Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Absolutely an internal blog on your website if it is related directly to the subject of the website is a great asset.

I'll admit originally with one of my websites I produce a blog solely to get better search engine rankings and some of my articles were indexed quite high on the search results which produced traffic to the website all interested in its content.

I now produced  blogs on my websites and find it more fulfilling because I enjoy spending my precious time working on it and know that it will hopefully be of interest and also it scratches my back in return by getting the articles indexed and also to some degree producing brownie points for my website rankings.

If you produce an external blog obviously there's a very definite chance that Google will not associate your work to your website, and not improve your search engine ranking.

That's really good advice, I also found that every time I put the effort into making really good content in the form of original content on my webpages of videos you get good results regarding traffic and search engine positions. I hope you put in the hours in on your content via our website

Hello Thomas

I understand your point that if usually an financial investment gets a good enough return in an ideal situation with unlimited funds you just go for it, but in the real world unlimited funds don't exist usually.

The 95% occupancy throughout the year is only because I've worked at getting every aspect of the business correct the facilities of the cottage after this spot on with the films tour etc. the other properties I represent on the same website and not quite as good and do not get the same occupancy rates so you've just got to get everything correct it appears.

I can see the you probably would get diminishing returns at some point on search engine results in comparison to time input but I've never got their because I've probably managed at this moment in time to get around 60% of the high traffic keywords working for me above the fold on page 1 of Google but there's still room for improvement. Only limited by time and money

But like you I love SEO it's become a way of life which is enjoyable on many levels.

Interesting, thanks a lot for your detailed response. It seems like you've worked out very clearly the customer returns in comparison to the money spent well done.

I find Google Adword does work, but I found it to be generally too expensive. I would think if my business for holiday letting was larger with more properties it would then be worthwhile, but at the moment with my own doing fine and only representing three other properties if I said that the campaign could easily run through £25 a day and I suspect wouldn't get enough bookings back to warrant it. We don't seem to get many people signing up for e-mail news from the website either so to be perfectly honest most of the businesses coming directly from the website only.

I tried Facebook advertising and found it to be very ineffective for both the holiday cottage and installation of wireless alarms, virtually nobody showed an interest it just costs money.

And I've not tried any of the online or off-line paid for directory advertising although it might be worthwhile I'll look into it.

Not asking about specifics of money, but this is just a general question to see what kind of return people get for their Internet marketing time investment..

I would say I'm getting  over 40,000 hits per year for one business which is holiday cottages but I only own one cottage and act as an agent for three other clients. Because the campaign is working well for me at the moment I get probably 95% occupancy throughout the year, which you would have no chance of accomplishing without SEO intensive input.

If I had to pay £0.50 a click approximately obviously it wouldn't be worthwhile, especially when you realise that a percentage of the traffic and not related to your product. I also have a second business which is installing wireless security alarms over the Internet and once again approximate traffic at the moment is almost approaching 40,000 again per year.

Now I'm sure there are some big hitters out but my general question is how productive, is you're organic results and Internet marketing for your personal business in comparison to what it would cost you if you had to pay per click?

I'm kind of wondering how well the Internet is working people on this forum for their particular businesses?

Good, Bad ? whats your story ?

Cheers alan

Absolutely great advice from EGOL, but it's a lot easier when you really selling just one product from your webpage, checking the analytics everybody goes to the tariff page and then moves on to the availability if they make it,  some get put off by the tariff page and leave

Hi

Absolutely I know exactly where you're coming from , I because I'm not the world's best technically at SEO 10 so I spend a great deal of my time making sure that the content of my blog is up-to-date and of good quality and it seems to do the trick . Example I planned to visit this particular tourist spot and film it with an HD camcorder and then visited as many relevant places edited the film and did my absolute best as an amateur to make the film interesting for people who are thinking of visiting, and  YouTube listed it very high and it's received thousands of hits so it's been worth the effort.

I then back this up by having a detailed walking tour of the area and made sure that it was a quality article and put the film and written area review together on one page which now ranks high and gets good volumes of traffic so good quality content  definitely is appreciated by search engines and people.  And for the back links once again it definitely is worth the time making sure that you get relevant good quality ones rather than lots of rubbish basically

Good a detailed response EGOl, thank you.

It's not a complex subject is holiday accommodation of one cottage and I'm placing the call to action links like the tariff and booking page easily seen on  on the left-hand side.
One of my own personal websites of similar subjects, holiday accommodation was constructed in Dreamweaver and it’s doing okay. I have so far managing to rank for most of the short tail high traffic keywords. http://www.endeavourcottage.co.uk/

But later on I have moved into WordPress and I constructed this website for a friend. http://www.whitby-holiday-cottage.com/ But with this website they didn't wish to pay for any other services like SEO.

The new website is going to be a holiday cottage as above, but this time they want to pay for the website AND onoing SEO......

I'm just thinking about how to do the best job from construction to the on-going SEO.
In my mind I wasn't particularly thinking about the on page optimisation, but if anybody has any particular points regarding which they think is the better platform between Dreamweaver and WordPress I would be interested.

I have made sure that title key words, body text key words , image names, alt tags, title tags, h1, h2,h3 etc are correct on both Dreamweaver and wordpress.

I bow to your knowledge EGOL, I am sure there are some very complex websites that need careful consideration on layout, but I was primarily thinking about the next step of Internet marketing of this website, rather than design.

