About the Landscape Juice Network

Founded in 2008. The Landscape Juice Network (LJN) is the largest and fastest growing professional landscaping and horticultural association in the United Kingdom.

LJN's professional business forum is unrivalled and open to anyone within within the UK landscape industry

LJN's Business Objectives Group (BOG) is for any Pro serious about building their business.

For the researching visitor there's a wealth of landscaping ideas, garden design ideas, lawn advice tips and advice about garden maintenance.

PRO

Paving Expert Bolton: Mick Gammage, an SEO case study

We'll get to Mick shortly but first of all a bit about SEO.

When it comes to the internet SEO, there's not a one-size-fits-all.

Nobody can honestly say, hand on heart, that if one particular SEO is applied to one website that it can be successfully applied to the next, and so on and so on.

What one can be sure of is that good old honest content continues to be king. Add to that a simple but effective, and honest, keyword and site optimisation strategy and it's not difficult to push a website up the rankings.

Getting on page one of Google or Bing isn't easy. The more the internet evolves and the more content that gets added, the harder it becomes.

Luckily for the honest site owner, Google has started to really clamp down on devious SEO practises - called Black Hat SEO - and is seriously encouraging good people to do good things with their websites.

I wanted to show you how Mick Gammage has brilliantly used Landscape Juice, combined with his own on-site SEO, to dominate the first few pages of Google.

Now before I go on, a caveat.

There's honest SEO and there's dishonest SEO. Forget about tweaking codes, mirrored sites, pages stuffed with keywords and redirected front pages, I'm talking about a site owner who's ultimately got something good to sell at the end of the visitor's journey.

There's no point in embellishing your story if when it comes down to it, the content on the site cannot be backed up under review.

Case study: Mick Gammage

First of all, take a look at Micks website: www.crystalclearideas.co.uk

You'll see Mick has laid out the site simply and clearly. The header is crisp and makes use of the association with Marshalls brand as one unique selling point.

Underneath the banner, clear as anything and big and bold is Mick's contact telephone number. You cannot miss it.

Just below the header are photographs; something in the landscape industry that has the potential to become one of the strongest tools in your marketing armoury. Mick's images are optimised with the correct title tags and each one is linked to a clearly laid out page explaining a bit about the product it is advertising.

To the left is a clear menu. Each title is again optimised to accurately describe its destination when clicked.

Again, underneath there is a clear link to Marshalls and underneath this is another method of contact.

The front page isn't cluttered or gimmicky in any way.

It doesn't matter where you click, wherever you land there's important information that tells a story. All pages are crisp and clear with optimised photos, balance keyword distribution and video to boot. Furthermore the text is clear and is written to explain exactly what the business does.

Levering Landscape Juice for optimum SEO

Now you may be excused if you think, when reading my over zealous and constant pushing of LJN, that I might be telling a few porkie pies in a bid to sell the virtues of the site?

Well I'm delighted to say that Mick Gammage and his clever and sensible use of LJN is the perfect opportunity for me to back up my claims.

Now SEO results vary from day to day and week to week and may even produce different results depending on the geographic location of the searcher.

The secret of SEO is to work hard on content within LJN to make sure you are capturing as much potential as possible.

I was in chat this morning...as I often do and we were generally chatting about the many positives of LJN and how it's created unimaginable value for members: many of whom may not actually know what it's done for them.

Rather than go to great lengths to explain, I just want to again point you to Mick Gammage's page here on LJN.

Straight away, when you land on Mick's page you'll be impressed by the meticulous attention to detail.

Mick's made sure his profile information is visible right at the top of his page. Again the content is rich in the right keywords and aptly describes his business, lists his award successes, keeps the contact info near the top.

Near the bottom of the profile section are geographic keywords which will assist in drawing in search engine traffic to his page.

Under Mick's profile comes the content that sells his business. Again video and photos lead the way. At the bottom are Mick's LJN blogs.

All Mick's blogs have been creatively written, clearly laid out with optimised titles; each image is linked to the relevant page on his Crystalclear website.

Website:
LJN Page: http://www.landscapejuicenetwork.com/profile/MickGammage

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  • PRO

    Now go to Google and put in the search words 'Mick Gammage paving Bolton'

    Now I know you are going to say that a potential client isn't going to do a search and find Mick in this way.

