Adwords how does it work has anyone used them

[dilly]

Hii,I am looking at the Adwords advertising method,never used it but want to try just wanted some feedback on if it has worked for tradesman.i have a web page ,yellow pages and their online equivalent.how have costs compared.
Thanks

 

[dreadnoughtheating]

Which 'profession' ?

Profession immaterial. Ditch YP and Yell ASAP - absolute carp. Don't even consider Thompson or PhoneBook. Bitter experience.

Oh, and don't expect the public to use the English Language to search for your services 'like what you do.'

DH

 

[dilly]

spoke to google adwords the other day it would cost me £2.60 per click so i would need a budget of around £300 per week according to them to make it worth my while,they reckon on around a traffic of only 720 people looking for these services in my area per month surely self employed people can't afford such high prices.There must be a better way would appreciate your feedback or experiences

 

[dreadnoughtheating]

dilly, what/which service are you gonna provide?. And, what geographical area?

My daily budget is £5 per day (I am a sole trader, 4 extra clicks, jobs @£1.25 'costs per click' is adequate for me), but, clicks only turn into phone calls/bookings IF, and its a big 'if', they like the look of your website, can find what they want quickly (concentration period on looking at sites is. say, just 8 - 10 seconds) and then be bothered to call you (get any landline calls diverted to a mobile number, punters dislike ansafones....)

Adwords express is a whole different ballgame, and waaaaay to expensive for me, is this what you were offered?

I limit my adwords campaign to Norwich, Covering all of Norfolk or East anglia is no my agenda.

DH

 

[Roo]

I've used both Adwords and Facebook advertising.
Although not for my buisness and only for a hobby site, as I got credit for both free with my hosting package.

I used £50 on both and didn't notice any really difference in people signing up to my forums.

I think SEO is the way forward as once I'd worked on the search engine optimization a little, I was the first result in most search's.

This got me more traffic to my site and didn't cost me anything.

SEOMOZ.org is a good place to look around.

 

[Whitespirit66]

spoke to google adwords the other day it would cost me £2.60 per click so i would need a budget of around £300 per week according to them to make it worth my while,

If those are the costs, I will second the advice given about optimising. If you can't do it yourself, pay someone good to do it for you. No way will having your site properly optimised cost you £1200 p.m.

 

[steve61]

Have you listed your business with google places/maps?

It's completely free and could get you to the top of the page with the right keywords.

I would show you my listing but I think its against the forum rules.its shows my website...........when someone types in 'carpenter in Ipswich' and other variations eg 'ipswich carpenter', 'ipswich carpentry' etc my listing and/or website is there on the first page. Having your location in the keywords and as part of your site title is the key.
There's plenty of free info out there describing how to do this stuff properly.
Steve
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[dilly]

Hi
Thanks for all the input I have sorted website out and it is now moving up the rankings,still cannot see how it pays the paid advertisers to do the paid click adverts or am I missing something

 

[matz]

Many trades do well out of ppc but you got to set the campaign up properly or it's money wasted. Targeting locally is cheaper than nationally. When i did ppc two years ago i was paying 20p a click with max budget of a fiver a day for local. It can be a great way of getting enquiries but your website landing page needs to be spot on as does the rest of it or you won't convert the clicks. Quality score determines click cost ...lots of factors influence quality score and this where people get confused...