Seo

[MZC&D]

Does anyone out there use an SEO company? If so is it worth it? What are you paying for them, ballpark figures anyway.

We get 90% or more of out tenants from drive by's, but thought I would look into SEO to boost our web status. I'm still one of those people that doesn't believe the web marketing is all its cracked up to be, at least not for our industry, but it might be worth a try if. To be quite honest, I prefer to use the yellow pages, which by the way we still advertise in faithfully.

[Steve_hajewski]

Re: Seo

Assuming you have a decent outfit that created/updates your page already, I would suggest you talk to them first. Make a list of the terms that you think your customers might be using to find storage in your city, then see how you rank and give your web people a goal of boosting your search ranking.

I get a lot of calls from "SEO specialists" but really think most of them are borderline scam artists.

Steve

[MamaDuke]

Re: Seo

I will say from personal experience that in some areas, there is little internet use and therefore not a lot of effort needs to be placed there. In other areas, there is no YP use and the efforts MUST go to the internet.

The only way to know if you can gain a good deal of customers from the internet in your area is to try it for a while. Be sure you are diligently and accurately tracking where your leads come from so you know for sure where to put your money.

My first position about 80 miles from where I am now, we pulled our YP ad altogether and it had no impact. About 50% of our rentals came from the internet.

Where I am now, about 30% come from YP and on about 2% from internet...however, we are boosting our presence there for the first time to see if it makes a difference. (I've only been here since December).

That said, I don't use an SEO company. We use Red Nova Labs for our website, and the SEO is all a part of what they do for us.

[MZC&D]

Re: Seo

Right now we are listed with storagefront, usstoragesearch and spare foot, none of which are pay per reservation, just a flat monthly fee, along with our own website which after it was created, we maintain it. We tried goolge adwords but it cost us an arm and a leg with no results.

[TomOfSPMI]

Re: Seo

Maybe I can help you out. I have an SEO and marketing background. I was on the vendor side with an SEO and marketing company and now I work in house as Director of Marketing for a company in San Diego.

There is no magic bullet in marketing, that is the first thing people always have to learn. If there was, everyone would just use it. Secondly, every market is different. If you are in a major metro you HAVE to use online marketing. Every major study will reinforce that. I can promise you more people do a Google search everyday than pull out a phone book.

So lets start by your location. Where are you at? What is the city size? How many facilities are in your area competing?

Also, how many facilities do you have?

The one big piece of advice I would give is, make sure to claim your Google maps listing. That is a must no matter what! After I get more info I can give you a more detailed response to what is the best strategy for you. Hopefully the other SEOers on here will pop-in with their ideas as well.

[TomOfSPMI]

Re: Seo

I get a lot of calls from "SEO specialists" but really think most of them are borderline scam artists.
Steve

Sad truth is you are right. Most of them really are. The idea is a really good SEO company is never cheap. Also, a real SEO company will NEVER promise first page. If someone ever does that, they are scamming you. They might get you first page, but it is by "black hat" techniques that Google strictly forbids and you are liable to be punished for it.

[MZC&D]

Re: Seo

We currently only have one facility, about 76,000 rentable square feet. We are located in columbus ohio, I don't know how big columbus actually is, pretty big. Our local competition is basically 4 of the big guys ( ustore-it, morningstar, mini storage depot, and public) and a small facility that doesn't ever have anyone in the office, at least every time I have tried to stop by. To give you a little more of our facility details, we are state of the art with alarms, cameras, free move in truck, and FREE 24 hour access, which is evidently rare around here.

[Lisa T]

Re: Seo

I don't know about the value of SEO specialists, but I do know the value of a website in our area. We have the $4.95 a month and $20 a reservation U-Haul/eMove webpage. I got two reservations/move-in's from that site this month. One rented a 10x20 climate and paid a year in advance, the other rented a 10x15 climate and is on autopay. Both paid full street with no move-in special. So I'm a big fan of being on that site.

Our own website is invaluable....we get so many people moving into this area, particularly from the Northeast US, that I would say approx. 1/2 our business comes from the website. Even the locals who drive by will check our website our first before calling or coming over. We average about 10-15 reservations a month on our own website, even from the locals who will just peruse our website and make the reservation online without ever even contacting us.

