Internet Advertising... advice needed

[rocket67]

We operate a family business in the home improvements industry.

This is a vey successful business that employs approximately 30 people, with a turnover approaching 5 million per annum.

We advertise extensively and have a budget of around 15k per month.

Had a visit from our Yellow pages consultant about a month ago to discuss our internet advertising. We were on a $500 per month plan called click manager. This has worked very well for us for the last couple of years, and a search on google using keywords always put us on the front page.

We were advised that the current campaign at $500 per month would now finish and be replaced with a new product at a cost of $2100 per month

The new product would guarantee a search result placement on page one in the top 3 results. Our old $500 plan always put us near the top anyway.
But we were advised that the old plan is no longer available to us.

I refused to participate in their $2100 per month plan, and the end result is that our ads have disappeared off the front page and in fact are now back on page34. Ouch!!!! This will cost us a lot of business.

So my question to internet savvy persons - How do we get back onto the front page of an internet search? We do not want to give in to their (IMO) outrageous pricing.

What alternatives do we have for internet advertising? Any advice would be much appreciated.

Rocket.

 

[prawn_86]

Re: Internet Advertising...... Advice needed

Hi rocket,

Im assuming you have a website also? If so you can do what is called Search Engine Optimisation which will increase your ranking in google and other engine searches. If you dont have time yourself you can pay someone, but make sure you check they are legit first.

If you specifically want those ads however, you will have to pay for them unfortunately

 

[rocket67]

Re: Internet Advertising...... Advice needed

Thankyou prawn, yes - we do have a website.

The most objectionable aspect of our dilemna is that these people feel that they can justify a 400% increase. IMO they are greedy ars-----s!!!

Have been reading about Search Engine Optimisation and will look into it today.

Unfortunately, i do not know a lot about internet advertising and have already been burnt by an unscrupoulous web designer. So i now have a very wary attitude with supposed computer experts. But there must be some honest experts out there somewhere. Just need to find one. LOL.

Rocket.

 

[Timmy]

Re: Internet Advertising...... Advice needed

Can you talk directly to Google about your needs and budget?

 

[Joe Blow]

Re: Internet Advertising...... Advice needed

Thankyou prawn, yes - we do have a website.

The most objectionable aspect of our dilemna is that these people feel that they can justify a 400% increase. IMO they are greedy ars-----s!!!

Have been reading about Search Engine Optimisation and will look into it today.

Unfortunately, i do not know a lot about internet advertising and have already been burnt by an unscrupoulous web designer. So i now have a very wary attitude with supposed computer experts. But there must be some honest experts out there somewhere. Just need to find one. LOL.

Rocket.

Hi Rocket,

Have you looked into the Google Adwords program?

You can choose which keywords you would like to show up in the search engines for (in the Sponsored Links section) and how much you would like to pay per click. You can also select which countries are allowed to view your ads. For example, you could decide that you only wanted Australians to see your ads as your website might be targetted solely at Aussies.

I use Adwords and like it and it's not hard to set up or manage.

 

[rocket67]

Joe Blow and Timmy, Thankyou for your replies.

Our yellow pages consultant told us that they are now tied up with Google, so a Google direct enquiry would probably be directed back to them anyway.

Had a good look at the Adwords program. There are a couple of concerns. Firstly - we have been told that the sponsored links ( Adwords ) on the right hand side of the search page are only " Clicked " in 15% of cases? if this is correct - the conversion to sales rate would not be good.

Also, the adwords website has a Forum. On the forum there are nothing but complaints about the Adwords program, mostly relating to ads not appearing when they should, and many complaints relating to payment. There are no people available to handle customer enquires. Any problems are dealt with via computer - eventually apparently.
However, for the quantity of accounts that are handled - it may be a small amount that have problems. If it is good enough for Joe Blow, then i will give it a go.

Have contacted our Web Hosting people and been informed that they can provide a Search Engine Optimisation Package. Waiting for details from them.
Hopefully we can regain a prominent position without having to pay the hefty increase.

Rocket.

 

[MS+Tradesim]

Rocket,

I second Joe's suggestion about Google adwords. All you should need to do is use exactly the same key words as your previous clickmanager campaign used.

 

[nomore4s]

Rocket,

We tried yellow pages online as well but couldn't justify the cost.

While not helping to answer your question about internet advertising directly this may be of interest to you. We have a listing on a site called Home Improvement pages and it only costs us $149 per year and we have had more hits off of it then we did off yellow pages online, for the cost it is worth the listing and the service has been great from them.

Besides the phone books it is the only other place we advertise.

And I know it won't fix all your needs as you obviuosly advertise alot more than we do but I think it is worth looking at, you only need 1 job from it and it has more than paid for itself.

 

[Joe Blow]

Had a good look at the Adwords program. There are a couple of concerns. Firstly - we have been told that the sponsored links ( Adwords ) on the right hand side of the search page are only " Clicked " in 15% of cases? if this is correct - the conversion to sales rate would not be good.