Is my i thinking correct for this subject of website?

I'm just about to start a new SEO campaign for a website and this time it's for a customer rather than my own websites.

I'm not a professional SEO, just an enthusiastic up-and-coming “hopefully”? amateur, so my question is, if you had to give a percentage out of 100, what percentage would you give to each  aspect of your  new SEO campaign, in order of preference?

I think I can obviously  state that on page optimisation has to be the first subject but then after that what would get the lion's share?

Would you give most of your  time to make a blog and content on the new website about the related subjects which is in this case North York Moors holiday accommodation, that is my plan.

What percentage of your time  would you give to guest posting, directories, article directories, link  building, social media, or any other SEO aspect.

I would be interested to see how people approach their own personal SEO of a new website, or even an  existing website for continual better search engine rankings.

Hi Sha

I'd noticed the opportunity to ask one question per month, but never really considered how important worthwhile could be but I definitely do now

Hello Jennifer thank you for pointing the service out I'll try make it as soon as possible

Hello FranciscoI have been very impressed by the quality and willingness of people to help out I think what tends to happen is that the people who are this website are all very interested in the subject it's not just work. I know in my case it's become like a hobby/work which is nice. All the best Alan

Hello Jennifer

Thank you for pointing this service out I will definitely try to  makethe time as soon as possible in he future

all the best Alan

Hi Rand

I think that your whiteboard Friday videos are very informative and enthusiastically presented along with all the other experts I am becoming familiar with and I can definitely see why professional SEO marketers can find this website must have.

Also I really appreciate all the interesting answers from everybody.

If I were perfectly honest I think that even though I am an amateur SEO I probably will continue with my subscription to Seomoz because I do market my own holiday cottage, and I'm just starting a holiday letting agency. And I also market my own alarm and CCTV installation website so a big percentage of my spare time is now spent on Internet marketing. My only reservation has been that to be perfectly blunt I have managed by just applying common sense and hard work to already get pretty good results considering my SEO technical abilities are not that extensive.

My holiday cottage is appearing fairly high on Google search results, managing first page for most of the main heavy traffic short tail keywords like "Whitby Holiday Cottages" and seems to be competing against a large established letting agencies who advertise throughout the UK with a great many more cottages than I have on my website currently.
I also have a website for my main business which is for the installation of CCTV and wireless security alarm, but I found that very easy to be very prominent on local searches because  there is not much competition regarding installation companies in one particular town.I moved up a gear by trying to appear in Google search results for just the brand name of a security alarm system that is sold by some of the largest retailers in the UK and I am once again getting reasonably good results, so it looks like it is doable for a one-man band like me.

So I guess what I'm really thinking is how important is it to get a great deal more technically informed, but obviously if I do I'm assuming I should get better results that will justify the time and money spent.

I'm looking at it this way that if I had to pay for the number of organic hits I get on Google search just for my cottages website through some service like Google ad words it would probably cost it about £1000 a month which makes the time and effort well worthwhile.

I think I probably will dig deeper into the technical aspects and hopefully try to become a valued member of Seomoz.

I just want to ask the people who subscribe to Seomoz on a regular basis, I just paid for my first  month subscription but to be perfectly honest I'm trying to work out whether
somebody who is not rolling in cash and trying to make a living can afford to
pay the fee each month.

I'm not a professional I just have two business websites and I'm learning the subject and finding it interesting. The tools do seem very good but I just wondered how people see this service on which aspect is the most important of them.

I like to continue, I have been impressed the quality of the forum topics and discussions

I just wonder whether I can afford to justify the fee.

Thank you everybody in town to help me, it just turned out
that the workplace website had been hacked. My web space provider cannot
facilitate the latest version of WordPress at the moment which means
unfortunately we haven't got the best security, but hopefully that will change
soon. I've uploaded the website again and all is well at the moment.

Sorry Sha I mistakenly put the - instead of .  what a silly mistake.

It's the word Whitby, a town in North Yorkshire with the domain .uk.net at the end.

www.whitby.uk.net for sure

Thank you alan

Hi activesuper

Please except my apologies it is www.whitby.uk.net

I mistakenly put the - instead of .

It's the word Whitby,  a town in North Yorkshire with the domain .uk.net at the end.

Silly me

Hi ShaYes thank you I understand the update regarding WordPress now, I can see that's got nothing to do with a it but  there is something very strange here If I type it into the URL nothing appears, but if I do a Google search I get this messagewww.whitby-uk.net this domain name is available for only $32.5 per year? And it says I posted that message with my picture under itWhat's going on I don't understand it I still own the domain name it's not for sale

I've just found this message below in my Google analytics, I wonder if this has anything to do with it?

But I still can't see why it should be apparently of sale, or nothing is appearing in the search results?

Dear Site Owner or Webmaster of http://www.whitby.uk.net/,

As of the last crawl of your website, you appear to be running WordPress 3.1.3. Google recommends that you update to the latest release. Older or unpatched software may be vulnerable to hacking or malware that can hurt your users. To download the latest release, visit the WordPress download page. If you have already updated to the latest version of WordPress, please disregard this message.

If you have any additional questions about why you are receiving this message, Google has provided more background information in a blog post about this subject.

Best wishes,

Google Search Quality Team