Help please - Google/Yahoo search engine advertising

[ilove]

Please can anyone help?

We have a website and we currently advertise with google and yahoo, paying ppclick etc but it is costing a fortune every month.

Is there a cheaper way to get us up the google and yahoo search listings other than paying them for the search words etc and paying them per click on our website if someone comes to us through them?

This is an area I know VERY little about!

TalkinPeace - thanks for all your help! I said a while ago that I tried Facebook ads - rubbish! i am going to try your suggestion and I am sure that I will get addicted - I love that kind of thing!!!! Will let you know!

Thanks so much Talkinpeace, I have been thinking I should tackle the world of adwords, with your encouragement I think I will dip my toe in the water. I'm hoping that as my business is quite obscure there wont be masses of competition.
Another thing is the cpanel for my site gives me loads of stats that I don't understand - any pointers on what I should look for?

Anyone who does this as a business can you PM me please - I'm wanting to get someone to do this for us to see if it increases traffic/orders. Thanks

.

ilove
the whole point of this thread was to prove that hiring other people to do this is not a good idea
because only you know your business

Hi I can't work out how to PM you ilove

My dh does adwords for a living and is just branching out on his own starting his own company doing precisely that. He says he will take a look at your adwords account, with no obligation and let you know if he can help, and set up campaigns, keywords etc etc mumble mumble whatever he does!

Hopefully he can save you money as well as increase traffice.

I've persuaded him to give you "mumsnet rates" too (no obligation though even if he sends you a quote obviously!)

He is registered and accredited with Google as an Adwords expert, passed all his exams and compelted his training and can prove his registration with them.

Anyway you can work out how to do the PM thing?!

message poster - right hand side of the blue bar with the name in :-)

thank you!

i didnae mean to be mean to either your dh or ilove
but i've ten years experience of NOT hiring people for that job

I'd agree that in the case of most small businesses, you are better off learning to do this yourself. Google's own training centre (which is free) is pretty comprehensive.

And at the risk of stating the obvious, you also need to spend a lot of time thinking about your landing page - that is, the page that people arrive on, after clicking through to your site (either through pay-per-click on organic search results).

If you are spending lots of money getting lots of relevant click-throughs, but they aren't converting into sales .... then you definitely need to make sure your landing pages are as good as they can be.

Have a look at Google Website Optimiser, which lets you try out different landing pages randomly so you can see which is more effective. It's another useful free tool!

Heidi, I've replied to your pm - thanks

Everyone else, thankyou for your advice. However 2 years in and still losing money on advertising and hosting compared to sales, I need someone else to look with fresh eyes.

:)

Probably a bit late to post but do check out: Women Unlimited, ReallySimpleSEO and Can do Can be by Karen Skidmore. All offer lots of free advice and help for small business owners, and I get most of it, although I do struggle through it.

Better get back to my adwords now and check how much they are costing me!

Great thread and advice guys!! I have to go on my ad words and change it... I have it set at £12 a day!! OMG!!

I have checked out some of Google's webmaster tools - apparently I have identical key words for my pages in my site... problem is it is a retail sites selling variations of the same product. ie.. toys will be in teh meta tags for each of my 100+ products.. how do I overcoem this? Will Google think I am spamming even though I am not??

any help would be appreciated.....

there will always be overlapping keywords
sitename ; toys ; children
but EACH page should have at least one unique worth that describes why people should got to it
eg tonka digger ; tonka truck ; tonka roller
tonka on each but the overall effect is different

recently I have found that the google spider is reacting more to the body text than the header tags so make sure your page is really descriptive

adwords ; £12 a day is NOTHING if you are earning £500 from it - all things in proportion