It's all in the follow up....Touch your customers.......

Okay now I have your attention, I obviously don't mean touch your customers physically, you'll just end up with a criminal record! I'd prefer that didn't happen!

How to convert more quotes to customers

What I mean is, the more contact you have with your potential customer the more likely they are to use you for the job, you'll show that you give a better service and care about them.

So you've sent your quote to your customer and wait for the phone to ring.........and you wait and you wait.

If this is you and it more than likely is, as this is what the majority of business owners do, I'll guarantee you're losing money and in more ways than one.

How much contact can you have?

The more contact you have the better, It'll keep you in your customers mind. After you've sent a quote out there are points you contact the customer to get to the front of their mind. 

Your first call should be to make contact to see if they got the quote and this should be done within 24 to 48 hours of sending it.

If you send your quotes out via email you can use email tracking to see when the potential customer has opened the email, then you know you can call them, if you use gmail you can use YesWare which tells you when the email has been opened or any links clicked on.

I have sent quotes out before and they had not been received because either it got lost in the post or I'd got the email wrong, so it's really important that you do this if just to check!

Your second call if they have not already asked you to go ahead with the work or had a look at your quote properly will be to see if they have any questions and this should be done around 48 hours after the first call.

Your next point of contact (should you not get the work) should be to send a card to say thanks for giving you the opportunity to quote and should they need your services in the future you hope they will think of you (If you do this, they certainly will)

Get marketing information

If you've not won the work it's a great idea to find out why, if you find that the reason reoccurs often, then you can change your approach for futures quotes.

If it's price then you can be sure that the customer hasn't seen what value you offer, you can then work on ways to make sure future customers will! 

 

If you get in early enough, you could even ask for a copy of a competitors quote to see if you could match or beat it, by getting a copy of the quote you also get to see how your competitor quotes and if they do anything that stands out that you could incorporate into the way you work! If you don't call though you won't get any information.

Keeping in contact with past customers

It's also important to keep in touch with customers you have done work for, this may be through a newsletter, Christmas card or just a call to make sure everything is okay.

I wrote more about this in the post How trades people and property businesses throw money away  

To your success

Paul

Integrity marketing in business

The importance of having integrity in business

I once went to a job, where a ladies storage heater had stopped working!

She had called me up the day before, but before I went to have a look at it, I had said to her that it would be best for her to check the fuses first and see if it came on that night before calling me out and having to charge her.

She did this and then called me the next morning to say it still wasn't working, I went round to have a look at it, and found the problem to be the cut out switch inside the heater, which was a ten minute job. So I reset the heater and was well.

As I was leaving she said thanks and that I was the only one who had been honest with her, she had called 4 other companies and all had told her she would need a new heater installed which would have cost a fair bit.

I like to be honest it’s one of my core values, but from that I had a customer for life. I know some people try it on but I was 1 out of 5, I find that disgraceful, that so many people do this. I really appreciated her comments and it gave me a buzz that she was a happy customer.

Integrity marketing

You do hear of people getting ripped off in all businesses but I believe it to be detrimental to running a good business as eventually word will eventually get round, especially if you take business networking!

I've seen it in networking groups before and it's the same with local communities too, certain business owners lose trust with the people around them and therefore no one refers them work and so they lose out, this is hugely costly.

Trying to make a quick few hundred pounds on a job, eventually loses potentially thousands, but also on top of that cost means that a company will have to spend even more on marketing to acquire new customers.

I think it makes sense to use what I call integrity marketing and always do what is best for the customer that way they'll use your services again and likely refer you to others! Not only that, it's what has given the building trade a bad name over the years and gives the media something to chew on for their next program.

Do you have any stories of where a customer was potentially ripped of but you saved them time or money, I'd love to hear them.



To your success
 Paul

How trades people and property businesses can lose money!

Most trades and property businesses are throwing money away by not using this simple marketing tool

I can pretty much guarantee that reading this post will make your trade or property business more money over the next few years!