Also, the adwords website has a Forum. On the forum there are nothing but complaints about the Adwords program, mostly relating to ads not appearing when they should, and many complaints relating to payment. There are no people available to handle customer enquires. Any problems are dealt with via computer - eventually apparently.
However, for the quantity of accounts that are handled - it may be a small amount that have problems. If it is good enough for Joe Blow, then i will give it a go.

It does take a little effort to get it all set up and it does require regular tweaking but I have nothing but good things to say about the program. But then, I'm not selling anything other than ASF, and that's free.

Be very careful how you word your ads what you use as the title as this will have a big impact on click throughs.

 

[rocket67]

We are taking note of the excellent replies. Thankyou.

Joe Blow and MS+Tradesim, Adwords is now firmly on the agenda for us, and we are going through the registration process right now.

nomore4s, The Home Improvement pages is an excellent site. Have already sent an Email off and will be listing with them.

Interesting to note that we have not heard back from our Web Hosting people as yet about the Search Optimisation Package. Supposed experts - need to learn a thing or two about customer service.

Thanks again.

Rocket.

 

[Uncle Barry]

Good afternoon.
A slightly different idea.

At anyone time I would have on-line about 400 pages or more. Come to think of it, it was over 400 sometime ago.
And have been on-line for some years, plus some, now.

And do not use the Ad word advertising by Google to find viewers of our sites.
However we run Ad words (other people's advertising)as adverting on some of our pages, to generate income.

Google in our case are easy to work with and there has never been any problem with payment, not once.

I work suggest, forget the wonderful, where you pay, for these special you beaut Page Optimisation programes.

Think of it, this way, if you use this program and so does the next 20 web sites, who wins, who is on top of the page, on top of Google Search page, you or anyone in the group that used this you beaut Opt, progame

Google Ad Words program is rather like shotgun advertising.
Google Search Page IS TARGET marketing, you do not waste money on pages that people are not interested in, or only click to look at your site, WITHOUT any follow up enquiry.
If someone is looking for your service/s then the Google Search is the only way to go.
Spend the time on YOUR site, and not in giving someone your hard earned dollars.

'Click through rate of 15% '..... are you sure
Our fifures would suggest that is not the case, but of course, we are not experts

'same key words as your previous clickmanager campaign used.'
NEVER EVER, unless your looking for the very same results and do not wish to improve !

To keep this post as short as possible, because the subject is at least 100,000 words long, maybe even more.

Rocket, can you supply your web address for a look......
IF its ok with the Mod and not against any Rules,
IF not, send me a PM with the address and we will have a overal look at your site/s and give you some feed back..free of course, as a helping hand.

You can get to the front page on Google within a month, to the top three addresses within the next month,
IF you...and that is yourself, you do the work, (and its really easy, honestly)

When you talk to any web page designer, you should ask, how many dollars have you made out of selling products on the net, you your self, if they will not answer........ if they haven't then .........

Mate, the story is all about you.
Kind regards,
UB
Sorry if my post upsets any web page builder, just the facts after many years at the Web and Selling products.

 

[Aussiest]

Re: Internet Advertising...... Advice needed

My advice in dealing with web designers and suppliers:

1. If they don't get back to you immediately and in a professional manner, they are probably not worth persuing
2. Get at least 3 quotes from different suppliers
4. Ask for references and follow them up
5. Only pay for the work that they do. Eg, sign contracts based on milestones rather than on timeframes.

Poor old Sensis. Getting a bit desperate. Aunty Internet is eating into their revenue :

 

[charttv]

try Facebook advertising. Superior to Google adwords IMHO.

Set up an account now and set your daily spend and away you go. You could have a campaign up and running in under ten minutes.

 

[Bolle]

Howdy,

This is what i do for a living SEO, and building and occasionally managing Adwords campaigns. I'll try and cover the basics without getting too involved (or really, really boring):

Firstly, your best (and most cost-effective) weapon is your website itself. The words that are on your website are what Google indexes to find out what your site is "about". When you write for your webpages, don't write specifically for your customers, consider the googlebots as well. Obviously you need to still make plenty of sense for your customers, but there is a world of difference between writing specifically for customers and writing for traffic. Writing for traffic will sound more repetitive, because you tend to want to work in same/related words more often. (As opposed to say print, where you will more often be aiming for synonyms and things to make it less repetitive.) Generally you'll know whether you've covered your words adequately when you proof-read your copy. A Google search of your words after your page is indexed/submitted will let you know whether it needs to be amped up.

Pick a bunch of 'target' keywords for different pages. Don't try to do everything on each page (nor everything on one page). Figure out what words you are targeting (you probably already know this), put them into related groups based on how people search and build your pages around "concept groups" of keywords. Also, be creative with your keywords - don't get too bogged down with focusing on a few highly-competitive words, think outside the box.

