OT - HIBS, Please help me!

Three web sites, each one aimed at a target market, so I have a wedding site, a party site and a Christmas site. I SEO them myself and two of them rank pretty well in my area. I am also a member of two major DJ Organisations who promote me and I'm on the odd carefully selected listing site.

Because of my past life, I analyse everything. I've tried paid adverts in magazines etc. I use a strategy. For £1 spent, if it returns £10 or less, its not brilliant and I drop it, £15 is ok, £20 is good. For example if I paid £100 for an advert, I would be pleased, and repeat it again, if it generated £2000 income.

I do believe that the way forward is the internet. Apart from referals, the rest of my leads come from websites.

I don't do much paid advertising as 90% of my business comes direct from my website and the remainder from recommendation. I list in most wedding directories but have a rule that I don't pay anymore than £40 for the year but I only actually pay to list on about 4 sites in total, (including Hitched!) the rest are free. I have a free listing on Yell and Thomson Directories but that's about it really. I never advertise in the local press as it's a complete waste of time and money for me. I think if you have an internet based business, the best way to advertise it is on the net. I did do a couple of wedding fairs when I moved over from having a florists shop 9 years ago to the internet but no longer do them as they didn't particularly work for me and I don't really have the time now. I used to advertise in "Wedding Ideas" magazine when it first started up about 6 years ago..? but once it gained in popularlity, the prices went up and I didn't feel it was worth it for the amount of business it brought in. Hope that helps.

Google adwords is a good way to advertise but you have to be careful as it can be expensive, Good seo for websites is also important, I believe I rank very well in yahoo and bing but im working on google at the moment. (commercial i rank well but weddings im top of second page at the moment)

It all really depends on your business what is it you are selling or offering, and how do you operate (website, shop)

I know bus adverts work well for some companies and it one i am looking to try and some use radio which doesnt work for me but works well for others. most newspapers and magazine adverts are a waste of time.

If your business is based locally, then wedding fairs are useful - but expensive. For me it is worth it, because the closer the jobs are to my base, the less I spend on fuel - and these campers love their juice. I also use Adwords but have a small budget cap - and am constantly refining the search. It works well if you are in a niche market. There may be more competition if you are a photographer or florest. I also list on a few websites, including Hitched - but Hitched is the only one I pay for. Free Index has been useful (and free!). The more big sites you are listed with / or blog / add to forums (with useful content) the more backlinks you create, which can also help your search ranking.

I have a shop on ebay which I do very well from and when they order from me I always put my web site details in with their order.

Wedding and craft forums are a great way to advertise plus google picks up on your web site link and pushes you higher up. I now rank on page 1 for most of my products and so most of my customers come direct from search engines. It does take many hours plugging away at the web side of things but it really does pay off in the end. It takes time but really doesn't cost very much.

I am not totally sure but my hubby is a web designer and apparently they can put words into your site when they are making it that come up when people search and this gets you higher up on google.

For me word of mouth and wedding exhibitions bring me enough orders and I haven't done much advertising at all. I did advertise in a national paper once and got nothing back and since then I haven't paid to advertise anywhere other than Hitched. Wedding exhibitions are costly both in terms of the stand sometimes and also kitting yourself out with display equipment and enough samples but 3 years on they work brilliantly for me. I probably get about 8 orders from each exhibition now and more to come steadily in over the next couple of years after because as you know weddings are planned well in advance. I limit my stand cost to £50 and know the places that work well for me so I'm sticking with them as I can't really take much more work on now anyway.

Google is your friend with that one.

For me a lot of it is word of mouth but I also use google adwords, thomson local, yell.com, touch local, free index. Apart from Google adwords, all the others are free and when anyone searches for what you do in your area, they always come up in the search results

It's all in the wording on your site, in particular on your home page. You need keywords on your home page that are specific to your products that google will pick up. If you do a search on google for SEO you will find tons of advice on what it's all about and it will help you understand what it is. For example I sell garters, ring cushions & dolly bags so on my home page there is plenty of wording including those products. you also need it in the title of each of your web pages. It all sounds complicated but you will get there.

Getting to the top of google all depends on the knowledge of your competition as if they have done a good job getting to the top it will make it more difficult for you.

Getting to the top isnt a case of start today top tomorrow it can take months for any changes to be recognised.

Google loves links to your site from similar sites. I.e photographers site linking to another photographers site. Google also gives brownie points to older sites and for those with lots of traffic.

not a HIB but i monitor google adwords for my company...basically in a nutshell....you pay for words to come higher up in search engines and then you get a monthly report on what words being searched more and where this si on your list....etc etc...we pay around £400 a month for our list

theres alot more to it but thats the basics!