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.
Replies
I didn't even know they were still in existence until about November of last year when I got an automated email asking me to update the details of my free listing.... as soon as I did I was inundated with sales call from them asking me upgrade to a premium listing. They started at about £175 for a year and by the time I had fobbed them off several times the price kept coming down until it hit about £49 for the year! I still didn't take as it just smacked of desperation to me.
They have virtually zero traffic for an advertising company and you will get no return from them in my opinion.
You would get far more return from using the free business listing pages such as.....
www.uksmallbusinessdirectory.co.uk
www.hotfrog.co.uk
www.thelocalweb.net
www.bview.co.uk
as well as scoots free listing, all of which have good google positioning. Alternatively create your own basic website and spend a short amount of time promoting it with google (which again, can all be done for free or for less than Scoots price, but can be time consuming)
Or you could use google adwords to get yourself top spot on google search results for certain keywords, this can get very pricey however if not managed correctly.
Regards
Trevor
Do you advertise in Yellow Pages + Yell.com?
Advertising on Yell.com will give your website a terrific boost due to the amount of "backlinks" you will receive from the Yell.com website (ours is currently around 1500 links from yell pointing to our site!). Google will see these links from a reputable source and give your website more recognition including higher placement in search results. I think the Yellow Pages itself is still a very popular way for the older generation to search for services as well despite the modern age we live in!
Hi Trevor
Don't forget to include LJN in your list of free sites to register with.
It's not just the listing that's free on LJN..there's cracking SEO potential, free business tools such as video, photograph albums, free blogging, free member forums to name just a few.
What is more, LJN consistently knocks spots off of Yell.com, My Hammer, Rated People (never actually seen Scoot come up against LJN for a search word or phrase).
Trevor Williams said:
I'm not so sure. It's so easy to target communities with geo-tags in a tight and focussed way.
I think you'd be surprised how many people will (do) go to the search engine and ask 'who's the closest mowing service to [my village]?'
Dan www.ad-landscapes.com said:
Hey Philip,
I did miss that one off but it was under the assumption he was here and already knew, but yes your quite right!
Scoot tends to lie on around page 7 or 8 for most google search results that i've purposefully when looking for the scoot result on! Unless you search scoot itself and then use its own search function a listing on there will never be seen. But apparently they do have a new Android app or Apple app or something, which will "Revolutionise the search market on mobile phones"...... or so the scoot salesman tells me anyway!!!!
Philip Voice said:
I had my Scoot email this morning and have made the mistake of checking it.....I was under the category of ' ground construction ' !! Any way my alteration of the heading has already generated two phone calls from Scoot trying to sell me ' top of the page positioning ' etc etc. I have declined and guess now will wait for the next call!!
Should have read LJN first.
One of the largest growth areas of google is for within the local community.
landscape contractors newcastle
garden maintenance bridgeport
etc
etc
Being on the google local business centre is essential for any local specialist (with or without a website) as this will put you top of results on the area map with full contact details so the potential customer will not even click through to your website but just call you straight away using the details right in front of them. Local searches were once the territory of Yell.com but search engines such as google and Bing are taking there market share by the day
Philip Voice said:
Thanks everyone, info much appreciated, will now wait for their follow up call and tell them to go away, politely of course.
Yes Trevour with yell.com. I have two web sites, www.mibservices.co.uk which I created through vista print and the other www.mibservices-edinburgh.co.uk done through yell.com. Yell are still working on some additions to the site at the mo, though it is live and out there, my vista print one I do myself. Its not the best, but as a commercial grounds maintenance contractor I dont need to have load of pictures showing my past present and future projects as with the hard landscapig guys need to do, so it should suffice for my needs.I can chop and change the vista print site as much as I like without incurring any further charges so if its not working I can change things around abit.
I will go and have a look at the sites you mention, am pretty sure I am freeindex and hotfrog but cant say I have had any enquiries through them as yet. The uksmallbusinessdirectory I am not on so will get a listing done on that.
NOTE TO PHIL:
Phil have you sent me through the payment details yet for my listings??
Thanks again folks
I came away from yellow pages for last years edition (2010). Due to the high costs they was imposing every year. To be honest you hear a lot of bad things about yell pages, i was getting a lot of response from them but 20% of calls was wrong leads of work. But the other 80% wasnt and i have gained a contract through them bringing in at least 5k a year. The last year the calls went quieter, we have decided to join them this year as they have changed the way they do things. You dont pay for a advert and yell.com seperatly no more. We have a advert, a yell.com page with a 30 second video on it and links to our webpage, aswell as being on there yell.com app for one price. Which i may say is cheap. Lets see what we get off them this year when it all goes live in February.
Trevor Williams said:
Hi Matthew, sounds like the same deal I have with them, I am paying £115.00 per month for the privelege, hope it brings work in. I know people on here don't care for ratedpeople.com but I have won two big maintenance contracts out of it over 40K worth, a massive commercial one and a large private house with acres of mature garden, both sites are good to do and are going on for this year also so will stay on their books also. For the sake of £40.00 a quarter and a few quid a lead if you decide to quote for it is worth a punt. Be nice if my web sites, yell or my vista one could net me the same again I would be a very happy bunny lol.
Matthew Amos said:
-
1
-
2
of 2 Next