Founded in 2008. The Landscape Juice Network (LJN) is the largest and fastest growing professional landscaping and horticultural association in the United Kingdom.
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For the researching visitor there's a wealth of landscaping ideas, garden design ideas, lawn advice tips and advice about garden maintenance.
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We got a free £75 worth of google ad words from simply business and tried it out. You don't need to go through a business- you can just sign up yourself. However, some things we noted were:
1) We didn't like our advert coming up on unusual or suspect websites- we had to search hard to find a way for our advert just to appear on google because otherwise you ad starts being linked to things that are nothing to do with gardening.
2) The more you want to appear on google the more you have spend per click/appearance - this can be costly.
3) It costs you when people click on your advert -doesn't mean they will call you though.
So, in the end we just used SEO for our website -this is free and we don't really miss google adwords.
That is just personal experience and next month we are due to get another £75 from simply business- so we will use it because it is free but will make sure our ad only shows on google.
Hope that is helpful - like i said that is just our experience- other people may have had a more positive time with it.
Susan
Recently loaded Google Analytics onto my website to see where traffic is coming from. Several paid adverts similar to Yell were not being touched and l have now terminated them. Working on Facebooks, Blogs, Google Places etc etc is driving traffic so concentrating on them. Will top-up with Google Adwords as very flexible and completely under your control and not another company who will happily take your money, provide poor customer service and ultimately lead to few results.
You can often pick up a free trial vouchers for adwords to the sum of up to £75 of clicks - which will give you a chance to play at no cost to you.
Suggest you say no to Yell! Try Adwords for often alot cheaper and your in control!
Also load Analytics on your site to view where customers are reaching you from - it also ties into your Adwords campaigns too.
Good luck
Hi Phil
Yeh don't bother with firms selling you Adwords when it is very easy to do yourself. As Craig says, make the most of free tools like Google Places as they obviously rank high in local searches - so make sure your 'profile' is as completed as it can be with images etc. Also make sure you have done all the free SEO you can do - again advice available from Google and others.
Craig's advice re Google Analytics is also good - I use it too and it's fascinating to find out where traffic comes from (including other LJN members checking you out!!) - and how valuable it is - some of it will inevitably be bounces - people finding your details to spam or whatever rather than seroius searches. But you can start to see patterns emerging and adjust your marketing or keywords in your website etc accordingly....
If you want to try Adwordsout, as Aye Naing says, maybe grab yourself a free voucher to trial so it doesn't really cost you anything to experiment. Adwords do offer plenty of free advice and tutorials to help you get the most out of it.
I would definitely recommend
1. targeting your geographical area
2. Using negative keywords to filter out things you don't want e.g. garden design/landscape jobs or software etc
3 trying some keywords as specific phrase match searches rather than broad searches. There is loads of advice out there both on Adwords itself and previous posts on here to name but two.
4. Try 2 or 3 different adverts in your campaign to see which wording gets you the best response.
I used a free voucher first time round and experimented with the above so that I could filter out much of the unwanted traffic/impressions. When I got another through Simply Business, Adwords would not accept it because I had already used vouchers on my account. But I did pay for a little while (3 weeks) earlier in the season when things looking quiet. Certainly increased (doubled) traffic to my website from my target area, with lots of page impressions, good time spent on my website (as Craig says if you also have Google Analytics working, you can compare notes and analyse). Had a few calls/emails and one new client from it during that time so it paid for itself.
So definitely worth trying if you are keen to increase your web presence and cheaper possibly more cost-effective than print advertising (depending where you are etc) - and you are in control - can end your 'campaign' whenever you want - or resume it when things get slower.
Hope that helps a bit - good luck!
You can help yourself a lot by having a search engine friendly website, and a regular updated one as well.
This SEO guide from Google is a great start: SEO Starter Guide
PS - Thanks Stuart for your offer to help other members :)
TVG Landscaping Limited said:
You can keep this inhouse, we got approached by a firm saying they were Google.. the more I pushed for info the more elusive they became until the admitted that they were a google partner, google does not use SEO partners so I Googled there company name, they featured heavy on blogs on Money saving expert and it was not good reading.
Nobody can promise 1st or 2nd page rankings as it not just adwords that gets you there it is the organic hits, how visible your web pages are to google, keywords and much more.
I agree with Craig. keep it in house but get yourself the full set of google tools, Adwords, Analytics and Google Webmaster tools (handy analysis of your site) by using these you should be able to get yourself better placed.
Couple of tips:
1) Get the tools Craig and I have mentioned - verys simple and quick to use
2) know your target audience, you can restrict ad placements by time & country, if you dont export don't advertise to the world.
3) Turn of the mobile ads, We've found the mobile ads can use more of your budget but these are not always honest clicks. many are search bots or crawlers. We've turned our mobile ads off and restrict them to desktop machines. our budget lasts longer
4) Keywords are king. learn which keywords your customers are using and keep monitoring them, some keywords may sound good but will swallow your budget with the wrong customers and not get you any return... ie. "Hort fleece" YES / "Fleece" NO ( jumpers / clothes / animals etc).
5) Like Auctions decide how much you want to spend before you start otherwise it can get very costly. you can still feature by using keywords smartly. Ie. last year "rock salt" was costing over £3 per click, but "Grit salt" or "Winter salt" was a fraction of the cost but still got us on the first page. companys paying £3 per click burned bright and fast but we stayed on the first page for a lot longer than they did.
6) Join blogs & forums. Lots of people read these and when your name appears offering comments and advice it can get people back to your site this helps with the organic listings.
7) you will need to set a time to check your adwords and analytics regularly. If you just assign keywords & a budget then leave it and not check, you will not get anywhere. spend a little time regularly to stay on top of the trends and you'll soon see your name on the first page and get a return.
Might sound complicated and time consuming but once it's all set up and you get to grips with it all it really is very simple.
Good luck
Barry
Just me chiming in to agree with all the advice, except for
I wouldnt bother with the Adwords, as your services (Garden Design) will be costly to get any decent returns!
During Feb-Sept we spend between £50-£200 per month on Adwords, and it's been responsible for almost every job we've had this year, and lots of other enquiries.
I'd recommend
• unless you offer a nationwide service, narrowing your audience by confining searches to a geographical location
• switching off having your ads run in the Google Content Network
• learning how to modify search words and phrases. eg. "-free" weeds out people without a budget
• run Google Analytics and learn how to use it
• stick to your budget
• Adjust the times your ads are displayed - we run at 50% of bid value during the early part of the week, building to 200% of bid value during the weekends, and we have made sure our ads aren't displayed during the night
• don't waste your money on very popular search terms. "Landscaper" will be expensive per click, and not bring you the clients you need. Be as specific as you can when setting your search terms
• take the time to trial different wordings in your ads. We ran a month's trial during March this year when I set up eight differently worded ads, then reviewed the click-through rates after 2 weeks. This eventually led to us working out the most successful wording
• If you are selling garden design, use the phrase "garden design" in the wording of your ad, as Google will display it in bold