We do as much of our own SEO as we know how to do..and it seems to be going pretty well. We have 4 competitiors nearby, but none of them are the big guys, and actually we only have one very old, run-down Uncle Bob's in town, and a U-Haul non-climate only older facility about 10 miles away. Other than that, all the storage facilities in town (and there are a gazillion of them) are small companies with 1-10 facilities.

Of the 4 facilities closest to us, one doesn't have a website, two haven't been updated in years, and the other has one that's a single page on the parent company's website that also isn't updated, is difficult to navigate, and doesn't have the ability of reserving online. They are all running in the 70%-80% occupied range. We have filled up 3 times in the last 2 years and have built 3 additional new buildings each time we got close to running out of units. So I am a HUGE fan of our website and the internet potential for our industry.

[TomOfSPMI]

Re: Seo

If you send me your websites URL I will do a quick, simple SEO evaluation and see how it is overall with a few comments for improvement, if any.

You are in a bigger market, which makes SEO results harder to achieve, but I would say in your market if you are not participating in online marketing you are missing out on leads daily.

[JulieA]

Re: Seo

Sad truth is you are right. Most of them really are. The idea is a really good SEO company is never cheap. Also, a real SEO company will NEVER promise first page. If someone ever does that, they are scamming you. They might get you first page, but it is by "black hat" techniques that Google strictly forbids and you are liable to be punished for it.

I had one who was going to present a plan to get my facility to 100% occupancy in a certain number of months! Ha--- we have been in business over 35 years. And in our progressive town of 45,000 I know there are only a certain number of renters on any given day.

[cowfarmer]

Re: Seo

Right now we are listed with storagefront, usstoragesearch and spare foot, none of which are pay per reservation, just a flat monthly fee, along with our own website which after it was created, we maintain it. We tried goolge adwords but it cost us an arm and a leg with no results.

Watch for the $20 per reservation charge from Uhaul's EMOVE
Many of their reservations do not move in; they have bad phone numbers and/or say they 'no longer need the unit'

You are stuck with the $20 EMOVE reservation fee

[Lisa T]

Re: Seo

Watch for the $20 per reservation charge from Uhaul's EMOVE
Many of their reservations do not move in; they have bad phone numbers and/or say they 'no longer need the unit'

You are stuck with the $20 EMOVE reservation fee

Cowfarmer, you need to go back and read the instructions..you do get a refund of the $20 if you log into eMove and request it.

I would be surprised if many of them don't move in, because they do have to pay $6.95 to make the reservation...so at least at the time they make the reservation, they need a storage unit badly enough to plunk down their 7 bucks.

I have had one reservation in 2 years not move in, and she called and apologized because she found a good roommate in time, and didn't have to move out of her apartment that she couldn't afford by herself and move back in with her parents.

[Safehouse]

Re: Seo

SEO can change your business over night. Why pay third party vendors to sell your products and take their cut all because they are better at SEO. Now you may argue that these sites are much more powerful than your local business website. That maybe true but Google favours local hence why you see the map in the search result so much.

If you don't want to learn SEO or pay a decent company to do it for you then at least work on your Google Local Listing. This is the listing that gets displayed on google maps.

Get your customers to leave reviews on there and that will bring in enough business.

[SSandecki]

Re: Seo

Cowfarmer, you need to go back and read the instructions..you do get a refund of the $20 if you log into eMove and request it.

You are only allowed 2 refunds per 6 month period if you're a large operator.

[RoemerWayManager]

Re: Seo

Does anyone out there use an SEO company? If so is it worth it? What are you paying for them, ballpark figures anyway.

We get 90% or more of out tenants from drive by's, but thought I would look into SEO to boost our web status. I'm still one of those people that doesn't believe the web marketing is all its cracked up to be, at least not for our industry, but it might be worth a try if. To be quite honest, I prefer to use the yellow pages, which by the way we still advertise in faithfully.

Ok i consider myself somewhat of an expert due to the fact i worked in SEO for a website development company for hospitals nationwide, in addition i interviewed and researched over 30 SEO companies once I started with my Storage company. with that being said I would only ever recommend or put my name on Automatit.net. They do our website hosting as well as our SEO for incredible costs!