a good starting point for a very easy proccess and pay on results.Not owning the website isnt the end of the world and ive heard of some seo's that wont give you the site you 'own' unless you pay for it or atleast pay for the login details.Anyway i will give this a fair crack of the whip and see how it goes.
Im sure this will go on and on as Ali will not sway one iota:)
and what on earth does a black and white bear living in china have anything to do with things,beats me:rolleyes:
 
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locallinkup

Thanks for the comments. The panda one was very funny!

You are right, whatever advertising you do, you have to make a judgement if it works for you after a fair time. I know for example that newspapers usually advise at least three months. I don't know the time in the in the Internet as you can get very fast results or equally like buses you can wait and wait then two jobs come along at once. To be fair if you spent three months at the full full rate your risk would be 90 quid. There is not a company out there that would do anything for that price I dont think.

The pro version is also available and having a customised website that is also on the front page is likely to get even better results but it still all boils down to someone looking for your service on Google. Hopefully they will be soon.

Thanks

Stuart Forrest
 
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Actually i have to agree with you on that note Stuart. No matter what advertisement you do, there is a small element of risk involved.
Having your own website is better that letting someone else own it.
But I suppose some web presence is better than none at all.
If Stuart is being honest unlike his predecessor i think its only fair to let people make their own mind up by using his service. After all you cant loose out if you are not paying for anything. I mean no upfront fee's, no paying for a website nothing. No need to give bank details or credit card details upfront either.
If there is no risk then give it ago.
 
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locallinkup

Ali-v-8

At last some common sense prevails. Yes its a very good, very fair and very low risk offer. It is very different from traditional web marketing methods. That is the intention and it is something we are very proud of. Why wouldnt we be as there has been nearly three years of hard work gone into it and 14 years of experience of this market.

Actually we do expect customers to give us their payment method up-front when they accept our first quote but before they are billed they receive a detailed statement including screenshots of every ranking and they then have 15 days to speak to us if there is anything they are unhappy with. Anything any customer disputes at this stage (or indeed any stage) can be reversed off their bill. Our system can automatically recalculate a bill.

We rarely get any complaints but invetiably some customers wish to make changes to their campaign at this point when they have had chance to see what is getting ranked. Of course that is also acceptable as they are not contracted in any way.

This is a package that allows flexibility at every point.

Thank you for your comments. I hope you understand a little more about what we do. I am sure it is different to what you are used to but there are always many angles to every market.

Stuart Forrest
 
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steve preston

Free Member
Apr 22, 2011
4
0
I have not posted anything on here for a while as i'm not competition just a VERY UNHAPPY EX customer! Inspite of everything guess what happened 3 days after my contract was Publicly declared closed...Anyone want to guess...Yep...They took my money..£10.90.....Hey...If you need some money just ask.....I'll include you as one of the charities i support..!
So today I'm having to cancel my credti card and get a new one...Such hassle! Read ALL of this mans comments...Read them carefully and look for the REAL meaning of his message!
My Dad once told me about paying with Peanuts!
 
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locallinkup

Mr Preston

I am very disappointed that you have decided to start posting again on this forum with comments that simply don’t fit the facts of your case.

You claim that you didn’t know a payment was coming out on 15th April butthis is simply not correct. We sent you and you opened an email on the 1st of the month with your invoice showing it would be debited on the 15th of April. This therefore was no surprise. As I have pointed out several times here your payment was requested on the 12th and taken on the 15th as per our terms. The same day we dealt with your cancellation request. Don’t worry we won’t take any payments in the future just like I said many times also.

You have stated on here that we took payments after you cancelled etc but as I have pointed out you were still dealing with enquiries through the service and asking for changes to our product as late as the 6th of April. Your payment notification was sent to you on the 1st of April as is required by the banking system. That payment indeed was to cover service from March and you have been billed nothing for April even though you didn’t cancel until April 15th. Of course you won’t be billed either as your account is cancelled.

I understand you may not require the service any longer but it would be helpful if you stopped making posts that implied we fraudulently took payment on your card as we simply wouldn’t do that. I think any fair minded person would accept that it is too late to stop a payment request leaving your account on the 15th on that day. Indeed when that payment was in any case to cover the previous month’s service I think it is also reasonable to expect you to make that payment. Most customers who leave us think it is reasonable to pay any outstanding invoices.