And this one sentence if you read no more, will do that:- 

"Keep in touch with your customers"

Most trades do not keep in touch and continue marketing to their customers and it means they are losing money, I think it's because most are thinking about the next job rather than long term!

If you're not staying in touch with your customers and letting them know you're still around, the next time they need your services you'll potentially be forgotten about and the simplest way for them to find someone else is to get on to Google and if they don't find you they're going to your competitor!

Let's take a heating engineer who would be one of the best examples, once a customer has had a boiler service with them the company should have a system to make sure the customer is contacted again in 11 months time to schedule in another service and then do the same for the following year and so on! 

The system doesn't have to be any special computer software, you can use a simple card system or Google calendar and just set a reminder so you know when to call.

Marketing to customers to stay in their minds

Of course just staying in touch with those customers once per year just isn't enough and the more you stay in touch the more money you'll make because you'll be in their mind more often and the more you're in their mind when they need one of your other services you're the one they'll call also the bigger chance you'll come up in conversation if a friend or family member needs your service and so get a referral.

There are so many ways to stay in touch with your customers and clients these days I can and probably will write a blog post for each at some point! However you have to make it useful and relevant to them and you need to find creative reasons to stay in touch!

Some ways to stay in touch

When staying in touch it's important to share useful and relevant things with your customer otherwise they'll just tune your marketing out eventually

• You could email tips and news!  
• A regular newsletter, and a printed one not email. 
• A simple phone call or card on an anniversary, birthday or at Christmas.
• Send them your latest blog post and maybe even blog about them
• Social media

Social media is a great and powerful way to stay in touch, with social media you can stay in touch all year round if you wanted to.

If your customer happens to run a business the best thing you can do is help them find more business or connect with others that they could have a great working relationship with!

This is a massive subject and this post does not do it justice I could write a whole book about it, but if you put these simple ideas in to action it'll make you a lot of money for your business!

If you've had a creative way to stay in touch with a customer I'd love to hear it.



To your marketing success
Paul Jennings

Small marketing goals

In a recent post I spoke about setting small marketing goals and that you should plan them every week. With that post I really only scratched the surface, So I thought I'd cover it in a little bit more detail.

If you don't have marketing goals for your trade business, you are just literally working week to week and not knowing what will be happening or where the next job is coming from, sometimes hoping to strike it lucky with a job.

This is why so many businesses and it seems especially with trades suffer from feast or famine, they either have too much work or not enough!

If you are looking to grow your business and take people on, you cannot live business life like that, marketing is how you get business in, it does not just drop in to your lap, every job you have ever done is because of something you've done or said in the past.

Choose and plan your marketing goals

You cannot just use one or two ways to market your business and these days there is no need to, there are so many free or low cost ways to market your business and 'fill the bucket' you should be doing as many as possible, I'd say a minimum of 5 to start with.

Just reading this blog will give you ideas of the marketing tools you may want to use for your trade or property business.

You then set a goal of how many customers you expect to get from that activity, if you don't know what your return on that marketing activity should be, your goal should be to find out by testing.

Put your marketing plan into action.

Once you've decided what marketing you're going to do, you need to add it to your diary, decide what days you'll work on your business and don't change it for anything but emergencies, Your job as a business owner is to get customers if you're out all the time doing the work you're not getting customers, no customers means you'll go into famine.

Read my post on writing a simple marketing plan

Even if you do 30 minutes of marketing a day it'll grow your business over time. If you do this it'll have a snowball effect and really pick up momentum!



To your success

Paul Jennings 
Marketing for Trades


PS if you really are too busy to do your own marketing for your trade or property business and are based in the Hertfordshire area, why not let me do it for you with my done for you marketing service

Don't do what every other business does!

Sticking to the marketing norm will stunt your growth!

I once sat down with a non trade business owner and we got talking about business and marketing and I suggested he try promoting his business with flyers, he bluntly shot my idea down and dismissed it saying it wouldn't work for him!

I asked if he'd ever tried it to which I got the reply of no because it doesn't work! So I asked him how he knew, to which he told me he had spoken to a larger competitor who had told him it doesn't work......

