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.
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Being a small 1-2 man business i set up my own website using wordpress, Not only is it free but also quite straight foward to use as long as you chose the right theme upfront.
Also there are dedicated SEO plug-ins which advise you in laymans terms what you need to do such as
'Warning Keywords not in page title'
'Warning Keywords appear to far into the pages body text'
I found that in my area there is so little competition that i rank very highly in google (4/5) for my chosen keywords.
Last thing i would say that is a MUST is a google places listing as these display ahead of general search traffic. Type in 'gardener holywood' to see shat i mean. My site www.sjsmithhomeandgarden.co.uk appears in the places listing.
Google likes sites with lots of good content which are up dated regularly.
Why not put a link to your website in your post?
Any specific recommendations re. SEO plug-ins, Simon? As Stephen says, committing to a monthly outlay for advertising/promotion is currently too much. I always include cards with orders and I have a blog on LJN, plus I´m taking on board the importance of good content and updating this regularly. What really annoys me sometimes is when I compare my site (which, I think, is reasonably well-written and constructed) with some others (not LJN members, I hasten to add!) that are really badly written and rarely updated but seem to rank highly. Clearly, it´s not just down to good content. At the moment I seem to be getting fewer new customers but more repeat customers who are presumably happy with what they´ve bought. One mystery to me is that I get orders from Australia, the USA and Canada but very few from the UK and so far, none ever from Spain, my home country. Just one of those puzzles of life, I guess!
I use the 'Yoast SEO' plugin on my wordpress site. I have found that use of specific low competition keywords has been most effective.
Also sign yourself up for a free acount at SEscout where you get reports of how you rank on google and bing for up to 10 keywords of your choice.
A good SEO'd website is a fantastic way of generating interest in your service- I've just reinvented my angle on landscaping and so far it has all been about SEOing my website. They didn't teach me that at horticultural college! It's another thing us lot have to be good at nowadays- It's great to keep learning. If only we could plant our computers in the right soil, water them a bit and have a top class website. We'd all be great at it!
Get as many things pointing at your site as possible- write a regular blog (about anything remotely related, with the correct keywords), post on facebook and twitter. Link your site to friends/ colleagues sites.
Ironically, Landscape Juice Network comes above my website when you type "Bespoke Garden Features" into Google, because we're all on here, using it, linking our sites to it and vice verca. I'm getting clicks through this site from potential clients now.
My brother is a dotcom millionaire, so it does help to pick his brains about stuff sometimes. The MAIN thing at the moment that is helping boost SEO rankings apparently is a blog. Even the massive internet giants are writing them. (wordpress blog, easiest for the google robots to read.)
The other thing is have keywords all over the site, so when the google robots visit you, they know exactly what you're doing.
Also, don't use FLASH, it is hard to SEO, I did, and will be changing to HTML in the winter for sure!
Social media - Facebook ect. It's free, it gets you out there & google loves it.