We are the only company of this type that doesn’t hold people to contracts so they can make their own decision if the service works for them. Remember all we did was work to get you on the first page of Google for many phrases. If people choose not to search for your service on Google that’s not our fault. As I have stated previously we have many driving schools benefitting from our service.

Like anyone you can choose where to spend your advertising money of course and I fully understand that being on Google won’t work for everyone but in your case you responded to several enquiries through our service, even in April. That is not the actions of a man who thought his service had been cancelled months before as you previously stated.

I hoped that we had drawn this matter to a close but I have to say that it is important that I put the record straight as we really do care about customer service. I am happy to present a timeline of your communications on here at some point but I would rather let the matter lie. Surely you should be teaching people to drive and I should be working hard for our customers.

Once again I am sorry if you felt the service didn’t work for you but Local Link Up remains one of the lowest cost and lowest risk ways for a business to test out whether being on the front page of Google will work for them. I think we have established that you don’t think it does for your business. I am not sure where you can go from here with the internet as the first page of Google is one of the best places to be in the current world of marketing. Of course you can spend your own time getting rankings on Google but you will find it is not as easy as you may think and you would probably be more profitable teaching people to drive and letting a professional organisation get you back on that first page. Obviously I understand you don’t think that should be Local Link Up.
 
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locallinkup

Ali-v-8

You cant help yourself can you. Did you read any of my previous replies or do you just sit there looking for something to criticise? I clearly stated several times that we could not stop a payment on the actual day of the payment. Have you no experience of banking systems? In any case the payment was for his March bill. Are you suggesting a client should default on oustanding invoices I think I will get my team to start ringing your clients to suggest they transfer to us for free and default on their agreements with you. Does that sound professional. I think not.

Quite simply and for the record the customer was advised on the 1st of the month that the payment (for the previous months invoice, not in advance) would be taken from his account on the 15th of the month. To do this you need to instruct the bank on the 12th. We dealt with a customer cancellation request on the 15th which was too late to cancel it as it would have already gone out. It didnt go out three days later. That is nonsense.

Once again I have posted facts on dates and you have chosen to ignore them to make some point. Please get your facts right as I am getting very tired of responding to your slanderous posts on here. The customer has a right to say what he likes. For the record I completely disagree with what he has said and quite simply he is suggesting he shouldnt have paid a previous months invoice when he was actively using the service. Thats not how I do business but thats up to him. I dont appreciate you jumping in however trying to imply there was something untoward in our billing system.

At what point would you suggest it is OK to take payments for a previous month. We do it 2 weeks after the end of the previous month when the service has happened. Lets talk about how you bill your customers because I understand that is not how you do it!

Ali-v-8 unless you have something factual to post on here please stop posting trying to score points against my business constantly. I wont tolerate it. I have not done this against your business when frankly there are a lot more questions you should answer. If you dont like our pay on results business model thats up to you but resist this constant points scoring.

We have an open, honest pay as you go, pay on results business model. Customers can join and leave as they wish and yes I prefer it if they pay their oustanding bills when they leave. That seems fair to me and to any normal person I guess.
 
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Well ive had my first month on local link up and achieved 138 page one google impressions and my bill of £35.
Although there may well have been 138 page one impressions for the search terms ive not had one single enquiry or phone call.That aside for the moment i also have no idea as to how many hits/site visits ive had if any other than my own when ive been on my site.
Im thinking that i need to rethink the whole structure of the key phrases and look at a hit counter if thats possible . In essence broaden the key phrases to more common terms and cover more of what we actually do as far as our type of works which far exceeds just the two main headings being used at this time
 
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locallinkup

Hi Dave

Yes your first bill is for £29.22 plus VAT. This is because 61 of the 96 phrases in your campaign were on the first page of Google for the last week out of the four weeks in the month and for most of the weeks many of your phrases were there. You therefore easily hit the campaign price cap limit we agreed with you at the start. In fact last week alone nearly £20 of phrases were found on the first page of Google and every other phrase on your campaign was no lower than page 3 which is amazing and you got many for free because we never bill you over the agreed monthly cap. Of course you do get some variations but it is obviously in our interests to work to keep you there now.

Because of your price cap you will never pay more than the bill you paid this month. Your cap can be revised downwards only if you remove some phrases to be promoted. It is usually 25% of the total value of phrases selected.

