Renegade Conservatory Guy

I’ve been thinking quite a bit lately…

And the question that is occupying my mind at the moment is…. would a ‘How to run a Double Glazing Company’ website be useful?

I’m quite sure that I’m the only person in the world currently thinking of this, which could mean that there is no need for such a website.  If this is the case please try talk me out of it!

My thought process is thus:

It can be very lonely running a conservatory or double glazing business, especially for sole traders.  In my capacity as the MD of a national conservatory manufacturer, I regularly spend my time talking to and advising customers on how to run their businesses.  But I share bits of information with one business owner, and then not necessarily the same with the next business owner.

So, what I’m thinking is that I create a membership website for owners of double glazing companies (and their staff) and share all the knowledge I have gained over the years about how to build a succesful installation or manufacturing business.  The knowledge I could share would be:

• How to purchase products at the right prices (eg sealed units, silicone, conservatory roofs, advertising etc).
• How to price up conservatories and double glazing correctly to ensure profitability.
• How to advertise effectively using mediums such as TV, radio, internet, newspapers and so on.
• Reviews and podcasts about software products such as Window Designer, Vector or Adminbase.
• How to motivate sales teams, and how to improve conversion rates.
• How to manage installations effectively.
• The list goes on and on….

Crucially, I would make the site a ‘community resource’ so that there would be a discussion forum for members to talk to each other and share ideas.  And, the software would allow members to communicate with each other privately - imagine a Facebook for double glaziers!!

I would use Membergate to build the site as it is designed for exactly this type of website, and I am already familiar with the basics of how to use it, as we have built our ConservatoryTV.com website using Membergate.

We’re in a period of turbulence for business owners and their staff in the double glazing industry, and my thoughts are that if people work together to encourage best practices then individual businesses will prosper, and the industry as a whole.

However, my concern is that it may never take off for two main reasons:

• Most people in this industry are too apathetic and suspicious to get involved.
• Most business owners in this sector never go online anyway.

If you have a view on this, please let me know by posting a comment.

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Climbing the Google rankings for ‘conservatories’

I’m feeling quite chuffed with things today, as a lot of the hard work we have put into SEO for our Conservatory Outlet website is gradually taking effect.  We’re gradually getting more visitors each month to the site, and crucially the number of conservatory leads we are getting has been steadily rising.

Traditionally, we have always been strong with terms such as ‘conservatories yorkshire’, ‘conservatory company leeds’ or ‘upvc conservatories huddersfield’.  This is our core trading area, so it is important that we appear high on search engines for such terms.

I’ve always felt that a potential customer in huddersfield is likely to begin searching for:

• ‘Conservatories‘
• Then ‘conservatories yorkshire’
• Then ‘conservatories huddersfield yorkshire’
• Or even maybe ‘uPVC conservatories huddersfield yorkshire’

You get the picture, and there’s millions of these ‘long tail’ search terms we need to concentrate upon in our industry.

But more recently we have turned our attention on the main Conservatory Outlet site (and some of our other sites) to more competitive terms such as ‘conservatories’, ‘upvc windows’ and ‘double glazing’.

And it’s gradually improving if you see the position we are now getting for ‘conservatories‘:

A couple of months ago we’ve improved our position from page 5 on Google to page 1 - and now position 5 on the first page.  When you consider that the companies down the right hand side are paying around £3 per click then this is clearly a good place to be.  We’re also doing reasonably well for other terms such as ‘conservatory company’, ‘conservatory suppliers’ and so on.

I wrote a post about the best conservatory website in the world a few weeks ago, referring to the position of the ConservatoryLand website on Google, and you will see that they are still in P1.  Our challenge is to make sure our website dislodges ConservatoryLand as clearly that position makes a big difference.

So, how are we going to be top of Google?

Well, there’s no quick fix, but here’s just a few of the ways we’re going to push for higher rankings for ‘conservatories‘ and other key search terms, such as ‘double glazing’.

New website

The existing website is not as good as it could be.  It’s not very good to navigate, and I don’t feel that the user experience is good enough.  There’s probably too much technical information, and possibly not enough consumer friendly content.  Don’t get me wrong, we’re getting plenty of enquiries, but we could convert a better proportion of visitors to good enquiries.

So, we’ll have a newly rebuilt site within the next few weeks.  The site will have plenty of content that contains the important key search terms we are aiming for, especially within the titles of the web pages.

SEO

We have a search engine optimisation company advising on the rebuild of the site to ensure all the H1 tags, source code, and general terminology that I don’t fully understand, is correct and Google friendly.

The company, Blue Claw, are also building links to the main URL (and deep links to other pages) by submitting our site on relevant directories, and by submitting articles we have written on article websites, creating plenty of good links to our site from pages with specific related content.  Google looks at links as being votes for a website, the more good links you have to your site, the more Google likes your site and ranks it higher.

Blogs

We already post comments on existing relevant blogs, but as there are not many double glazing blogs out there we are creating our own blogs, which effectively act as micro sites.

They’re not great sites and the content is crap, but the key thing is that we are building links to our main site, and dealer sites.  Some examples are:

• uPVC double glazing blog
• uPVC windows blog
• Conservatory blog

Let’s face it, one of the main reasons for having the RCG website is to push links to our sites (you may have noticed!!)

Conservatory TV website

We have a website called ConservatoryTV which includes more general advice and information about conservatories.  We generate quite a few leads from this site, but crucially, there are plenty of links to the Conservatory Outlet site, and other dealers.  There’s a lot of video on this site which is all hosted on YouTube (with more links from there!)

Forums

We occasionally post on home improvement forums but this can be hard work.

PR

We have a PR guy, Iain McInnes, and he ensures that any news items and general press releases are submitted to the two main double glazing news resources - the Glazine and Fenestration News.  The press releases always carry a link to our website.