A few months later I was talking to someone in the same industry and mentioned this, I got the reply 'that's how I get most of my business!'

Try different routes to market

So my moral of my story is that you should try every avenue of marketing your business, what didn't work for one business doesn't mean it won't work for you, there are lots of variables and so long as you do small manageable low cost tests. 

On top of this you should try variations of the same marketing method, so if you want to try doing a flyer drop do 2 different versions of it with a different message on each. One may not work or work as well as the other, you may try an offer on one and none on the other to test the response that you get, then you can take the one that worked well and do a different version of that.

What marketing have you seen in a different industry that you can try in your trade or property business?



To your marketing success

Paul Jennings

The 4 Step marketing plan for your trade business.

A simple 4 Step marketing plan

Most tradespeople I speak to have no plan for their marketing, no plan means no direction to growth no way to get what you want from your business.

Churchill said 'Fail to plan, plan to fail' and this applies well to many things but very well to marketing!

Now if you have started your business as a lifestyle business, that's okay although the the stuff I put out probably isn't for you, however if you want to grow a real business and you've not got a plan and I mean one that's written down on paper (it's no good just in your head) then you have a lifestyle business, so this blog post is about getting that plan down on paper and the key things you need to create a basic marketing plan for your trade or property business.

Here are the 4 key steps you need to think about and have in your plan.

Step 1. Who are your customers and clients?

Knowing who your target market are, is really, really important and the answer here can't be anyone.
You don't want to be going to quote for jobs for people who want you to work for £10 an hour or those that don't understand the value you give them!  
Build a picture of them and what they do, their interests and their family the house they live in.

Step 2. What will you tell them?

What is your USP, why should they use you and pay your price?
And more importantly can you prove that you can deliver what you say or do you have a guarantee that says what happens if you don't?

Step 3. How will you get your message out?

You need to detail how you'll spread your message, the actual marketing you'll be doing and you need to have many ways to market your business and be doing many things all at the same time not just one! 
It may be Networking, Pay Per Click, Flyers, Social media, Direct mail, Blogging and articles or one of the many other ways to market your business.

Step 4. When will you do this?

You need to plan when you're going to do your marketing, you need to figure out how much time you're going to put into getting new customers and clients, they are the life blood of your business and what puts the food on the table so if you're not working on getting more you've got a stagnating or dying business.




So hopefully as you've been reading through this simplified marketing plan you've made some notes on your 4 step marketing plan, If not grab a sheet of paper now and write it down, strike while the iron is hot as they say and then follow through!



To your marketing success

Paul Jennings

How to grow your business little by little

Too busy to be marketing your business

I hear from so many trades people that say 'they are too busy to do this or too busy to do that' and that they don't have an hour a day to focus on marketing their business! Is this you and your business?

This is why so many trades and property businesses suffer from feast or famine, they only start marketing when the well is dry, there is an old saying of 'don't wait until you're thirsty to dig your well' and this applies to marketing so well.

So how do we get out of a marketing feast or famine

The best way is to set goals for the week, just small simple goals it may be work on a website page, sending out letters to potential commercial clients or even some customer service calls/ follow up calls to make sure everything is okay.

So lets take the marketing goal of sending out some letters to get commercial clients, If you set yourself a goal of sending out up to 5 letters per day to potential commercial clients at the end of the week you'd have sent out 25 letters, not a lot however over a year that's around 1300 letters! It all adds up!

Breaking down your marketing

Look at your marketing activities as a drip in a bucket

Just by doing a little bit everyday you break it down and make it manageable. Keep doing it and making small marketing goals and you'll never experience a famine! Like a drip in a bucket eventually the bucket will be filled and it's the same with marketing, it all adds up.

You do need to plan these goals too, so be sure to set a planning time during the week when you sit down and just focus on growing your business this may be on a Sunday for the week ahead.

Over time you'll see results from these little marketing activities.

