I was in Gosport earlier today and though not surprised, I was dumbfounded by a few things I saw! Shops closed down throughout the town, twelve Taxis sat waiting for the Portsmouth Ferry to come in and when it did only two of them got fares. The car parks, even though they are free were nigh on empty as was the town centre.
Having been in Gosport for about an hour and on my return to the ferry I gazed over to the Taxi rank and nine of the original twelve Gosport Taxis was still there. This begs the question, how many more companies, large and small will fail during these testing times? A simple answer is many. So what can be done, if anything to help?
As a business, sometimes we need to advertise to get business, however the cost of that advertising is often expensive. That said the number of people using the Internet is still rising, so surely advertising on the Internet could be the way forward. So how could you advertise or even get noticed on the net?
We are a search engine optimization company and I guess you are thinking I would say “Optimise your Website.” Well yes and no. That would help you get more traffic, however not many people can afford an optimisation service, some do not even have a website. So what else can they do?
You could consider advertising in an online business directory; however the cost of these can range from £200 a year up to £500 a year. But do they offer value? Yes and no. Most take more than one person per page, including your competitors, which is not value so, no. If they are near the top for your search term you then yes, perhaps! Why perhaps? Well let’s look at some examples.
For £348 a year plus vat you could try thebestof, they have some good results, however a problem with them is that more than one person could well share the page for the term you are going for. Did I also mention the £149 plus vat set up fee? They do however offer a network service, but if you were a company offering Coach Holidays, would you need the network? An Accountant on the other hand might. They also drop leaflets through doors a couple of times a year, but you could always do that yourself. So your first year would cost you £497 (plus vat).
What about City Local? The set up fee is only £50 (plus vat) with a regular monthly fee of just £15 (plus vat). However you again share with others; you can add another £10 (plus vat) per month for top spot though. So if we add the figures together, to be top spot, would set you back £395 (plus vat) in year one.
To many this is just too much, is there a cheaper alternative? YES! We are top 10 in Google for search engine optimization; we have created our own business directory. Unlike others we do not share pages with all comers, we only except one person per niche per town. We do not charge a set up fee and we only charge £50 (plus vat) per annum. Are we near the top for all the terms we are going for, No, not yet; however for a directory that is only a few months old we have hundreds of top 10 positions.
Will we continue to charge only £50 (plus vat) per annum, no, however anyone taking a page now will keep that same price for the following year as well, in effect £100 (plus vat) for two years. After that we guarantee that we will not increase your fee above £200 (plus vat) within the first five years of being in the directory.
Will this stop any companies from folding, probably not, but and it is a big but, it means that some small (or large) companies can get a year of advertising on a highly optimised page attacking local searches for the cost of one local newspaper advert. It may be a small thing, but it is giving these companies what they need right now. Advertising, where advertising works for a fee that is well below the average for this type of service, supported by a one of the top seo companies in the UK.