You can of course adjust your campaign at any time as there is no contract. It sometimes requires a bit of playing with to get the phrases that work for you found, remembering of course that we have no control whatsoever over who chooses to purchase our customers products/services, we can only do what we promised and get you on the first page.

Also I advise people not to expect miracles. This is advertising after all and being on the first page does not guarantee business this week or next but it usually comes. Of course one of the issues with advertising is that you need to be there every week so that when someone looks for your service you are there and not your competitor. At least with Local Link Up we keep on working to make sure you are there week in week out otherwise we earn nothing from you. With your services I guess they are fairly good order values and so far you have invested a total of £29.22 in our service. Most companies wouldnt even register a domain name for that price.

We also advise that the best results come from the best investments. If you are really serious then upgrade to one of our Pro Design packages that give you a custom website. They usually get better response rates. Our packages range from £299 to £599 for standard websites (i.e. without ecommerce etc which I doubt you need). Alternatively do what many, many of our customers do and stick with the PLINK for a few months and see what response you get. Even if you did for a year you would still have spent less than most companies charge just for designing a website.

Feel free to call our support team and adjust your campaign any time you like.

The 138 figure is not page impressions but 1st page google rankings (i.e. 61 in the last week and the rest over the previous three weeks) We are working on more reporting dashboards that you will have access to but frankly what matters is if you are getting a return on your investment, not how many people look at your page. Like any advertising only you can decide this over a reasonable time that you feel comfortable with.

Thank you for your feedback. If there is anything I can help you with feel free to call us and ask for me directly. I dont generally handle day to day support (there are better people than me at that) but I am really happy to answer any questions and receive your feedback so we can keep improving the service.

Stuart Forrest
Local Link Up
 
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Ali-v-8

Yes I agree it is not quite clear although we always thought it was prior to this comment. We are not charging for impressions or clicks. That is not up to us.

We charge based on rankings and in the previous post I explained this. e.g 61 phrases were ranked in week 4. A total of 138 first page weekly rankings during the month.

Perhaps we need a new way of wording that. We are considering how to make it clearer.
 
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I understand fully the comments and the way rankings are shown 61 phrases ranked on page one on the fourth week and a total of 138 phrases ranked on page one for a duration during the previous three weeks although there is no finite list as to when these phrases appeard on page one or where they ended up before the fourth week.I appreciate that rankings fluctuate dramatically if you dont keep your eye on the prize.
Its not that difficult for me to follow my rankings for my key phrases and keep a log manually. I have been running google adwords for a different purpose and the costs are a lot more expensice to stay on page one.My last look gave me an average position of 6.5 with 15,000 impressions ( impressions?) i understan position but not clear as to what an impression is let alone 15,000 of them and where they are impressed....seo for idiots,can i have a copy!!!!
 
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Dave

Thanks for your comments, I am glad it wasn't too confusing but we do have quite a few dashboard updates planned for the near future.

I guess you know that you can drill down from the dashboard when you are logged into your PLINK and see each weekly bill. From there you can drill down to each phrase we charged you for and see a screenshot we took to confirm the rankings. It doesn't however show a date and time on that but I guess we can get that changed to show when we checked the rankings. I am not sure if we currently store it as we do everything in week numbers but maybe we do. If we do it could be added restrospectively but if not it could be added going forward. I will speak to the development team in the morning to see if it can be done quickly. It seems like a logical improvement and I should have thought of previously!

As I also mentioned in a previous post we spread the checking of your phrases out over seven days so that it is as fair as possible and impossible to get charged the full amount unless the majority of your phrases are there for all of each week.

I think hits and impressions are a load of rubbish really. Having lots of people looking at your website is not the same as phone calls or emails from real potential customers. As I said previously the most important thing is does it work for you in the end. If it doesnt and you havent spent to much then thats fine. If you invest thousands only to find no response then its a different thing. We hope our package will work for everyone but inevitably it may not if they have a product or service that nobody wants. I doubt you fall into that category :)

We do our best to get businesses on Google and keep them there. As you know we only get paid if we do. We will always work with you to try to make sure you get what you want as we are the only company who bills nothing unless we get your the rankings. We have to keep working with our customers!