To your marketing success

Paul Jennings

Marketing for Trades

How to convert more quotes to customers

A powerful marketing tool to add to your marketing toolbox

One of my favourite subjects within marketing is the one I call massive value marketing and next to no trades or property businesses are doing it as part of their marketing, so if you grasp this and do it, you'll put your business way above your competitors! 

By showing your potential customers that you give massive value, more will buy from you, If you convert more it will mean you'll save money!

What is massive value marketing

Many businesses give the old 10% off type of incentive to entice customers to buy from them or a voucher for £xx off, this is old, old marketing, frankly boring and if you give these sort of discounts it's money coming from one place - your bottom line, your profit and we're in business to make profit right?

So rather than giving 10% off, give 10% more, this way the customer gets better value, your bottom line stays intact and potentially you can actually make more money.

How does massive value marketing work

We're going to go into a bit of maths now to explain this, not my strongest skill so I'll keep it simple! The 10% more should cost you either nothing or very little.

If you give 10% off, say £100, that's £10, if your profit from £100 is £20 you've cut your profit in half. That £10 can't come from anywhere else because your business costs have remained the same.

If you give an extra service which means you may be on the job a little longer it won't physically cost you money, or lets say you buy a product for £3 that may normally cost the customer £10 to buy and you give them this product for doing business with you, you have given them 10% more but it's only cost you 3% or £3 from your bottom line.

I hope that makes sense!

From a psychological point of view the customer feels like they have got a better deal so are more likely to do business with you and in reality they have, when I used to give discounts (it didn't happen often) I in a way begrudged it and in all honesty the customer probably didn't get me at my best!

This is a much better way of giving value, you are limited on how much discount you can give a customer but on a giving more value basis you are not so limited, if it's something that would be of no or little cost to you.

Lets say you give them 3 products at a cost of £3 each to

you, it would have cost them £30 and however it's only cost you £9, therefore they've got an extra 30% and it's only cost you 9% still less than the 10% discount you may have given!

What can you do to give massive value

So if you decide to give away a product it could be something that you can buy in bulk to get a really good discount, a discount that someone buying one or two would not get.
You could give a discount from a non related business, for example if you are a builder and you've just completed an extension and loft conversion for a customer - If you knew or built a relationship with a local restaurant, they would offer you voucher of say a value of £60 but you'd pay only £30 or less, You give the voucher to the customer for a free meal for 2 to say thanks for being a customer. 
This is a real Win/Win/Win situation.

I know the last example would mainly be given at the end of a job but, do you think that's going to be a talking point when they meet friends and family.

Great massive value marketing for a plumbing and heating engineer could be installing free magna cleans.

Brilliant massive value marketing for an electrician may be a free 1/2 hour Visual condition report at time of quoting!

Massive value marketing for an interior designer could be a free portrait session for the family with a photographer in the newly decorated home.

I'm sure you can come up with many more for your business, be sure to come up with several so you can tailor it to each customer.

To your success
Paul Jennings

No one cares about your logo, except you!

Is branding important to trades and property businesses as part of your marketing?

I often talk about how no one cares about your business name, logo, brand colours etc and it's true that people are not interested in this about your company. 
When you're marketing your business whether it's with flyers, on your website or on your vans the logo should be one of the smallest elements most businesses put too much emphasis on these things, the logo will take up most of the advert or marketing material.

It's generally just us the business owner that cares about these things about our business, prospective customers just want to know that our business can do the job that they need to be done. This said branding is still important.

Why branding is important to marketing your trade or property business

Although customers don't buy your service initially because of your branding, it is part of their decision whether they are going to call you, you need to show that you're running a serious business and not a cowboy outfit, spending time and money on branding will show this and show that you as a business owner care about your business and therefore care about the customer.

Branding is more than a logo

Branding is a huge subject and it's not just for large corporate companies, sole traders looking to grow their business should also look at branding their business.

Branding is not just about your logo and the colours you've chosen it is also about how all of your marketing materials look and about your values as a business, what is important to the business and how that works for customers too, it's important to make sure that all employees and subcontractors know these values too and when interacting with the customer keep this message consistent.

