UKC

OK, so we have been paying for an ad in the back of Climb, Climber and Summit for a number of years now!

Just looked at the budget for next 12 months and can't decide what to spend it on! I did used to advertise on here years ago and then the forum got too big and I stopped. I think I was one of the first people to use a paid post thing all those years ago when your ad did get seen at the top. Happy days when I got business from here.

Have many of you look at the classifieds, how many actually then book anything because they have seen it in the mags?

Should I just spend the money on a better website, or more SEO stuff?

Any idea oh wise ones of UKC!

Sam Orange

In reply to Sam Mayfield:

I never look at the back of climbing mags, and flick past any page inside it with ads.
I hate being marketed at, and if I notice an advert, I am less likely to buy. (I guess there could be subliminal advertising that affects me, hard to tell really).
I buy stuff that friends recommend, or I search for the thing I am looking for and then read reviews online.

In reply to Sam Mayfield:
I might skim through them once I've read everything else, but they are certainly not a priority and I have never bought anything as a result of an ad in a magazine.

And that iuncludes holidays and accommodation.

If I was looking for accommodation on say, the Costa Blanca, I'd Google that.

In reply to Sam Mayfield:

Yes, so ex secretaries can get phone calls many years later as someone read the details in a mag in a hut...

In reply to Sam Mayfield:

I no longer buy any UK mags but even when I did, I'd never go there to find accommodation. I ended up staying at the Orange House from on-line recommendations (mostly on here) and from folk who'd stayed with you in the past.

Reputation has a much longer reach than some tiny advert in the back of a magazine IMO.

In reply to Sam Mayfield:
before the internet i looked through all the adds in the back of the mag's , remember the badly drawn and almost hand written adds for Buffalo and joe royal ( i think ) ropes ?
it is easy to reach a wider audience outside the readership of a highly specialised magazine now days, so i don't even buy the mag's any-more to see the adds, i can read enough online.
word of mouth is still a best start

In reply to Sam Mayfield:
Have you ever tried to work out how many bookings resulted directly from the adverts?

Do you ask your customers how they found out about the Orange House?

That way you can crudely compare the income/profit to the advertising cost.

In reply to Sam Mayfield:

I've stayed with you because of word-of-mouth. I think most of the climbers I know would automatically look at the orange house if going to the costa blanca.

In reply to Sam Mayfield:

I'd go for search engine optimisation and web services: I don't look at the back pages any more and barely glance at Ads on here. I know of you through word of mouth but if i didn't, I'd be finding you through google, blog articles about you (written by someone other than you) and/or trip advisor.

You're got a free focus group on here - I'm sure people will tell you about how they book hols and it they've heard of you, how they did so. I'd also talk to your current clients and work out how they heard of you but you're probably all over this!

In reply to Sam Mayfield:

just went on a biking trip to the French Alps and went off recommendations from here.
then checked the place out on TA.
I would never go on the back of a small ad in the back of a magazine. My advice, spend your money on web advertising

In reply to Sam Mayfield:

Agree with the rest here. I've never bought something off an ad in a magazine (possilby why magazines are dieing).

But internet searches and word of mouth are how i tend to find stuff like that.

In reply to Sam Mayfield:

Well I've never really noticed the Orange House in either of those mags and I buy all of them on a regular basis. But I have heard good things said about you on here. So I suspect that word of mouth is better for you than anything you pay for.

I've been doing websites for about 15 years now, both personally and professionally and most of the SEO industry is total snake oil. So don't waste any money on SEO. A good web dev will know plenty about making sure the site is laid out properly, so you'll get the most from that. After that it's basically:

- Content is king, especially regularly updated content - as well as posting that content on all the social media sites. Don't ignore google plus either. But the normal round of facebook, twitter, google plus, instagram etc as well as lots of regular blog posts will be the main 'SEO' draw.
- The 'older' the website the better - eg buy your domain for the maximum number of years allowed
- Make sure URLs are human readable
- Links from other good websites - but don't buy links, it'll end badly for you

Basically it takes a bit of time to build up a decent ranking and you are at the mercy of google to an extent.

