Can anyone give me some advice please.

Hi,

I have just had my website revamped which I am thrilled with, but unfortunately I am getting very few hits per day?

I keep upto date with google analytics and I have advertised on all the free directories specific to my industry, but still not getting many hit?

Can anyone give me some advice as to other ideas I could try to drive more traffic to my site.

My website is at www.manandvan4u.net

Any advice would be much appreciated

Thanks.

Tomas

Hi Thomas,

For the van service I would probably suggest the use of more offline type of marketing - leaflet drops, local papers etc. It is a very local service you are offering and this will give you great reach.

Also try to locate as many landlords as possible for your second service and to see if they can help put you in touch with their new tennants, who will of course be looking to move furniture around in the near future.

Might be worth having a word with charity shops as well. A lot will turn down furniture donations because they cant transport them to or from the shop. If they think the furniture is valuable enough they will pay someone £20 to fetch it. Also if someone buys it from the shop and cant get it home they could recomend your services. Maybe offer them a 50% discount on the collection side in return for all the delivery business which is charged to the customer

Finally take a look at books on the subject of "Guerilla Marketing" which is all about getting maximum marketing bang for the minimum of money. You will find a ton of ideas for promoting local businesses.

Good luck with it.

Thanks Carl.

I got this book on audio book format (Guerrilla Marketing in 30 Days) - I have never been able to use of any of the 30 ideas in there, but listening to it always puts me in the right frame of mine to work on my marketing. Its on my iPod so I think I have listened to it about 20 times now.

Also take a look at back episodes of the video podcast "Help My Business Sucks" (click here). Ignore the interview episodes - they suck and are just big adverts. All the other episodes look at guerrilla marketing methods in action. If the link doesn’t work you can find it on iTunes as well. (It is an American pod cast but the creator and presenter is English so it is not too American)

Hi Tomas,

I would seriously consider engaging an expert like Gareth Mailer http://www.4networking.biz/Members/Details/51180 Check his testimonials....

Cheers,

Martin

Cheers for the recommendation, Martin :) 

Are you in the local free paper, I thik the leaflet drop is the best option and stuff like that

You say you've just had it revamped, but it looks about 10 years old.  It's all very well getting more hits, but if the website itself isn't much cop, you won't convert them. Sorry to sound a bit harsh, just an opinion 

It's not harsh, just accurate. 

The website has a lot of problems IMO, and needs massively revamped - the fact it's all HTML "template" based too, have you considered Wordpress? Would be a lot easier and neater...

Even if you just want to go with an "out of the box" theme for the time being from ThemeForest.net, and build up from there when the website is more established...

On the SEO front, I'm in this niche with another client and as such I couldn't take on the job (that's to presume you are actually looking, Tomas!), hence why I haven't called; however, there's lots of great advice posted around these boards, and if you are looking for SEO give me a bell and I will be more than happy to put you in touch with a few trusted people. 

As said above Tomas, you will be better spending time on offline marketing and using Facebook, get on the facebook groups in your area (for sale, local businesses etc) and get the site revamped (again).

If I landed on your site and was after your service I would jump right back off TBH, it breaks so many of the "rules" of a website that it's never going to convert sales I am afraid. Black background, green text, moving gif's, I wouldn't have used a site like this in 1990 let alone today.

You have 2 real options here, either hire a professional to give your site a premium feel or do it yourself properly, sites such as themeforest.net will let you buy a website theme from only £6 and then all you need to do is change the content and images to your own.

A decent site will help convert any prospective customers and they would more than likely pass your website onto others, unfortunately your current site is more suited to a 1990 website archive.

Hi Thomas, I echo Gareth's and Gareth's comments above. Following our brief chat, I've emailed you a report which shows you what you need to do to the site to irmprove it for SEO purposes to get found in the searches. There are only 46 searches for "man and a van" Bristol, and 16 for Cardiff - nothing showing on the other areas. 

If you need any more advice let me know. 

^^ Basically what they said.

The website coding is very poor and it's missing a lot of elements which would make it "google friendly". In general terms it's dated and very 1990s in its layout. I'd take one look at this site and assume the business had folded 10 years ago and it was just a fluke the site was still up.

From personal experience I've always searched online for man and van services when moving home/office and you might want to take a look at this guy's site as I found it decently laid out (compared to most M&V sites I've seen - it's all relative - and it definitely wouldn't win any design awards!): http://www.vanandmansheffield.co.uk/

I'd advocate not going down the DIY route as you need a professional's help with this - it will definitely be an investment in your business.

Interesting, I looked back on archive.org to see what the previous site loked like, based on the comments here.

Nothing shows for it.

Hi Tomas,

One thing you can do today - go to Google Local and set up or claim the listing for your business - you will find all the instructions there.

Once you have a listing encourage your customers to leave reviews for you, load pictures of you and your van and perhaps a video of you and your van.

Fill in the descriptions field properly and include a list of prices and any special offers you have. Plus include links to your website.

As you get more reviews you google listing will rise up the rankings and as searches for your type of business will trigger the local part of Googles Algo it will provide maps listings above most of the other results. So you can get listed high up for your google places listing.

Re the website I'd echo what everyone else has said - if cash is very tight you could go to wordpress.com, choose a theme you like and then pay the $17 per year to map your existing domain to it - you will then know your codebase is solid and the design is at least contemporary. 

Do you have a large Polish community locally? If so it might make sense to focus your marketing towards them as speaking Polish will be a good selling poing for you in this market.

Good luck

If you do go for a new site, please keep the video of the chick!!!!