Websites and SEO's (search engine optimazation)

Wondering who here has experience with SEO's and how effective they are. I know they can be a bit pricey, but everyone I've talked to said its well worth it. Our area is pretty much wide open, a few companies have sites but they're not that impressive and are rarely updated, and no one stands above the rest. No one here, to my knowledge, utilizes an SEO.

Various others I've talked to said its the best advertisement investment they've ever made, because now a days everyone uses the internet and google to find companies. They get more calls from folks finding their website than they do by any others means.

I think Jon has some experience with them, I recall reading somewhere that he hired one awhile back. Hopefully he chimes in.

I built my website myself and fine-tuned it. Took hours! I am currently paying an SEO firm several hundred dollars to work their magic and bump my ratings and visibility. There are so many intricacies to SEO, that hiring a pro is necessary, imo. I think the return on investment is going to be great. Other than referrals, my only form of advertising is the web.
check it:
www.simplyarbortree.com

Nice looking site! The pics in the gallery could be a tad more focused...

Looks really good. I like the picture of you and your wife. I think that is a good idea to show your pic that way the customer won't worry your a rock star! Lol. Your education and history is top notch as well. I agree with MB on the pictures also could use some Photo Shop touch ups. Contrast adjustment on first pic. If you don't want to fool with it yourself you can always barter with a pro photographer to take a few shots to add to your website. Best lighting is to the photographers back for most pics and the best time which is very important is right before sunset or beginning of sunrise for professional quality shots. Just my Opinion

Just knock out some more pics with a better camera.

Thanks for the input guys, I really appreciate it! Regarding the photos, they are actually all great quality shots... When they did the SEO fixes, they had to reduce the pixel dimensions down to 640x420 or something, so that the page would load faster. Apparently page loading speeds affect website performance and ranking. It does make it look kind of shoddy in my opinion, because pictures on a website are eye-catching and good for clients. Yep MIT, gotta let them know your just a regular tree guy, haha! Thanks for the feedback, alohas!

Ranger- Do you currently have a site? If not it's pretty easy to set up a site with wordpress or something similar. For almost free. Sites like Godaddy.com you can get your domain name and wordpress install all in one shot. From that point find a skin (template) to slap on the wordpress site. Surf youtube and you'll get walked throught the process.

If your area is untapped for websites you might luck out and come up quick in google searches. Get a googe places page and get the site indexed. Again youtube how to do that. Read up on keywords for your area. There are plug ins for wordpress pages that will help with SEO.

It will be fustrating at times but you'll learn quick. If your area is jammed with competition then some SEO help might be worth it.

No, I really need to do something because I am getting only word of mouth clients which is good if I did a lot of my previous bidding better. So I need to invest in something that will bring in more opportunities for better paying jobs. Right now I am stuck in this cycle of just getting by. No plan being implemented. At least not on paper.

Here is my new Yodle.com designed webpage after the initial phone consult and one quick set of revisions. I've emailed pictures, but they're not up yet...http://www.treeservicecompanyolympia.com/services.html

https://www.google.com/search?q=tre....5.0....0...1c.1.24.serp..1.4.306.XXPIPtBqvEo

under "tree care olympia" its gotten me on the first page. "Tree service Olympia" doesn't. "Arborist Olympia WA" gets my self-designed page on the first page http://www.southsoundtree.com .

$400 a month.

Just started.

Will report back with more...

400 bucks a month? Crikey!!!

Adrian, ever use wordpress?

If not, look into it. Buy a template you like from themeforest and fill it out with your own content.

Once it's got some good content start some adwords/bing campaigns in your area. Google specifically likes a lot of front page unique content. You can't leverage your site to the top of the bidding just with money. They score your site on a lot of different criteria on top of your bid. Bing I'm not sure about.

Get set up on google plus as well. When someone searches for a tree service in your area the google map will be at the top. When you sign up to google plus, it'll send a postcard with a verification to your business address. Once you verify you'll show up on the map portion of the google listings. Also, it'll put your address under any top or right side ads you buy.

You're on the right track and you can generate interest without a ton of spend.

Some simple photo enhancement software will improve on those photos. I don't think it need affect file size. I think this is an improvement. Maybe a tad heavy on sharpness, but it is all adjustable. With a reasonably good photo to begin with, the world is at your command. Nice shot, by the way. Didn't anything come with your operating system? An array of downloads off the web available as well.