How you are on social media is also important and plays part of your brand that you build, if you are negative on social media always complaining about things or swearing this is devastating to your business brand and is a sure way to make sure you never get business from it.

So what are your thoughts on branding, let me know in the comments below!

To your success

Paul Jennings

Your van sign writing

Marketing your business with your vans

Many construction business vans that I see have their sign writing wrong for getting lots of new enquiries, they normally have their logo as the biggest thing on display and their phone number one of the smallest (as in the image) , sorry if that's your van, after reading this post you may want to have your vans re-sign written.

Don't focus your van sign writing on your logo

I know you're proud of your business and logo, it's important to you, the issue is your logo is only important to you! nobody cares about your logo or other branding! I'm not saying branding isn't important, it is. However to get calls from your van, which is possibly your best and cheapest advertising tool you have so you want as many people to see it as possible.

How best to have your van sign written for marketing your trade or property business

The main set of people who are going to call you from your van marketing are people who need your service now or in the very near future, So you need to tell them what your service is and how to contact you and the bigger that information is the further away people can see it, which means more people can see it, on top of that when you are driving around it makes it easier for people to take down your 

information to call you later! The image on the left is the best way to show that information, the main parts being in large letters and at the top of the van. There is not much more to it than this.

Sign writing like this will make your business stand out from a distance

It's just a very simple way to present your information to get more business.

I also recommend having business card holders on the sides so passers by can take your information too! check out http://bizcardbox.co.uk/ to get some for your vans! (I'm not affiliated in any way with this site) the best way to see how this works for you is to only add 15 cards at a time and then count them, you'll find this is possibly the cheapest way to advertise your business.


To your success

Paul Jennings

Top 10 website basics: A checklist

Website marketing basics: A checklist for trades

Following on from my last post about the pros and cons of building your own website or hiring a web design company I thought I put together this basic checklist.

So you've got a website, Whether you built your own trade website or had it done for you check through this list to help promote your site, be aware just like trades and property businesses there are cowboy web designers who don't know how to put together a decent website, here is a list of the basics your website should have to be a great tool for marketing your business, the more questions you can answer yes to the better!

Do you have text that explains who you are and what you do and where you do it, but more importantly how you Help The Customer? Is your phone number on every page? Does your home page have a call to action such as Follow us on Twitter/call now/ email for more information? Do you have an about me page that represents your passion for your trade business? Have you clearly defined your services, pricing and guarantees with a page for each? Have you included customer reviews/ testimonials, preferably with pictures of the people or videos which would be best? Do you have 'trusted logos' - NAPIT, Gas Safe or NHBC  etc. With a page explaining what they are about. Does your website contain your keywords? Do you have a blog to show your expertise, knowledge and drive visitors to your site. Can a visitor +1 your website and follow you on Google+, Twitter and on other social media networks from your website?

So how many Yeses did you score?

0 - 3 Looks like you're just starting out. Check out the rest of my blog posts on websites.

4 - 7 You're on the right track. list what order you're going to complete the tasks and get to work the sooner it's finished the sooner you'll increase traffic.

8 - 10 Way to go. Think about taking the next step - Pay Per Click Marketing?

Once you've completed this checklist your site will be in the top 20% of websites for trades and property businesses most cannot say yes to all 10 points.

To your Success

Paul Jennings

Want to seriously grow your business? click here to find out more about my services and how they will help you.

DIY a website or use a website design company?

DIY website or not to DIY website that is the question

Over my last couple of posts I've discussed how you can make your own website for your trade or property business and in my follow up post about how to get that website

found in search with Search Engine Optimisation So the question is though, should you build your own website for marketing your construction or property business? as there are a number of pros and cons to doing it yourself as there are with using a website designer too.

As a trades person we've all seen DIY electrics, plumbing other building work done badly, and we've seen the same with websites too, I know it's not the same and there is no danger to life but there could be danger to wealth! I've seen some really bad websites where they'd have been better off not having a website at all!