Thanks


Stuart Forrest
Local Link Up
 
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Thanks and yes ive gone through the plinks and dropdowns etc so pretty savi with the method adopted by you guys, as for times and dates of your searches 'It seems like a logical improvement and I should have thought of previously! MY IDEA NOW,do i get some sweets:)

I am happy with the rankings and lets face it it been only a month so you have been hard at work no doubt about that and for a realistic cost. If anyone can beat you on price please stand up!!!

Being an impulsive and impatient person that i am,a trait that can confuse and annoy most others except my closest of friends i am in the mind to start again with a completly new set of phrases that point out the more detailed aspects of our work and not so black and white. This i have no doubt would bring in other customers other than for a kitchen/bathroom.
Think of the actual works involved to get to the final product from start to finish.
ie: carpentry,plumbing,tiling,flooring,electical,plastering and not forgetting the supply only side of things with the vast choice we offer.

I only mention this because not all businesses have only one product/service but many limbs that should be made known.I think if i had sat down and gave a lot more thought about key phrases before letting keith (my local link up contact) set it all up I could have been upto my left nut in related work.
You wouldnt ring a bathroom fitter if you got a leaking stopcock or a kitchen fitter if your extractor fan stopped sucking(air)

Local link up does get on to the job very quickly i must admit with phrases they find on your website and you can be up and running in 48hours,thats not a problem.But given more thinking time for the customer to come up with phrases of their own would be more beneficial and stop the moaners and unconvinced
 
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Thanks again for the comments. You are very welcome to change your phrases at any time and we will do the work. Obviously we prefer it if it isnt too often otherwise we have to keep redoing the work we have done but thats the deal we offer!

Sometimes our sales people get people started on the package without spending too much time considering exactly what phrases are good for the customers. Often the customers dont know until after the fact as well so we do sometimes get people coming back to us asking to redo it. Thats just fine, we understand.

Just give our support team a call when you are ready and we will do what you need.

Local Link Up
 
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I have a question.
Keyphrase = what exactly?

If for example you own a garage and you get page one for garage Manchester that would be 1 keyphrase (good term). What other terms would a garage appear under? mot centre Manchester, car tunning Manchester ..etc
Who determines what terms a client would pay for. Does he choose.
 
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The client chooses their phrases ultimately. Why dont you look at our website instead of posting on here, or as I have said previously, worry about your own services!

I dont mean to come across as rude but I feel that you spend all your time on here deserately trying to find fault with what we do. In fact the reason I posted on here myself in the first place is in direct response to comments made directly by you and other "SEO experts" that were posting frankly slanderous nonsense on here with zero knowledge of our services. Thankfully yours werent the worst but some comments were ludicrous and made by people with no industry knowledge.

We always try to be open, honest and great value. If you are genuinely interested in our services, look at our website or arrange a meeting with me to discuss becoming a reseller. I dont wish to go round in circles answering minor comments and explaining and justifying everything we do to you.
 
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I think this thread will just go around and around with aliv8 coming up with little snipes at local link up.
Without going back 11 pages to the orinigal op which i really cant be bothered to do, who i believe ask is local link up genuine or a scam!

As A customer of local link up i can say this is genuine and give what they offer.I have been on google page one and other high pages (2,3) more now than ever doing my own seo which i have very little know how of.

I am glad that locl link up will change phrases as needed so i personally will sit down and come up with the most relevant ones and stick to them.
I would stress to potencial customers wishing to sign up to the local link up that they should push their own phrases and not leave them to the link up guys to pick them for them.
Local link up means local so im sure Manchester wouldnt be one area. More likely Manchester is broken down into suberbs as would London,Birmingham etc

One question: can a customer change the local link up areas?
Currently my local link up covers High Wycombe,Beaconsfield,Maidenhead and Amersham....Beaconsfield and Amersham are relatively small areas with low population compared to Maidenhead,High Wycombe.
 
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Dave

Thank you for you kind comments and yes I agree this goes round in circles.

Yes of course you can change you phrases AND your areas. It is important that you only pay for phrases and areas you wish to promote. Some people like to target the smaller areas while others dont bother. I wish all our customers would review their quotes before we do the work but very often they do it when they get their first bill! We are used to that and accommodate it. Again contact support when you are ready to do that.