So the take home from that? If you can't find the time to write a blog post once a week and chuck up a few nice pics up on instagram, get a copywriter to do it for you. Shouldn't be impossible to find a climber who is also a copywriter.

Or get a new website designed. Make sure you talk to them about SEO.

In reply to london_huddy:


+1

That and a special competition on here, free weeks accommodation or the like. Big hits, that will reach a new audience.

In reply to london_huddy:


I'm curious - what sort of web services do you think will help in this case?

In reply to mattrm:


Search engines aren't really bothered about your site 'being laid out properly'.


This seems a bit meaningless to me. Google, bing, duckduckgo, etc. have no idea how long you have 'bought' your domain for. Even if they did it wouldn't feature on the algorithms they use.


How would they not be? Don't think you can use (for e.g.) base64 encoding for URLs.


Relies on you persuading other 'good sites' to backlink to yours. Not always easy in my experience.

In reply to Willi Crater:

Mobile friendly has an impact
http://searchengineland.com/google-clarifies-the-mobile-friendly-algorithm-...


Expiry date of a domain is i think public so it could be in the algorithms.


http://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/t.php?n=620963 is not human readable.

A url that contains 'Is it really worth advertising in the back of climbings mag' has meaning for humans.

See page 8 of the Google Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide.


Encourage guests to post on social media, blogs and trip advisor.

In reply to Willi Crater:

Now that Google's search engine is getting more and more complex, getting up the rankings is about more than just SEO (as you probably know). Web services in this context would include options like getting an agency or contractor to help with cross linking and references on other pages as well as making sure that trip advisor and other databases are as favourable as possible would be my advice. Building new content for blogs and supporting others to produce copy about you is all good too- trickling it out keeps pages higher on most search algorithms.

In reply to Willi Crater:


Yes they are. See page 8 of the SEO Guide (as elsewhere rightly points out). Also the following page is useful:

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/76329


Of course they do, it's public information (eg whois data). None of the search engines actually detail their algorithms
as it'd make gaming them too easy. But they do weight information that's been around for a while (and linked to a lot) higher. So there's no harm in doing this. But it's probably a very minor part of the picture. Honestly, it's all about content.


Again read page 8 of the Google SEO Guidelines. I mean that this URL:

www.example.com/climbing/how-to-belay.html

Is better than:

www.example.com/p.php?id=12345


I never said it was easy. I just said it was important. Indeed, generally, unless you have very deep pockets, I simply wouldn't bother trying to get backlinks. Just post really good content on a regular basis on your site and on all major social media sites and the links will eventually come.

SEO that's important that you have control over:

- Content, lots of it, that's good, posted often and linked in all the social media

SEO that's important but is largely out of your control:

- Backlinks

SEO that's not so important, but easy to do (so well worth doing):

- Site structure/design
- Domain structure / age
- Adding your site on to Google/Bing/Yahoo webmaster tools

In reply to Willi Crater:


A well laid out and easy to use site is vital for Web based advertising.
The web portal is often the first thing new customers see and first impressions count.

In reply to london_huddy:

Hi Andrew what do you mean focus group? or just asking etc?

In the old days I asked how people had heard about us and just about 100% of people said, not sure really we just know about you! not that helpful lol

Sam

In reply to Sam Mayfield:

That's about the size of it- where people find places to stay, how they access sources of info and what they want to see (photos, reviews, descriptions, owner ethos, whatever).

You've probably got a good idea already but you never know. I've recently had confirmed how much more the under 25s value videos than other groups, for example.

In reply to Sam Mayfield: advertising in the Rockfax Costa Blanca guide is probably worth keeping on.

In reply to mattrm:

>Shouldn't be impossible to find a climber who is also a copywriter.

That would be me. Feel free to get in touch anytime Sam.

In reply to Willi Crater:

Excellent!
You've turned Sam's post into a web-developers' pissing contest.

Did you intend to, or did it just come out like that because you can't help it?