Buzz Marketing

This is the next stage of developing links and visitors to our double glazing websites.  I’ll tell you more about this as and when I know where we are going with this.

Conclusion

I’m just scratching at the surface of what is required for effective online marketing.  I probably shouldn’t be sharing this with other people from the double glazing industry, but I enjoy writing about this - so why not!  I’ll no doubt be keen to tell the world if, and when, we ever get to Number 1.

In the meantime, if you need any further advice on SEO and link building, please get in touch.

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Have you any idea which is the best conservatory website in the world?

You might think it would be the website of one of the following companies:

Anglian Home Improvements
Everest
Ultraframe
Synseal

But, no despite being some of the biggest names in the conservatory industry, none of these companies have the best conservatory website in the world.

The best conservatory website belongs to:

ConservatoryLand in Mansfield woodhouse, Nottinghamshire

And their website is www.conservatoryland.com.

They have the best conservatory website for one simple reason. 

They have been at position 1 on google for a long time for the term ‘conservatories’ and ‘conservatory’.

Companies, including my own, pay big money with Google Adwords to get on the front page of Google for the term ‘conservatories’ - as much as £3-£4 per click!

Conservatoryland manage to get to the first natural position on Google for no cost per click.  With millions of searches per year for this term, this puts Conservatoryland in a very powerful position.

They also appear very highly for other important ‘long tail’ conservatory keywords:

diy conservatory - position 6
diy conservatories - position 5
self build conservatories - position 8
conservatory prices - positions 5 and 6
conservatory suppliers - position 6

This is the beauty of the internet, as smaller companies can compete and beat the major suppliers for key search terms.

So how can ConservatoryLand beat the likes of Anglian and Everest to this top spot?

Well, the site is well built for search engines to begin with.  I must admit I don’t like the look of the site and find the pages slow to load, but this site has been built to be search engine friendly.  When you’re number one on Google, you’re going to get lots of visitors, and ultimately LOTS OF CUSTOMERS!!

And the site has lots of websites linking to it in comparison to other websites out there:

                                          Google Links                Yahoo Links
Conservatoryland               91                                2,481
Ultraframe                            8                                  355
Synseal                                  8                                 260
Anglian                                 131                             3,460
Everest                                  42                               823

The Screenshot below shows the Google link stats:

Anglian clearly has a strong SEO plan and link building campaign, with more links than Conservatoryland, but crucially ConservatoryLand has specialised on ‘conservatories’, whereas Anglian have also concentrated on other home improvements such as double glazing, kitchens etc.

And the way Google is changing, the more natural links you have to your website for terms such as conservatories the better your site will perform.  Did you notice in that sentence, I created a sneaky natural link to my own site - I’m working on beating ConservatoryLand to the top!

The picture is completely different for ‘double glazing’, though.

If you type in ‘double glazing’ on Google, you’ll find the big boys have put real effort into SEO, taking 6 out of the top 10 positions.  At the time of writing the top 10 is as follows:

1. Zenith Windows - national installer
2. Everest - national company
3. Anglian - national company
4. Planet PVC - no longer trading
5. Safestyle - national company
6. Double Glazing On the Web - small company from Dorset
7. Weatherseal - national installer
8. DoubleGlazing.com - an eBuilders portal site
9. DoubleGlazing4Web - A website that feeds to Safestyle’s main website
10. All Double Glazing - information website.

So, if you’re a smaller double glazing company, you’re going to find it far tougher to compete on the term ‘double glazing’ and the pay per click rates are far higher.

To conclude

The internet is going to become far more important for the conservatory and double glazing companies in the future, so you need to start working on building links to your website now, for terms such as double glazing (see, I did it again!)

And, now matter how small or large your double glazing firm is, the internet is a fair playing field (well, sort of), and you’ll not get traffic to your site without putting in the effort.

4 Comments »

How to run a double glazing company

It can be a lonely position running any company, and running a conservatory / double glazing company is no different for most owners.

I’m lucky that I run my conservatory business with my brother and we can bounce ideas off each other. If we make a mistake it’s a joint mistake, and it’s not as big a deal.

As part of my role, I’m sometimes called upon to talk to the owners of other conservatory companies, and help with business advice when things aren’t going quite right.

Today, I’ve spent much of the day with one of my customers (who will remain anonymous) trying to solve possibly the biggest problem:

A lack of sales!

Background on the company - well they’ve recently invested in a great conservatory showroom, and invested a lot of their personal savings in the project. They have the best conservatory showroom in their area. All installations are project managed throughout by the owners to a meticulous standard. The quality of their conservatories, windows and doors are top notch - they have to be - they buy them from me!

So, why are they struggling to bring in the sales?

I appreciate it’s a tough market, but it’s all too easy to blame the economy, the weather, the Government etc. They’re struggling to bring in the sales because they haven’t got things quite right. My advice to them, and other conservatory and double glazing companies is as follows:

There’s clearly lots more to it than the above list, but it’s a start.

The most important thing is to not give up, believe in yourselves and your products and service, and the sales will come!

3 Comments »

Double Glazing TV ads

Getting across the correct message in any advertising medium is not easy. In many cases it’s a case of ignoring the professionals and going with what you believe to be right.

I’m interested to know what your thoughts are about the following TV advert currently running on Yorkshire TV:

It’s clearly a bit cheesy, but name me one company in our industry over the last 10 years which has been successful producing quality TV advertising. There has been one company out there which has been highly successful over that time, but with the worst type of TV ads - Safestyle UK.

West Yorkshire Windows have invested heavily over the years in TV advertising, mostly with well thought out ‘professional’ campaigns - all of which have been mostly expensive flops.

This advertisement, though, has filled the showroom and the phone is ringing! It’s a crazy world.

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