Yes we are Local Link Up. On the whole (apart from a handful of customers) we only provide SEO in product/area. We dont do national/international campaigns and specialise just in local business connections. There are plenty of companies that offer national SEO. It is and should be expensive if it is done correctly and can have very mixed results and there are many many people paying for services they dont end up getting in that market. Focusing on local search means we can offer the no payment until you get results package that we do.

Once you need more help just give us a shout.

Local Link Up
 
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No snipes... just clarity.
Theres asking for clarification and theres blatent put downs my friend,reading back through your replies there have been more putdowns than genuine questions asked in a formal manner.Im guessing you offer national seo and not localised geographic seo.Im guessing that you like many seo's charge an upfront fee and a monthly rate for your services and proberbly have a reasonable portfolio,but im also thinking that the local link up mission statement of no upfront fees and pay per result is in the long run a more attractive offering which will force other seo's to re think their methods.Wouldnt it be better to diversify rather than become obsolete through greed and the pound in your pocket now today rather than increasing your portfolio 1000+ fold offering lower costs.These are my views but hey iv been known to be wrong
 
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Ok - I'll bite.:rolleyes:

I didn't care about this thread much, but now I am very interested.
The reason I am interested is because I love marketing.
This is blatant marketing. I have to say well done but you would probably not like it and come out with some outlandish claim.
Your website content has been copied.
How would you class this as a good idea.
I wouldnt do it.
.

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whitevanman

Free Member
May 28, 2011
1
0
Hi
I was contacted by Niall Sempel of Locallinkup on Thursday 19th. Ive been pestered in the past by companies selling all manner of advertising services as well as internet advertising. I have little understanding of the industry other than as a user. I have never needed to advertise as i get recommended by word of mouth. By luck I was on my computer at the time so I was able to look at some of what Niall was talking about. He offered me a no win no fee chance to have my own web page,Plink. Sorry Stuart I have to agree with davzzr its not the prettiest thing. But for someone like me I wouldnt want to spend silly money on something I could live without, its a good starting point. Now, for the moment I have declined the offer but locallinkup have still bought the domain name and put some of my details on it. I thought this was very good of a commercial organisation spending money on a domain name without my buy in. I know in the long run they have to get a return so they could remove my details and sell their services to someone else. I would be interested in leaving it for a few weeks without LLU form of SEO just to see how it does. After all you cant show how good the LLU SEO is untill you see it without it. If I am wrong please inform me as I said I am new to this. The other thing with this is being of a cautious nature I can feel my way in. Get to know the terminology,get to understand how it all works, get to know what I want myself before I spend serious money, or not, on going any further. I have seen and heard of many people wasting money on advertising to little effect. I have learnt quite a bit by reading this forum so thankyou to all the contributers. A special thanks to Stuart, davzzr, and Aliv8 knowing the questions to ask is important.
I have been trying to populate the Plink, now as a novice to this I seem to be having a few problems. I have tried to phone Niall a few times and also there customer support but no answer. Maybe an e-mail is better.
So far so good apart from the populating the Plink problem which I am sure Stuarts team will sort out.
I will keep everyone informed with how I get on.
I am now going to look at davzzr site and also the boiler services in burmingham site
I dont know whats wrong with it maybe someone could tell me.

P.S I dont work for Stuart,davzzr or Aliv8
 
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WhiteVanMan

Thanks for your reply. Sorry I am away on holiday currently so can't give a detailed reply but I understand your comments on the design of the PLINK. It is created to look like a social networking page which is not to everyone's taste I guess.

We do offer a Pro Design package which is a fully customised site to your design but requires you spending from £299 upwards. Many customers we deal with have been soured by spending money with countless SEO or design companies that don't deliver. This product and was designed so we can give the PLINK away free and then offer the chance to upgrade after we have proved ourselves. We are the only company in Europe that do this.

We are also going to offer a limited set of customisation on the PLINK at some point in the future which may help.

In respect of your comment about the support line I am surprised. We have normal UK based people's answering the phones. We pride ourselves on not having a queueing system and answering calls promptly. The number is 01524 230250 and is open 9am to 5.30pm. We did have a phone system outage the week before last for about three hours. Other than that we are pretty good at answering the phones. Nialls direct line is just that. There is no overflow so it is best to call the support line where we will always be happy to help you.