Hopefully though you find my posts here useful in helping you to create your own site and even if you decide to go to a designer you'll know enough to understand what they are talking about.

Here are the good points in building your own website to market your business

• You get some flexibility: Once you've got a bit of knowledge on building your own website you can update your site and add pages when ever you choose which can save a fortune, however the trade off is that it may not look exactly how you'd like it to be as most website building software have limited capacity.
  
  Also if you use a good website design company, they should be busy and that means any changes you need could go into a queue and may take a couple of weeks.
• You can save money: This is normally the main reason you'd want to build your own website as adding pages and making changes can and normally does cost (you don't expect them to work for free right) and lots of changes means you can run up a bill.
• A feeling of achievement: It's a nice feeling when a customer says how much they liked your website and even better when you tell them that you built it yourself - of course if customers never say this then you may want to look at going with a website designer.

So there are some good reasons for having a go at building your own website, lets have a look at the reasons you may not want to;

• It could look unprofessional: This is the main reason you shouldn't DIY I've seen some really poor websites and I mean really poor in design and has none of the things I mentioned in the last posts, which means it may never get found by searchers, which could be a good thing if it does look bad!
  
  A bad website is worse than none, you'll get a bad reputation and if you do get traffic to it, it will turn off potential customers, I've been at networking meetings or spoken to other networkers when the subject of someones poor website has come up, it's just like having bad business cards.
  
• It won't work properly: When I was an electrician and called out to fault find I used to be able to find it because of my years of experience, of knowing what to do to eliminate possibilities of what the fault could be, a novice would probably not be able to do this.
  
  The same applies when DIYing a website an image may not display where you want it to, not size properly or display at all. There are things that can go wrong that can create frustrating moments and eat up your time, I've had a fair few of my own in the past.
  
• It may look like many other websites: Most DIY website building sites or sites such as Yell use templates, templates that everyone else has access to and use.
  
  Appearance matters on your site if you look like everyone else it sends a message to potential customers that you don't really care enough about your business to have a unique good looking website and you'll find if someone is looking online for an electrician or cleaning company then they are looking at many websites so are likely to come across those templates!
  
• It’s takes time: Maybe a lot of time, depending on your knowledge and skill, if you're not savvy with basic computing skills then you've got a lot to learn and it could take weeks months or years, not in having to learn the technical stuff such as HTML but good design so it looks good when people read it and also making it look good to search engines for Search Engine Optimisation.
  
  As I said in the earlier post I've been doing websites for a long time, read many books, blogs and been on marketing/ website courses/ seminars and I still only consider myself to have a basic knowledge.
  
  On top of that a website is never finished you need to keep adding to it for those of you that have been following me for a while, know that my site is always changing and having pages added. You need to do this because that's what Google like updated, current sites.

Whatever rout you decide to take, make sure you keep learning how to market your website as online marketing is one of the best ways to get new business now, if you don't take the opportunity then someone else will!

To your website success

Paul Jennings



PS if you want to read more marketing tips check out the top tips here

How to get your website for your trade or property business found

What marketing do I need to do to get my website found

Following on from my last post about building your own website there are a number of things you need to be doing and I mean need to do, to get your website seen, that's what I'm going to be covering in this post, I'm going to be talking about Search Engine Optimisation or SEO for short!

What the hell is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

When someone searches for a building trade or property business on a search engines, they use keywords such as Builder in, Electrician in, Interior Designer in or Architect in..... (add your local area here) this is just a very basic set of keywords and it is different for different businesses.

SEO is about designing your website so that when someone searches for your keyword terms, it is deemed worthy enough to be shown to the potential customer in search results!

SEO is adding the right words to your website and online marketing for your business for your building trade or property business, generally though if you add enough pages to your website this will happen naturally.

What are my marketing keywords

The first place to start with SEO is deciding on your marketing keywords, the best thing to do is grab some paper and brainstorm all of the words that someone may type into a search engine to find your business, as I'm an ex sparks, lets go with keywords for an electrician or electrical contractor.