Sounds like good advice Adam! Of course it's only good advice if one takes it

Adrian, just saw this post. I did a lot of back and forth and research on this subject. Personally, I think a website designed by yourself can be a lot better than paying someone else to do it. Not in every case, but it really isn't hard to design a website with the programs available today and it often gives a personal touch to the site that you can't get from someone outside. I designed this site 100% on google sites (www.hawaiiarborist.com) which is a very limiting program, there are much better ones out there (I've heard wordpress is good).

As far as the SEO stuff goes, I no longer invest in that. At one point I was paying $500 a month to a company (orange soda) to do SEO optimization work to the site. I'm not 100% sure it did much, I noticed some traffic increase and a slight improvement in organic ratings but it wasn't dramatic. After 5 months I stopped using them.

Advice:

Get familiar with google analytics and track your website visitors. Get to know how your visitors are finding you. I found through my site that a lot of people were finding us through google adwords (which I had setup approx. $200/month account), and overall I found this to be the most effective way to advertise yourself online. When you are busy you can reduce your budget, when you're slow add money to it and calls start coming in. Works great.

You can do your own SEO work for the organic ratings. Start linking your site to everything and anything online (that has some value). Facebook, youtube, twitter, local sites; everything you can find to link and point back to your site (adds credibility in the eyes of search engines). Keywords are far overrated and overhyped, don't stress them. I don't have any keywords (google sites does not allow) and we rank consistently in the first page for most searches related to trees and hawaii in organic searches. Make sure you use google maps, bing maps all the available search engine directories, set it up.

Personally, I wouldn't invest in the SEO stuff again. I think they helped some but not proportionate to the investment. I think with some midnight oil and some hard work you can do a far better job.

jp

MasterBlaster said:

400 bucks a month? Crikey!!!

Click to expand...

That's a bottom of the barrel package. Erik shopped around. This is on just the website. A lot of marketing/ SEO stuff (the website cost is minimal). No online marketplace (no need) or the other fancy stuff that some websites use. Unlimited Customer Support and free updates on a professional webpage with a mobile webpage for smartphone users. Will let you know what I find over time. Initial 3 month contract, with month to month thereafter. Supposed to take 60 days for the 'organic' listings to ramp up with the keyword type of thing. They pay advertising to places like google and bing, IIRC, to get my listings up. A guaranteed number of leads per month, funneled through their phone number to my phone.

Had two leads turn into sales, some bids outstanding, some bids possibly lost to competition (naturally). One job, in a new neighborhood had the neighbor add $300 simple tree on Friday when we go to finish. They have huge Doug-firs over concrete that they will want out sometime in the future...crane work. They replied that they were expecting such a ballpark bid as Erik gave, $5000/ tree or for both trees. Bad LZ, primaries in vicinity, big trees.


Still have a lot of updates to do on website... http://www.treeservicecompanyolympia.com/, just got a gallery up on the first page of some initial pictures. The pink flowering cherry is our house.

I used to do it myself.

If an area is not saturated with similar companies with websites, it's worth it. I used to be in the top 3 for years. About 5 years ago, it got to where there's dozens if not a couple hundred tree, landscape and maintenance company sites in the area.

At that point, I challenge any good SEO professional to make a good promising case that they can keep a company in the top few slots. It's not that it won't happen. But only a fool would not acknowledge that there are likewise many good SEO professionals, as are many good tree care professionals. If a bunch of SEO folks are using smart practices on multiple sites, how would it be that all the companies could all be 1st, 3rd or even 8th, reliably?

But certainly if there's little competition, it should be EASY to bump your results with a competent person helping. With minimal competition, it almost gets to the point where the site owner themselves could do half the work if they had the ability and program to work the code and upload their site files.

In the landscape trade here, I know there's a few companies reliably doing well. One ... the site owner has done a lot of the work himself for years consistently. His site also has AGE ... and age of a site apparently has value from what we've kept track of over 8 to 10 years.

A few others pay people, and I've began to consider that if they invested what they are paying for SEO into other forms of advertising, maybe they would do just as well.

8 years ago, I would have thought that SEO and internet was the only way to go, and that all other advertising would become inconsequential. Then ... as I noticed several hundred new websites, but NO NEW 1st, 2nd, or 3rd place on page 1 of search results, it became crystal clear than other forms of advertising would soon become just as relevant to use and optimize.

Presently, I have one webpage for one facet of the "green" profession that few companies compete for ... and it's sort of my back door to gaining as much landscaping work as I used to get through my home page. So I just do very minor SEO for that one web page.

If I were back down in a small town like Medford, Oregon, again, I'd certainly bother with the whole website and what's related to the whole, on the internet.