Web advertising advice wanted.

Dave_Kilkenny

Winter months and work is slow for my father, I work on his website and online marking to date its been quite successful with adverts on DoneDeal and just search hits.
I am looking to improve incoming traffic to the website and possibly any other tips. Any other information you want let me know?

Business: Stoneyford Engineering, A Kilkenny based business specializing in the production and installation of wrought iron gates and railings. Also we do custom metal work and repair.
Ie. Years of work with Roadstone Waterford(Before their closure) for repair safety cages etc, on their quarrying machinery.
Or; The old Spiller's flour mill in Waterford, working on their silo's.

Target market: Home owners and building contractors.

Target geographic: Republic of Ireland.

Website: [Unsure if I can link this after reading the forum charter let me know if I am allowed]

Google Analytics Information

tomED

What online marketing did you do? The site doesn't look like it's been optimised at all?

You really need to plan a campaign to be found for the services you provide. I'd also take a look at the services you provide and see if you can describe them in a way that people will actually search for.

If you can, you should increase the number of pages on the site to give yourself more opportunities of being found.

Obviously there is a lot more you can do, but you really need to improve the site first before it's worthwhile doing anything else.

pixeldesign

Exactly! You have to find some good keywords to optimize your website, analyze the competition, write articles related to your business, so web spiders will have something to index.After you find the keywords, build backlinks, use Social Media and Social Bookmarking sites.There are many ways to increase your traffic/popularity .You can use services like adwords to advertise your business if you have some money.Dont rely on Google.You can optimize for Bing, Yahoo and Ask aswell as there is less competition, and you can get more visitors.Also you have to learn more about search engine marketing, so you can learn how to convert your visitors into sales.

blue4ever

You have only 5 pages in Google index – really try and get a few more –

These ‘pages’ Large gates, Unique custom fabrications, Railings are really only popups and have no information for Google to digest.

Get you page titles in order – more keywords – you have done work in the keywords meta – but that’s more or less ignored now. Structure good page titles.

You don’t currently rank (in first 100) for automatic gates or riveted gates for example.

I’d have a page (not a pop) for each of the products available and some decent information on each product (plus pics). Photo galleries are great – but not much information in them.

Google maps – get the business premises listed there. Also map your premises in the contact section (? is there a specific address – get GPS for your location)

That’s a few to be getting on with!

C

yeahme

• Traditional style riveted gates
• Large gates
• Unique custom fabrications
• Railings
• Automatic Gates
• Balconies
• Staircases
• Plant maintenance

you should have a page describing each of these in full,
with the title of each. and then use keywords.
to look for keywords of your competition use "meta seo" add on for chrome browser,
its what i used, very simple for a beginner like me!!
also business wise you have not defined if you are a business2business or
a business2customer company.
To me its very important to make a distinction of what you are.
and if your both well, use pages for both.
something like a residential farmhouse gate page, and then another
for commercial premises gate. etc. etc.
also you're using google analytics,
you can also use webmaster tools, to highlight the area you want to be found
which is Ireland, AFAIK and I dont know much, it may help increase ranking,
I'll leave the tools advice to the people here who know better than me though.
I've also done a blog, twitter and facebook ac and hopefully that will help more.....

Dave_Kilkenny

tomED wrote: »

What online marketing did you do? The site doesn't look like it's been optimised at all?

Obviously there is a lot more you can do, but you really need to improve the site first before it's worthwhile doing anything else.

In regards to online marketing, I have been advertising on the popular Irish website DoneDeal. This has been my only source of online marketing and would like to learn more.
I am considering putting an advert in the local paper in the comming weeks but need to see if its viable.

pixeldesign wrote: »

Good keywords to optimize your website, analyze the competition,
After you find the keywords, build backlinks,

I am working on about 5 keywords at the moment. These are industry and location specific.
I have analyzed my competition and am working on improving my website now to be more competitive.
In regards to back links, I am clueless as to where to get started.

blue4ever wrote: »

You have only 5 pages in Google index – really try and get a few more –

You don’t currently rank (in first 100) for automatic gates or riveted gates for example.

I’d have a page (not a pop) for each of the products available and some decent information on each product (plus pics). Photo galleries are great – but not much information in them.

Google maps – get the business premises listed there. Also map your premises in the contact section.

I am now expanding my website, increasing the content and rewriting the old content.
I have also narrowed down my keywords and am aiming to get rank number one as regards to my keywords which aren't overly ambitious but very important and would increase traffic significantly.

As regards to my images, I am looking for a simple gallery solution for this at the moment something with a CMS would be ideal. Id like a thumbnail gallery (Large thumbnails) that support captions under them, then when you click the thumbnail it will redirect to a new page with the larger image on it with a caption again.
Although it is vital I can incorporate this image gallery script into my current website with my current websites CSS.

I am in the process of creating a page for each individual product. For example, traditional old style riveted gates.

yeahme wrote: »

business2businessor a business2customer company.

also you're using google analytics,
you can also use webmaster tools,

I use both webmaster tools and analytics, in regards to my target market I believe not stating either suggests both. Although I am working on a commercial section for my website.

Dave_Kilkenny

Have updated the website a lot writing up pages for specific products and services, constructive criticism wanted.

Will be changing the gallery when I have time and starting the advertising campaign in full power in the new year.

tomED

That's a lot better, you could go further and rename the file names to include your keywords.

e.g gates.html to domestic-gates.html

Also include your keyphrases on the page - for example you have domestic gates page, but that phrase is only mentioned in the alt tag of an image. You need to include it in the text too.

blue4ever

Much better - really getting there. The gates and railings pages are already indexed. Would you stick the map on the contacts page (I know its on other pages, but punters are funny at times)

byrne0f56789

Good stuff on SEO.

Search advertising like Google AdWords is something you should think about. However, you need to work on your conversion rates.

It's about achieving a workable Return on Investment on the advertising spend. You need to work out your limits. Make sure you make a profit from the get go.

Start with low bids then gradually increase them if you don't see any traffic. Monitor everything as you are already doing with analytics.

Best of luck.

seachto7

Also, bear in mind, if you are going to do an Adwords campaign, that a conversion for one service could be a lot more than another service or product you offer.

I think having a contact form to fill in on site would be useful.

Get some kind of a "contact us" tab or button, and make it visible.

You could track leads/conversions off this page.

At the moment, it would appear people are getting to the contact us page, and getting phone numbers.

So, how will you know your ROI on a PPC campaign, if you cannot track it online. Even with a contact page, you will probably be getting offline leads as a result of people viewing the site.

But it would be no harm to have a contact us page....