    However there are two things the results will tell me. First is the shear volume of LJN pages indexed by Google. We rank higher than other well known social media brands.

    Landscape Juice holds positions 1,2 & 3 (may vary slightly where you are) above Mick's own site (which is unusual but it does back up any claims that LJN is a compelling SEO force).

    LJN ranks higher than LinkedIn, Marshalls, Twitter and Pinterest...Facebook doesn't even feature until well down page two.

    After page two, if you continue to click through the Google results you'll see LJN listed time after time.

  • mick did a cracking job on my website and the blogs i have done vie LJN are on the search bots cheers cookie

  • PRO

    Magazine's are for show LJN for dough

    The case study I posted above was indexed by Google within five minutes. It's a potent example of how the site features in SERPS (search engine results page).

    Landscape Juice got just under 2,200 visitors yesterday alone. Now if you put those numbers up aginst a typical trade magazine readership there's no comparison.

    A magazine comes out once a month and is read by 5,000 people, for example. It takes two days for LJN to hit those numbers.

    The site is refreshed minute by minute whereas a magazine's news is out of date by the time it's published. This is all assuming you are lucky enough to get anything published in the first place.

    What is more...and this is the most important of the lot. A trade magazine is insular. It's great for one'e ego in the sense it gets your pictures in front of industry peers but it doesn't reach the consumer: your potential customer.

    There's no stickability inside a magazine. When a magazine is thrown in the bin or used to light a fire it's gone forever but an article written on LJN has the potential to reach a growing audience day after day, week after week, year after year.

    Last of all there's the cost comparison. A listing, page advertising, mail shot or advertorial can run into hundreds, if not thousands just for one printed issue of a magazine: and only reach, potentially, 5,000 people.

  • PRO
    Phil could you have a look at my ljn profile page advise on improvements please, thanks.
  • PRO
    Just had another thought Phil. Are you able to interogate the page view stats to reveal from what city the hits are coming from. If you can and are able to publish them on ljn it would get the doubters and not too sure about going pro members some real evidence of the worth of seo from ljn
  • PRO

    It's pretty good already Brian.

    Where you are listing services I'd add an asterix at the start of each fresh line and a capital letter. Also a pace where there are defined paragraphs.

    I've removed the keywords from the profile section because they weren't working. I might add them back at the bottom at some stage.

    Brian www.mibservices.co.uk said:

    Phil could you have a look at my ljn profile page advise on improvements please, thanks.
  • PRO

    Done the changes Phil, yeah looks clearer and better now, thanks.

    Phil Voice said:

    It's pretty good already Brian.

    Where you are listing services I'd add an asterix at the start of each fresh line and a capital letter. Also a pace where there are defined paragraphs.

    I've removed the keywords from the profile section because they weren't working. I might add them back at the bottom at some stage.

    Brian www.mibservices.co.uk said:

    Phil could you have a look at my ljn profile page advise on improvements please, thanks.
  • PRO

    It would be pretty onerous for me Brian.

    You can install stat counter on your LJN page: http://www.sitemeter.com
    Add the HTML code to the HTML section on your page.

    Brian www.mibservices.co.uk said:

    Just had another thought Phil. Are you able to interogate the page view stats to reveal from what city the hits are coming from. If you can and are able to publish them on ljn it would get the doubters and not too sure about going pro members some real evidence of the worth of seo from ljn
  • PRO

    Ok thanks

    Phil Voice said:

    It would be pretty onerous for me Brian.

    You can install stat counter on your LJN page: http://www.sitemeter.com
    Add the HTML code to the HTML section on your page.

    Brian www.mibservices.co.uk said:

    Just had another thought Phil. Are you able to interogate the page view stats to reveal from what city the hits are coming from. If you can and are able to publish them on ljn it would get the doubters and not too sure about going pro members some real evidence of the worth of seo from ljn
  • PRO

    beside where i have www.mibservices.co.uk inserted on my home page Phil ?
    Phil Voice said:

    It would be pretty onerous for me Brian.

    You can install stat counter on your LJN page: http://www.sitemeter.com
    Add the HTML code to the HTML section on your page.

    Brian www.mibservices.co.uk said:

    Just had another thought Phil. Are you able to interogate the page view stats to reveal from what city the hits are coming from. If you can and are able to publish them on ljn it would get the doubters and not too sure about going pro members some real evidence of the worth of seo from ljn
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