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Nate, tags are just an additional thing - no biggie really, I started doing it a week ago
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Nate, change is good, guys that start bouncing you off with big budgets can get blown away now. As long as you can maintain an edge, the internet can be a windfall for us. If it stays static, then all our competitors will slowly learn what we know and then we lose our advantage - guys on wall street call it the efficient market hypothesis. Basically we are profitting from large arbitrage in understanding, the more guys that get smart to this, the less the 'arbitrage' becomes - thus we lose our advantage.
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Google is so impersonal, passive, detached.
I'm going to roll the dice on this one and continue to build relationships directly, face to face, person to person, business to business.
That way I won't have to relearn seo. Oh wait, I never learned it in the first place. My business would suffer if my mind was encumbered by all that knowledge.
:jester:
I'm going to roll the dice on this one and continue to build relationships directly, face to face, person to person, business to business.
That way I won't have to relearn seo. Oh wait, I never learned it in the first place. My business would suffer if my mind was encumbered by all that knowledge.
:jester:
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N8
There is a difference between marketing and advertising. I depend on marketing.
It does take years and years to establish your ability to market and sell at the right price, and then have the labor capacity to go out and deliver the service at a high level.
In my opinion, hours and hours spent at the computer developing seo and rank for a self made website is time that could be much better spent. Time is our single greatest resource because it is finite.
But then, if there's an easy way and a hard way to sniff out success in this business, I will take the hard way every single time because the reward is greater and I know the road it leads to. The majority of contractors will take the easy way.
Differntiation.
There is a difference between marketing and advertising. I depend on marketing.
It does take years and years to establish your ability to market and sell at the right price, and then have the labor capacity to go out and deliver the service at a high level.
In my opinion, hours and hours spent at the computer developing seo and rank for a self made website is time that could be much better spent. Time is our single greatest resource because it is finite.
But then, if there's an easy way and a hard way to sniff out success in this business, I will take the hard way every single time because the reward is greater and I know the road it leads to. The majority of contractors will take the easy way.
Differntiation.
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SEO is more of a hobby and its brings out the Competitive side of me. Besides it differs none than spending hours upon hours on PT. Mine as well get some SEO out of the numerous hrs on the internet.
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I'm using it. Typically, my local listing gets ~150 views per day and ~20 "actions" per day (clicks to site, more info, reviews, etc) (population: less than 300k)
With the tag added on June 28th, I am not seeing any differences. The tag itself only got a total of 10 clicks since that time.
For your area, Chris, this would probably not make any sense since local traffic is so low to begin with.
Scott, I absolutely agree with you. But, instead of overlooking seo/website building/internet marketing altogether because of time constraints, why not hire someone to take care of that for you? I think that in the residential repaint market, internet marketing is an important piece of the pie (not the entire pie, but a good chunk of it).
I do most of this stuff in my off time because it's a hobby of mine and I enjoy the subject, but for the guys that literally put in 1000s of hours to learn how to code/seo/etc from scratch just to "save" a buck, I think energies can be better focused elsewhere with better RIO.
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$200,000+ (75% of new customer leads) will come from my website. If you think it is anything less than the single most important piece of marketing/advertising/selling your business can have, you may be kidding yourself. I'm not smart enough to do the actual ROI but I just paid the $150 annual hosting fee. Its gotta be in the kajillions.
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Ken
Your business is much different from a paint contracting business based on avg sale. This is one of those apple and orange deals.
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Hey Ken, weren't you going to redo your site a while ago? What happened?
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Scott, I am interested in your opinion. My average sale this year is approximately $1300. How much is it for painters and how does that affect people using Google to find tradespeople? I think there is a difference between commercial and residential but even that gap will narrow over the coming years.
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I have the design sitting. I would like to add in a few more elements for an auto pricing script I may be inserting but primarily...
If it ain't broken, don't fix it. I will swap it out this winter.
maybe
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I think the greater distinction is between new construction and residential repaint (vs residential and commercial). Most of Topcoat Finishes' work is in NC, if I'm not mistaken?
For folks who do mostly NC, it just doesn't make sense to focus energies on search engine rankings/seo. It is much better, for the short and long term, to cultivate good relationships with builders, etc.
For folks who do mostly NC, it just doesn't make sense to focus energies on search engine rankings/seo. It is much better, for the short and long term, to cultivate good relationships with builders, etc.
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Ken
It's hard to get any concrete data in this business. My guess would be that the truly average sale could be as low as $1500. Total speculation. Mine is higher, and I do have a minimum at this point, where I know jobs become worthwhile based on my own number.
My hunch is that it would be easier to use seo and google to sell an avg sale in the less than $1500 range. Those are almost impulse buys. The problem is that this low of an avg sale would necessitate a volume model and all that goes with it, which you have, but most here don't. You are running about 20 guys at a $1300 avg sale. To my knowledge, Dan and Nate don't have nearly that large of a workforce.
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