Paying to be listed on the top of google

[Jbrodie]

I've got a lot of time on my hands today.
I just signed on a few weeks ago with this company, they will get me on the top of the google list in my city. They did do it. I'm # 3 in google for windshield repair tampa check it out JB Windshield Repair.
Anyway my first question is, is it worth the money to advertise this way or hope that google will find you and not pay anything?

Talking to the guy from ACT he said "the only way to get alot of work is thru advertising". The free sites still want your money and the pay sites want even more of your money. I could go thru a list of things I'm advertising on, is there a percentage that business use for advertising?

[Ricersux]

There are NO guarantees that your site will ever be listed. Most of those SEO companies are just setting you up with the "crawlers" each search engine uses...The most important part of getting Google to give you a high listing is what is said in your site's title bar. That gets indexed and viewed first by the bots. You can go to the major search engines (google, yahoo, ask) and there is a section to submit your site to be crawled...it just takes time. DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY on something that can NOT guarantee....even Google doesn't guarantee a top listing if you pay for a featured listing or utilize adwords.

(BTW - I have a degree in Network Engineering)

[screenman]

I would be very suprised if some of the busy guys spend much on advertising. For me and many like me the way to get new or more customers is to go out and find them, not wait and hope. Face to face and keep knocking, a quiet day should be a sales day that way it would be a busy day.

I cannot even count the amount of companies that have told us they can get our tinting business to the top of Google, funny thing is these same companies tell my friends in the business the same thing, someone will be disappointed.

[Jbrodie]

So how do you go out and find them? I've tried car dealerships they all going under, I tried body shops they take your card and I never hear from them again. I don't want to stand in a parking lot looking desperate begging for work. I did stand on a corner with a canopy tent and a banner got a little bit of work but not worth the time to stay out there all day in the heat waiting for a bite.

[screenman]

You have just mentioned all the things that work for most of us. Some of my best customers took 10 or more calls before I got my first job off them, these same customers provide a steady income for me 20 years on. Just one call is seldom enough, I would suggest your canopy location was incorrect or did not look right, not all car dealers are going down it only seems like that.

Spend all you want on advertising, in my very humble opinion it has provides very little reward for the investment. At least over here that is the case.

[Jbrodie]

You know we are having a resecion over here. Car dealers are going out of business. Heck car manufacuturers are going going bankrupt. People losing jobs and getting tight with cash or waiting until the windshield cracks all the way and than they want to repair it. I need a new angle of approach. Advertising is easier for me. I have never been good at going to shopping centers and pursue customers?

[Frank EU]

We have been working with Google. This is two years ago and it was just a project we ran to see what would happen. Some months our expenses were over $1500 and we advertized nation wide (in The Netherlands, we did not exclude any area, nor were we focussing on a certain area), other months it was around $900, depending the number of clikcs. We kept using Google for about six months. As you probably know, we are repair only. Although our advert was clearly repair only, we got too many leads for replacements. But we do not replace, nor refer to any replacer. We did not find the Google program all that helpfull. We thought so in advance but we're pleased to give it a fair shot >and we did.