Google have sent me a £50 gift card

[KatyMac]

To use on 'adwords'

As a tiny local childcare setting is there any point doing anything with it

(If so what should I do?)

I got one as well... I'll put it in the play cash register, when I locate it again. I already have an ad-words account, so I can't use the voucher - would have thought Google would have checked who already had an account.

Not really sure there is that much benefit for you. You will need to set the filters very well so that the ad is only shown to people within a small geographic area.

It will cost you to setup an account... but after the initial charge the £50 will be credited to it, so you can use it to test with. Then just not put any more money in once the credit runs out.

Maybe not then

Do you want to come & play?

The setup cost to register is only a fiver I think, but in any case you could set up AdWords with a limit of say 5 or 10 quid a month and just 'pause' any adverts in periods when you aren't needing to advertise.

You can set the hours of day when the ads are shown and make them UK-specific if that helps, then add keywords which make matches depend on your locality. It is pretty easy to set up, so you only risk the initial fiver for registering, and can set things to limit how fast the credit gets used up.

Rather than just ignore it, you could surely spare the fiver knowing the credit sits on the AdWords account (and I think they are nearly all time-limited so it is a case of 'use it or lose it' really, isn't it.

(I get a voucher every couple of weeks and plan to use them as 'prizes' in a free draw for anyone registering to be listed on a UK wide index, or getting a website developed for them.)

You can make the ads UK specific, plus add a Radius as well, to help better target the ads.

It is something to play with and won't cost much to setup... except for Time. Time is of course something you may not have much of given work and family circumstances.

When I did it, I got more hits on my website but no conversions (no paying customers). So to me it was a waste of Time.

You are even more geographically limited than I am, as you only provide childcare from a fixed location... so your target market is very small geographically.

If I put in Childminder YourVillageName - Google lists you in 1st position.

If I put in childcare YourVillageName - Google lists you in 1st position under Google Places and several times in first page of results (from various websites including your own).

There are very few adwords ads coming up for those searches... so won't be hard to get an ad to appear there. But would having an ad in the Adwords section really make any difference?

Where it MAY make a difference is on Google Content Network, where Adwords ads are displayed on non-google sites, such as on Blogs. Then if someone blogs about childcare or childminders and talks about your part of the country, then I think you ad may show up.

It is hard to know how it will go. I did it and it got me no new business. So give it a try if you like.

NetworkGuy - How can a small business which provides a service at a fixed location benefit best from Adwords? Customers of the business will be mostly from the same village, or a nearby village.

My view is that by using AdWords you should at least guarantee a listing, even if (for whatever reason, including changes to algorithms, some glitch at Google's end, some glitch in network connectivity meaning they don't spider your website, or for any other reason [such as accidentally being blacklisted for breaking some hidden Google 'rule' - such as having text the same colour as the background] a site gets missed.

However, I can see your point that it may amount to little or no advantage if clicks are costing cash but bring in no new business. I think it may be worth monitoring how someone reaches your site (the free counter from SiteMeter also gives whatever info it can for the last 50 unique visitors [it detects someone visiting and then returing within minutes, so that doesn't get logged as a 'new' visitor].

SiteMeter will show a few details about their browser, any search terms entered if they came after clicking from a search engine, and a minimum of extra [not full IP address, but ISP, for example, if possible]. Of course someone could write their own code to log this info, but why reinvent the wheel. (Full IP info can be found from your website logs if that was important.)

I'm not really that hot on the media / promotion / branding aspects, and consider SEO (search engine optimisation) that some firms charge a fortune for is not necessarily a waste of time/money, but may prove disappointing. For example, if a SEO firm rings a photographer and claims they can be top of the rankings for say "Chester photographer" (or some similar phrase) then that photographer might be conned paying a high fee, and will appear top for a bit.

However the same SEO firm could ring 30 photographers in the Chester area and charge each of them the same high fee. Some will feel fleeced if their site doesn't get into the first page of entries and you can guarantee that even if the search terms seem unique, there could easily be another entry which matches within days / weeks.

You have to remember my client base is a very small part of 3 post codes; the main part of each post code is too far away to use me.

I'll have a look

OK, seems like AdWords might be unsuitable for some "very local" services. Worth knowing...

Katymac, Goggle Keyword Tool says that the following keywords may be good for your site:

childminder
childminders
childminding
clubs after school
out of school club
after school club
out of school clubs
after school clubs
ofsted for childminders
childminders uk
uk childminders
childminding uk
childminder uk
nursery or childminder
childminder or nursery
after school clubs for children
childminding from home
childminding at home
before school clubs
before after school clubs
before and after school clubs
out of school childcare
breakfast after school clubs
breakfast and after school clubs
after school clubs uk
ofsted outstanding childminders
activities for after school clubs
after school clubs activities

Some of those are not suitable.

