google and advertising

chalkie99

OK, I have looked at your site and, sorry to be blunt, it is not effectively designed. (This is my tactful way of saying what I think )

It doesn't really appeal to the eye or give a lot of confidence in contacting you and it's not set up to be search engine friendly.

My personal advice, and I'm not trying to sell you anything here because I don't sell website design or hosting, is to start all over again with a new website address which relates to something people will be searching for - https://www.hampshiredrivinglessons.co.uk for example was available few minutes ago.

The hosting firm I use is £17 a year and provides everything you need together with automatic installation of Wordpress which is a pleasure to use and is very search engine friendly.

There are plenty of people who could set you up with a simple but very effective site very quickly for very little cost and I am sure you would get lots more enquiries.

Good Luck - let me know if you require more info

lincroft1710

Having also looked at your website, I am sorry to say I agree with Chalkie99.

hampshirebabe

If I'm looking for a plumber or electrician though, I wouldn't google hampshire, I'd look for someone if Fareham, my town, or even my postcode. I couldn't put in all the areas I cover in a web address.
£17 a year sounds like a bargain, but would it still be easy enough for someone who doesn't know how best to optimise it to get the best search results? I have been planning to add a fair bit more, but haven't had time and wanted to be sure it was going to be found before I put lots of time into it.

paulwf

hampshirebabe wrote: »

Because I do automatic I dont tend to teach students, mostly its new mums, slightly older ladies or ladies from other countries.

It's great you've got a specific type of customer in mind, that means you can really target your advertising and use your ad spend effectively.

If you do google adwords I bet a huge amount of your spend is wasted on clickthroughs from teens looking for normal lessons. I'd rather pop along to an NCT meeting or get in their magazine or whatever they do. As you don't sell online I wouldn't spend too much advertising online (though I'd still have a good website so people can find out more about you).

Also spending money on advertising is the lazy - and most costly! - way to promote yourself. If you are prepared to put some time and effort in you can get much better results for next to no money. My advertising spend is zero but I spend a heck of a lot of effort (and a little money) on promoting my business.

Savvy_Sue

Another market you don't mention is the 'haven't driven for a while and now need an automatic' brigade. I wouldn't say there's a huge market for 'post shoulder replacement surgery' lessons (apparently there's only about 5000 such ops done each year, far fewer than knees or hips), but there are a fair few shoulder ops done which lead to a similar level of initially restricted movement!

If you can network with local groups for sufferers of Rheumatoid Arthritis, you might find it worthwhile. I'm not in Hants, but I am having a refresher lesson in an automatic next week, prior to letting rip in our shiny new automatic!

hampshirebabe

You're right Savy Sue, when I say I teach slightly older ladies, its mostly women who learnt in thier younger days, then got married and haven't driven since. Now for one reason or another they need to be able to drive so have refresher lessons, its amazing how much they remember, I taught one lady who was in her late 60's and hadn't driven for over 40 years, but she was brilliant at parallel parking!
Networking is a good idea, and one I'd not actually thought of. Up till now I've been with a big school who've given me all the work I need, so haven't needed to do anything myself. I do do quite a bit of networking without realising it, I call it going to playgroups ;-), but I'll look into some of the other suggestions too.
Thanks, just need to get my website sorted now.

Savvy_Sue

Just a thought, but have you investigated the cost of advertising in local church magazines, and in programmes for school fairs? Both those would hit your target groups reasonably well.

I know one instructor used to go to the boys' secondary school fair and if you could reach the pedals, you could have a go round a separate playground, plus there were leaflets with lots of introductory offers. Anything where people could 'have a go' might demonstrate to the nervous that they could actually do this!

Savvy_Sue

Savvy_Sue wrote: »

Just a thought, but have you investigated the cost of advertising in local church magazines, and in programmes for school fairs? Both those would hit your target groups reasonably well.

just to explain my reasoning on this: the factor you've identified as common to most of your learners is that they're women. Well, you find more women than men in church, and you find more women than men involved / attending school events.

Plus you've also identified older ladies, and young mums. Both these are well represented in churches (drawn in through Parent and Toddler groups in the case of mums!)

Now, some people will look for a driving instructor through google, BUT in most cases wouldn't you prefer to go with a personal recommendation? You will get your name out there with church magazines etc, so that if asked people might say "No, I don't know a driving instructor who used an automatic, but I know I've seen one advertising lately".

For that reason, while online is necessary, I don't think it's necessarily going to be the way people find you. It may be more about getting your name out there IRL.

pinkclouds

hampshirebabe wrote: »

Also, is there any basic info for complete beginers about how to improve my google ranking. I keep reading things like 'link your site to others' 'make a sitemap' and others, but I dont know how to do it.
My facebook page comes up quite high in the list, but just says you need to join facebook to see more.

Your Facebook page is easily found because it has a lot of good content and mentions several appropriate "keywords" i.e. words or phrases that people type into Google when searching for your Facebook page. Including suitable keywords in your web content is a good way of improving your Google page rank and your search engine visibility and it's definitely something you can do yourself with a little bit of time and creativity.

For example, your website "contact" page doesn't mention "lessons" or "Fareham" or "Hampshire". If you type your phone number into Google, then your "contact" page comes up immediately. But it's unlikely that someone searching for your contact details is going to know them already - they are more likely to search for "driving lessons fareham", with maybe one or two other keywords like "automatic" or "female instructor". (Actually, a combination of all those keywords brings up this forum post on page 18 of Google's results!)

Basically, write down whatever you think someone would type into Google when searching for your website. Then, try to include these words or phrases into all of your web pages and mention the most important ones as often as possible. (Currently, your home page mentions "automatic" 6 times and "instruction" 5 times but it only mentions "lesson", "driving" and "fareham" once each.) Don't write them as a list - include them naturally within your sentences and paragraphs. If you find this difficult, maybe a friend or relative could help your re-write your web content? Plus, it's always good to have more people proof-reading in case of typos or omissions.

As for the other things you mention... "Link your site to others" just means having your URL/web address displayed on appropriate, good quality websites. "Make a sitemap" in this context means create a XML sitemap, which should be uploaded to your root directory. It is a useful tool for search engines but not having one will not prevent your website from being indexed (i.e. listed in search engine results).

I hope that helps a little.