Landscape gardener - where to advertise

ifconfig

About a year ago I did up a website for a family friend who is a landscape gardener. I may have to tweak it for SEO to boost Google rankings although, to be honest, I think, at the moment the main issue is he isn't getting much inbound links from other sites so most of the SEO is in-site.

Anyway - he has been asking me how he can improve his adverts and marketing online.

I figure that he should try out Google adwords. Any idea how much this might cost to tryout ? I know it is based upon bidding for keywords. His business is limited to 2 counties in Ireland at most so that should narrow down some of the keywords and hopefully they won't be too competitive in terms of pricing.

He asked about free directories and Yahoo.
I'm personally not sure whether Yahoo enjoys much viewership in Ireland.

I see a list of free online advert directories on this forum and I will definitely look into that for him.

Anyone aware of any other web directories which might be useful for him to get his business listed on (which might be good for folks who may be considering gardening work, etc). His work is fairly seasonal and it mostly picks up around spring time although this year he is expanding into tree surgery, etc so he wants to get word out.

Any suggestions on relevant nooks and crannies on the Web (as viewed from an Irish perspective) where he might be worth investing in in terms of online publicity ?

Freshie

First place to start is to see what level of search traffic there is for relevant keywords/phrases try free tool www.adwords.google.com/sleect/keywordtoolexternal
They when you've picked your list of keywords put them into https://adwords.google.com/select/TrafficEstimatorSandbox this will tell you the cost for every click. You need to be in position 1-3. Adwords itself has many useful tips but it takes time and effort to learn and get a good performing campaign. If using it don't opt for 'budget optimiser' instead use manual bidding to set your price and achieve position balancing this, the Click Through Rate and Quality Score per keyword.

tomED

Generally speaking, you won't get much traffic from a search directory, regardless of their popularity. But, they can be useful generating links back to your website. In the past Yahoo! and Dmoz used to give significant benefits to your rankings on Google.

There are many free directories that you can add your site for free and hopefully get some link love from it.

Google Adwords is a good place to start - but think about the approach and make sure your website is capable of converting visitors to a lead.

Aside from SEO, a good place to post for that type of work would be GumTree - have heard of others such as electricians, painters etc getting decent amounts of work from it.

p

What about finding targetted forums? Are there any sites or forums about building your own home? These could be good people to target. A paid ad on a site like that could yield good results.

ifconfig

OP here - many thanks for the replies so far.