Dotgov

[Protilers]

Oh.....and the ceramics are not 21mm..........they are 12mm...............GARY!!!!.........you want it?......

 

[Ajax123]

It's just a similar set up to Barbour abi or glennigans as far as I can see. Not a scam just a service you buy in order to take some of the leg work out of finding leads. None of these systems promise to give you work, just leads that you can chase yourself. Those leads presumably go to anyone and everyone in a given area who subscribes to the service. I've seen lots of such services pop up in the last few years as the recession has bitten and work has been harder and harder to find.

I guess in a way it's similar to what I do in my own job albeit we don't charge for leads. What I do is go out into the market place, find jobs and get them interested in or specified as GYPSOL screed then hand those leads out to my customers to chase

I suspect that now building is on the up and contractors will become busier some of these services will no longer be viable as folks will not need the help to find the work. Government contracts are a law unto themselves though so if you want to do that sort of work you will probably have to use a service like this to get the contacts you need.

 

[Dan]

Fair enough then. The plumbing ones I see clearly aren't this sort of thing.

 

[chris.tiling]

Cheers guys.
I must admit when I was speaking to them on the phone, I assumed it was a tie in on .gov and not a company called dotgov...so this was the first warning (shouldn't assUme!).
I am gonna leave well alone (you go for it tho Geoff - then subbie me in!) as I don't trust the middle man lead generators. They may well be genuine, but there is no guarantee I will get my money back.
Cheers one and all for your input

 

[stone tiler]

"Protilers rates as no 1 in the natural links in google,bing and yahoo for tilers in london, london tilers and tiling contractors in london!"

Hi Lee

Out of interest who does your website seo work to get you up that high on google? Is it constant work or just bi-monthly couple of hours done by yourself? We are looking to get our site further up the rankings but everyone I speak to gives phone number quotes for the work needed and no guarantees. PM me if you'd rather not discuss in open

Cheers

Kev

 

[Dan]

There's never a guarantee and if a firm guarantees you number one position they're probably talking out of their arse. Search engines control who ranks where using algorithms. Not seo firms.

That said you can find a skilled guy who understands the algorithms and can rank you highly but it's an ongoing battle if you want number one position forever.

And I wouldn't pay a penny to rank number one in bing or yahoo. Google gets more than 95% of all search traffic in the UK.

Adwords can be a good short term thing but you don't want to do it forever.

 

[stone tiler]

There's never a guarantee and if a firm guarantees you number one position they're probably talking out of their arse. Search engines control who ranks where using algorithms. Not seo firms.

That said you can find a skilled guy who understands the algorithms and can rank you highly but it's an ongoing battle if you want number one position forever.

And I wouldn't pay a penny to rank number one in bing or yahoo. Google gets more than 95% of all search traffic in the UK.

Adwords can be a good short term thing but you don't want to do it forever.

Hi Dan
Yeah I know theres no promises of number 1 spot but even keeping on the first page would be good. I realise its an on-going thing and you have to accept everyone wants to be no 1 and wants to knock you off the top. My problem is to stay on the first page is costing a fair amount of money. I can honestly say I'm not sure if pound for pound I get get a good enough return for the investment. Tried adwords. Found it a total con that needed constant tweeking.

For you guys who do the seo yourself and know what the score is, a question. Whats the best things I can do myself to help with rankings? Is it a blog? Constant/monthly re-writing of information on the site to appear fresh to the google spiders? More and more pics?
The guy I use at the mo keeps going on about quality links and sub-text/hidden text...things I can't do. It seems to be working but I can't believe everyone is going through this seo bo##ock ache!

 

[Dan]

You don't need to keep rewriting anything really. If you have a testimonials page and a picture gallery of some sort, that'll update the header code to let Google spiders know you've updated your site. New links to it also make google realise the content is still current. So links are a biggy and always have been and always will be.

Unique content is key. Just make sure you've written a lot about what you do, and the area's you do those in need to be written a fair bit too. You need to tell Google what you want to rank for by pointing it out obviously on pages using page titles well and the page meta description (the hidden bit your guy is probably talking about.

What you build the site in usually helps too. I generally recommend Wordpress to people as you can update that easily once it is ranking without screwing up the main settings. And you can edit the pages, add / change pages, and not screw up the navigation etc.

But you should be able to take over it from your guy and not be tied into ongoing costs once it's ranking well. You just then need to continue adding testimonials or blogs or something once a month or so. And lots of lovely pictures. That's for your site visitors moreso but it'll help a little with SEO.

Adwords is cool. You want to use negative filters though. So "Tilers in London" will be competitive. Avoid that. And avoid "Tilers" and "London" on their own. You'd want to use more specific local locations and you'd find the bidding isn't so competitive so you'll get your clicks for a cheaper price. Then any clicks that are costing a lot that you find you're paying for, use the negative filter to cancel just those ones. After a week of toying around you'll find you're paying pence for each click, and a % of those should get you calls, and a % of those will turn into quotes, and a % of those jobs. So it's working out really what has been worth it click-wise and what's a waste of time. But that's not Google's fault really. It's just testing and toying for a bit yourself to clock it.

 

[stone tiler]

Keeping up with the website just seems like such an involved thing. Its almost a full time job if you use adwords aswell. I'm running out of time to tile!!!

I do add more and more pics but the blog needs more updates. I'm in wordpress for the main site and the e-commerce bolt on bit is in Jshop. Both seem fairly easy to use. I'm not sure it'll ever be at the point of me taking over the running of it tho. 18 months in to the campaign so far and still seems like loads to do and although we have quite a few search terms going on, very few seem to be doing the business.