Adwords is fine if you have the budget and the time to tweak it and track it. But SEO is way cheaper and in my opnion gets you better traffic (better quality, at any rate) when done well. One of the drawbacks with Adwords is that they will advertise you not just on Google but on 'related' sites that allow sponsored links... those are the random, seemingly unrelated ads you sometimes see on cheap/not for profit type sites. They can severely reduce your clickthru rate, because almost nobody ever clicks on them - probably because they quite often have no relevance to the information on the page they're appearing on.

If you DO go with Adwords, use your budget wisely. Don't bid on the words you have targetted in your web copy. To see what i mean, search
"Virgin mobile" - they are the first result based on their web copy. But they also PAY to have higher-than-first results in adwords. Which is utterly pointless, in my opinion. Throwing money away. It's like bidding against yourself in an auction. Sure you can do it to make SURE you win, but why would you? (Particularly if you're already winning.)

Please don't "stuff" keywords (don't jam them in every which way, don't fill your meta tags with rubbish, don't put 'white' words on a white background that Googlebots can see but readers can't - google is smarter than it used to be, and will penalise sites that do these sorts of things. Basically, don't be too greedy. Just write good content and focus your pages.

And don't pay >$800USD for 'SEO courses', they are largely a waste of time, money and paper. There might be some good ones out there, but there majority are a waste of money.

Hope this helps; and i'm sorry your last web guy was a jerk. That really annoys me - makes the rest of us legit folk look bad by association, and makes it harder for us to get decent, paying work.

 

[Bolle]

Also, Uncle Barry, i don't know any web designers that sell products online. They focus their attention on design and usability, it's their clients that do the selling.

 

[rocket67]

We are very impressed - and intrigued by the quality of the responses regarding internet advertising. we have a lot to learn.

I will reply to the last few posts individually to avoid having long, drawn out responses.

Uncle Barry, With over 400 pages online - you are more than qualified as an expert.

I see the adwords program ( as recommended ) to be a quick and easy solution to getting back on the front page of a google search. Maybe only short term if we can work our way to the front page of the( target marketing ) main area of the front page. I am very interested in finding out how to make this happen without spending the dollars, and yes - i am prepared to work at it .

The click through rate of 15% was mentioned on several Internet Advertising sites. I have no idea whether this is correct, and note that you feel that it is higher.

Your suggestion not to use the same keywords as before has me slightly confused. As you will see when i PM you my website details - there are only so many keywords that could be used for our product. Could you perhaps elaborate on this?

Thankyou for offering to look at the website and then offer some suggestions.

Rocket.

 

[rocket67]

Re: Internet Advertising...... Advice needed

My advice in dealing with web designers and suppliers:

1. If they don't get back to you immediately and in a professional manner, they are probably not worth persuing
2. Get at least 3 quotes from different suppliers
4. Ask for references and follow them up
5. Only pay for the work that they do. Eg, sign contracts based on milestones rather than on timeframes.

Poor old Sensis. Getting a bit desperate. Aunty Internet is eating into their revenue :

Aussiest, Looks like excellent advice.

Our last Web designer was only interested in bumping up the price every time that he came to discuss our proposed website. We gave him the shove after his third attempt to put the price up.

A lot of advertising people are only interested in obtaining the sale - and do not follow through with good copy in their ads.
We learnt a long time ago to write our own copy for ads, and insist on seeing proof copy before giving final approval.

I agree with your comments about Sensis. IMO they know that the days of charging small business owners 40k for a full page ad every year are coming to an end. Maybe that is why they are trying to charge an extra 400% for internet advertising. I look forward to the day when we can tell them to go take a hike.

Rocket.

 

[rocket67]

try Facebook advertising. Superior to Google adwords IMHO.

Set up an account now and set your daily spend and away you go. You could have a campaign up and running in under ten minutes.

Hi charttv, I am of the old school - Fairly new to the internet, and have avoided opening a Facebook account. The conspiracy theorists have scared me away from it.

Thanks for your suggestion - I will look into it.

A possible problem is that our internet ads need to be restricted to South Australia. This is because we Retail, Manufacture and then Install our products in the customers homes.

Will see how it works.

Rocket.

 

[rocket67]

Bolle, It was an absolute delight to read your post. Great to see the writings of a true professional.

I had no idea that the text on a website could have an effect on the way that a google bot operates. You describe it so well.

Time for us to do a rewrite of our website.

Looking at various websites - it becomes obvious that many web designers do not understand these basic rules.

I am still absorbing parts of your post, and it is obvious that a lot of learning is required to completely understand how the search engines operates. My weekend will be spent in study to try and get a grip on it.

This all goes to show that one can blindly hand over money each month to advertisers and maybe not receive good value for money, or do a bit of homework and then do it yourself and reap the benefits in both money saved and the satisfaction of doing it yourself.

Thankyou very much for pointing me in the right direction.

Rocket.

 

[Bolle]

No worries. I enjoy my work, i really hate hearing things like you described; a 400% increase out of nowhere, for no added value?? Greed, that's all it is. Sure, sometimes it costs a lot for good service, but it sounds like that was just costing a lot for nothing. Bunch of damn cowboys, by the sound of it. And not the good kind.