Thanks

Stuart Forrest
 
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As a member of local link up i have to say these guys do what it says on the tin and for a relativly small cost. However its true the acual site you as a member get is universal and doesnt inspire the reader to any extent.
I would like to see an option for layout templates,even to change the colour would be something. But above all a simple hit counter (one line of script) would settle a lot of doubt as to wether the member is indeed getting any views.If there are views and no contact then the site can be ajusted by the member as far as his/her wording,pictures etc appears to entice a potencial customer to call.
In fact i personally think the whole page looks too bitty, with click more to see more of the business description which should be the bulk of the page .Click on image to enlarge doesnt acually enlarge the picture and the large ask me a question box overwhelms the page altogether. I also dont think the facebook and twitter links are relevent or the box with other advertisers popping up especially if there are others doing the same as or very similar to me.
It does seem that the local link up logo/banner and external link to local link up website are the center of attention with brighter colours to draw the eye and not the members business
I appreciate that local link up do what they say they will by getting you onto google page one with all or most of your keywords and that they also need to make more membership numbers by advertising themselves on your page,Fair enough!. Yes i know there are the upgrade packages to consider with all the goodies you can expect from a webdesign angle but the free plink needs to prove its worth before members will upgrade including myself.It has to be said that the free page is local link ups bread and butter and main marketing tool so a bit more flare could be adopted.
This is constructive critisism and by no means detracts from the point that my personal keywords/phrases are and have been high in google page rankings for the past 6-7 weeks constantly pages one and two
 
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L

locallinkup

Dave

Again thanks for your comments and we do listen to everything that is said. We are considering various updates for the PLINK and have some ideas that we will introduce in the near future. That said it is a free product and I hope you will understand that we cant give everything away up front otherwise nobody would have anything to purchase from us. We do rely on a percentage of customers taking the upgrades to the advanced products to fund the growth of the network. When all is said and done the PLINK including a domain name and all the initial work we do is not charged to the customer up front which is completely unique in the market. Most companies charge an awful lot without actually delivering anything.

We will be introducing many of the changes you suggested, in fact the original version of the PLINK which was replaced about 12 months ago actually had the changing of colour schemes and not many people used it. We intentionally kept everything the same so that it was one consistent message going forward but we have had further thoughts on this following feedback. Of course it is each to his own as we also get very positive feedback about the styling and functions of the PLINK.

What is most important is the PLINK contains lots of information to get your phrases ranking which ideally would be in a multi page website but we simply cannot produce this for free. If we were to do this we would have to charge an upfront fee which we prefer not to do.

I tried the click to enlarge and it worked on my PLINK. I think it depends on the original size of the image. It should pop up in a window with a larger image and seems to on mine.

In summary we will introduce many custom styling options in the near future. I cant say when as we have many projects ongoing but it will be quite soon as development time allows. I will keep you updated.

Stuart Forrest
 
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Daz5773

Free Member
Jun 10, 2011
2
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Hi

I am a "customer" of LLU and stumbled on this site when searching for them in google to get their contact details. Basically I signed up with them around 8 or 9 weeks ago and I am still waiting for the plink profile they gave me to appear in google search engines. To be honest I'm not here to slate them because they havent charged me a penny so far hence the reason I'm not sure if I am a customer and have always been polite and friendly when I have spoke to them, they just havent delivered on their promise of 1st page of google within 4 to 6 weeks. If I was one of their customers who had paid £300 set up fees I think I would be going ballistic now but luckily I didnt!

Around 2 weeks ago after getting fed up with LLU I set up my own free site with Yola which is to be honest not very good but after reading up online on website promotion etc within 2 weeks and no experience of SEO, Google or computers really today I'm on the top of page 3 of google when I searched for "york plumber" and 1st page if I add 247.

I'm spending a fair amount on adwords every month and want to promote my company without doing so. Basically after paying one company a set up fee and a monthly fee for SEO and website that didnt rank either I just want to know is SEO worthwhile, what sort of fee is realistic and what can I expect to get for it. Is first page of google and staying there easy to achieve or not?

This is my second attempt at paying for SEO and I am beginning to think its the modern day timeshare scam lol. I realise my search term is pretty specific and there are other keywords I would like to improve but just want some honest and realistic advice on what is achieveable and at what price or is adwords the only way to guarantee 1st page of google and you just have to pay their fees?

Thanks Darren
 
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