First off we'll start with Electrician in..(your area)
Then you could have:

• electrical rewire 
• electrical rewiring
• electrical fault
• electrical testing
• electrical fuseboard (I know its a consumer unit, but people still call it a fuseboard)
• electrician rewire (People search this way)
• rewire house
• electrician prices
• good electrician
• lights not working

This is a tiny list your list could be very long perhaps pages but you get the idea. If you're an electrician these are your marketing keywords you need to think about having on your website. 
You can then use the Google Adwords Keword Tool which will soon be Google Keyword Planner to find more keywords, you can add competitors websites to the keyword tool to see which keywords they use too.

Google keyword tool will also suggest keywords related to your industry.

Something else the keyword tool will tell you is how much competition there is for that word on a high, medium and low basis, so out of that list above as you can imagine 'electrician' is high, 'rewire house' is medium, however 'how much does it cost to rewire a house' has low competition.

The competition is on the basis of Google Pay Per Click campaign, if you use PPC as part your construction business marketing plan then the medium and low keywords are the ones you want to think about going for as it will cost less!

However in SEO marketing on your website you want to have a mix of all of them!

What you need to add for SEO marketing

The key thing for SEO, and if there is only one key thing you take from this post it's CONTENT, content is a big thing for Google search right now and it's the best way to spread your keywords out, the best way to have content is to have a separate page for all of your services not one service page with a list.

On top of this search engines love sites that are current and constantly changing, I would add a new page to your site every week, this is why I'm a fan of building your own site, as with a website designer this can become very costly very quickly.


Make sure your keywords are in the titles of pages, headings and sub headings and throughout the page itself, so on this page in the post title I have website, trade and property business in the title, in the heading and sub headings I have Marketing, keywords and SEO along with keywords in the labels. 

Have your Keywords in your URL is a big help so even if you are a plumbing business called Quick Install ltd it's best to have a URL/domain called www.YourAreaPlumbing.co.uk or www.PlumbersInYourArea.co.uk you can search for your domain at 123-reg.co.uk

When you add images make sure that it has what is called an ALT tag, this is for 2 reasons, if the image doesn't load then people can get an idea what it is, but also search engines can't see images and so read the ALT tag.

Get good backlinks a backlink is simply a link to your website from another website, just any back link is no good, so if someone calls you asking for what is known as a reciprocal link turn it down as it'll probably be no good to your websites SEO, you need links from high ranking and quality websites and sites that have content based on your industry. 

What doesn't work

Links from forums or blog comments and link building sites, most forum sites, blog comments etc seem to attract people adding links to boost their SEO, this does not work because they generally have a 'No follow' attribute which tells search engines not to follow links, so this is a waste of time and as for things like link building sites, well Google just ignores those apparently it does the same with most directory sites!

Lots of Keywords repeated numerous times (known as keyword stuffing) on a page is also does not work and can be seen as spam by search engines and can harm your search engine results, It's best to only use your keywords 2-5 times per page.

The same goes for having every area and/or postcode that you cover listed on your website and to be honest it looks messy! It's much better to have testimonials on the site with the customers area listed.

Submitting URL to search engines you domain such as www.HertfordElectrician.co.uk is your URL and you used to have to submit these to search engines for them to be found, that has changed today search engines are a lot better and this no longer needs to be done however I would submit your site to www.dmoz.org

Human SEO mix

When adding all of this to your website you need to keep one key thing in mind and that is people will be looking at your website for your service, so it needs to be readable and make sense otherwise those people that come to your site will just leave!


There is so much more to SEO than this and I'll cover a bit more in the next post, I'll try and make it a bit shorter too! even then there is more to it, however if you do just these basic things, you'll be ahead of most of your competition in your area. 
But remember that it's an ongoing process, you can't build your site and expect to be found over night, you've got to be found by search engines and then your site has to 'prove' itself against your competitors. The whole process can take months but it is worth it in the end!



To your SEO success

Paul Jennings