Currently the keyword nanny is more popular in the UK than childminder. 165,000 local monthly searches vs 40,500

You need to think about what parents are likely to type into the search engine to find a childminder in your local area.

Would be nice if it did work for very local services but I couldn't find a way to make it work for me. Keyword phrases that are only one word are useless as there can be a lot of competition from companies paying quiet a high clickthrough. Yet parents may not compose google searches with more than just a single word.

So if looking for a babysitter, they may just enter in babysitter. Some will include a large geographic area... such as babysitter in surrey. While on occasion you may get the keyword plus the village/town name.

Talking of which my website needs updating

It's so hard not to put variable data on

I wish I could update it myself but it's so nice I'd be scared to mess it up

Katy - you should be able to modify individual pages quite easily, as you won't be changing the structure, just the wording.

If you give me the FTP login details, I can change things for you.

Katy - I'd use it and have found Google adwords to be a very useful and cheap way to get the word out. Do you use Google Analytics? You can see how people find your site and then think how you would like for them to find it.

I just googled "childminders my hyperlocal area" and came up with a Mumsnet discussion as the top result! You might try those sorts of searches and if no one actually uses them then change - you won't be charged if no one clicks.

I've had good luck using adwords - found it cheap and effective. I lower the daily spend if we're getting good press that's driving traffic (it's currently at £1/day) and raise it when we've dropped off the radar a bit.

Networkguy, I get the vouchers too but can only make them work for the site they're associated with. Does that make sense? I mean, I get them for my freelance site but want to use them for another one and can't. Actually, I should have kept the separate accounts as different campaigns on the same account. Live and learn!

Really

Hmm I'll have to look in my archives - I'll get back to you

Is that rude to the person who did it? It seems a bit cheeky

Can you use the voucher even though you already have an adwords account JJ? The small print on the letter I got said that it was for new advertisers only. Maybe there are different vouchers out there.

KatyMac - depends on the contract. If the contract is for ongoing maintenance then you should go to them. If they only did the initial design, then they have been paid for their work - you are not committed to go back to them for changes.

Nannynick, it doesn't say so explicitly on the letter but I think you're right. I was just hoping for a free £50 on the one I use.

Katy, just make a backup of whatever you're changing and then you're set if goes wrong. And don't worry about messing up - everyone does it all the time (look at the ultra brief down times here!) and, usually, people don't notice or if they do, it doesn't scare them off. It's the best way to learn.

"the site they're associated with"

The ones I get are in an IT paper, and are for new AdWords users only rather than tied to a website, so I cannot use them myself, anyway...

Mine was a mailing (snail mail )

While I have you nice people here, can you recommend a programme for recovering data I accidentally deleted off a memory stick (I haven't used it since)

I've seen nstances where the web desigbn firm chares a year's hosting fee to allow the transfer of hosting to some other firm, situations where the "Registrant" s shown as the web design firm (so in a spute over ownership, the end user would lose out), and where the copyright on content does not show the customer who commissioned the project, but the web design firm, so they can say something on the lines of 'if you leave us, you need to get the new site designed from scratch'.

All of the above I consider immoral methods of trading, either ripping off the customer with high charges or holding them over a barrel so they cannot easily move to another web host or design firm. Sure, if you switch design firm, it may be to update your content rather than rewrite from scratch, but some end users must come away from web design firms with a bad view and I would not wish to be associated with unscrupulous operators!

I've actually been working on a 'Get your firm on the web' site which suggests the steps an end user might follow to ensure the registration is under their control, that they are able to switch hosting without any need to 'ask' (let alone pay a fee) the existing web design firm, and that they ensure copyright is clearly shown as theirs. Also helps to get a copy of the website on CD from the web design firm, so in the case of a dispute, it can be shown whether the firm has altered copyright messages etc.

Harsh and seemingly over-cautious, perhaps, but it might stop some of the nastier web firms from ripping small firms off. Then there is GBBO.co.uk which means a firm can get set up for free, the online web site development tools from some hosting firms and finally letting a web developer do it so an end user doesn't spend two or three times as much of their own valuable time when they could be earning twice the cost of the site being done for them, in the same number of hours.

Katy - try www.piriform.com/recuva

Thanks Nick (is it easy?)

yes, very easy. Has a Wizard which asks simple questions such as filetype, location, then it sees what it can find.

Seems good

Is there an easy way to compare the contents of 2 files?

The filesize may be different, so that would indicate that they were not the same. The last modified date may also help show which is the later version.

Good idea

Thanks - I think it worked but I had it all in folders, & now it's all in one folder

No system I know of will recover the folder structure. You will need to recreate that.

Good that you got the files back though