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• 

  Helen Redwood June 22, 2011 at 12:27pm

  Hi Dave

   

  do you mean Adsense where you put Google adverts on your own website to earn revenue on each click or do you mean advertising your own business on Google Adwords to drive traffic to your website?

   

  Regards

   

  Helen
• 

  Dave Sewell June 22, 2011 at 12:35pm

  Hi Helen,

  Thanks for the response - and you're right, I need to sort out what I'm asking first! 

  I'm referring to the latter - advertising my business to drive traffic to my website.

  All best,

  Dave

  www.the-gardenmakers.co.uk
• 

  Craig McGibbon June 22, 2011 at 12:48pm

  Hi Dave,

   

  As previous post on the subject

  Initially it is quite daunting to set up and good to do with the free trial as it give time to play. Once up and running Google starts to make suggestions for keywords that will give you more coverage. The impressions and clicks per category log helps to see what works.
  
  Setting your budget is essential otherwise you can run up a huge bill. Also essential, select you coverage area and don't default to UK - a mistake l made initially; you edit this on the Campaign tab edit Targeting to the areas of interest.

  >> Decide on your monthly budget, divide by 30 and this will give your daily budget.  Google uses your daily budget as a guideline - some some days it will be more and others less.  At the end of the month remarkably it adds up to your monthly limit!

  
  I have only run a campaign since late September and have noticed increase traffic to my website and had several enquiries direct from the advert, one of which turned into a job, which l completed a couple of weeks ago. Happy to say it's paid for itself.

   

  From previous LJN discussion

  http://www.landscapejuicenetwork.com/forum/topics/google-ad-words?c...

   

  The statistics and the package give you daily monitoring ability Dave so you can adjust as you go....

   

  I've stopped for the moment and l'm trying one of these SEO companies but gut feeling is a was getting more results from adwords for less money even though the SEO puts me on google first pages almost every time.
• 

  Fenlandphil June 22, 2011 at 1:27pm

  
  SEO is good as it gives you a position in the organic search area. I did a couple of business link courses where ad words was covered and had some very useful advice from other LJN members, Chris Nnagle included.

  I am using adwords at the moment and it is self financing.
  Craig McGibbon said:

  Hi Dave,

   

  As previous post on the subject

  Initially it is quite daunting to set up and good to do with the free trial as it give time to play. Once up and running Google starts to make suggestions for keywords that will give you more coverage. The impressions and clicks per category log helps to see what works.
  
  Setting your budget is essential otherwise you can run up a huge bill. Also essential, select you coverage area and don't default to UK - a mistake l made initially; you edit this on the Campaign tab edit Targeting to the areas of interest.

  >> Decide on your monthly budget, divide by 30 and this will give your daily budget.  Google uses your daily budget as a guideline - some some days it will be more and others less.  At the end of the month remarkably it adds up to your monthly limit!

  
  I have only run a campaign since late September and have noticed increase traffic to my website and had several enquiries direct from the advert, one of which turned into a job, which l completed a couple of weeks ago. Happy to say it's paid for itself.

   

  From previous LJN discussion

  http://www.landscapejuicenetwork.com/forum/topics/google-ad-words?c...

   

  The statistics and the package give you daily monitoring ability Dave so you can adjust as you go....

   

  I've stopped for the moment and l'm trying one of these SEO companies but gut feeling is a was getting more results from adwords for less money even though the SEO puts me on google first pages almost every time.
• 

  Helen Redwood June 22, 2011 at 2:40pm

  SEO is more of a long term process and can sometimes take 2 or 3 months to really take effect.

   

  There is a keyword tool in Adwords which will offer suggestions based on a list of keywords or a website address and will suggest bids. I would however recommend starting with a small number of very relevant keywords and usually go a bit lower on the suggested bids to begin with. You can then monitor it using the various reports and adjust accordingly and add or remove keywords as necessary.

   

  The amount you spend will be determined by your daily budget and how much you bid on each keyword.

   

  The Help Center is very comprehensive and they also do online courses and webinars to help get you up and running.

   

  As mentioned in the other thread you can usually get a free trial, so look out for vouchers

   

  Helen
• PRO

  Phil Voice June 22, 2011 at 2:59pm

  Dave
  
  I'd re-iterate what I've said before. Landscape Juice is very Google friendly and any content you add here is directly linked to you so your company is the one who potentially benefits.
  
  I'm not sure if you've seen this but Gary's proven the LJN blogs work well: http://www.landscapejuicenetwork.com/profiles/blogs/make-landscape-...
• 

  Dave Sewell June 23, 2011 at 6:52am

  Thanks everyone for responding to this and indeed the pointed to the previous thread. Some great information in and links in there. Phil,  I did read Garys post with considerable interest a week or so agoa nd hope to talk with him about that soon, and I'm aware that LJN has excellent SEO capabilities. I'm just keen to see how effective this form of marketing might be as well. Ironically and somewhat illogically I'm very unlikely to click on a paid link myself so I wonder how many other web users act in the same way...

  Dave
• PRO

  Paul @ Ashgate Garden Care June 23, 2011 at 7:05am

  I used to use Google Adwords. I now just use SEO. I just as good if not better response from SEO in part due to SEO reaches a broader audience (ie it works on Bing, Google, Yahoo, ASK etc and not just Google).

   

  I have a theory that  after a while your brain learn's to 'ignore' the adwords and concentrate on the search engine results.
• 

  Helen Redwood June 24, 2011 at 12:13pm

  Excellent post by Gary.

   

  Just to add, another reason for having separate adverts is that Google also takes into account the relevancy of your landing page, so make sure you direct people to the most appropriate page on your website for the keywords and ad content, don't just send them to your homepage. Also your clicks won't convert as well if users don't immediately find what they are looking for on the landing page and make sure you have a strong call to action, contact details etc on the page so they don't have to hunt for them.

   

  With regard to SEO v Adwords, I don't have any figures but people are more likely to click on the results in the natural listings and these do convert better. However you do really need to be quite near the top of the page to get a good number of clicks. Bear in mind when checking your position that google takes into account your browsing history, so the results you get might not be what others see.

   

  Google has changed the adverts at the top of the page subtly to make them look less like sponsored ads, obviously to make people click on them more.

   

  Regards

   

  Helen
• 

  Dave Sewell June 24, 2011 at 12:34pm

  Thanks all, especially Gary for that excellent summary. I think I now have enough information to give it an informed look.

  Thanks again!

  Dave

  www.the-gardenmakers.co.uk