I realised one thing. I have to improve my business online image. The market is changing at a very fast pace and gone is the days of outdoor advertising doing the job for me. I am not saying that outdoor advertising is dead, but in my industry the Internet has taken over and I will have to adapt or die.

In the early days of Internet it was easy, as very little was coming my way because of it. I wrote my own web page with a copy of Dreamweaver and got good rankings on the search engines. Then I disappeared from the top page and I went the Adwords route. All of a sudden my business picked up and I realized this is the way. Just to see business dwindling again. So I up my budget and it pics up again, but for a short period. Now if I Google my keywords, the opposition has taken over again. So what is happening?

Seems like everyone is just pumping more and more money into their budgets to keep the top spot. Well, I am sorry, I will have to find another way. It is getting just too expensive.

I am in the hospitality industry. When you Google for a Guest house in a particular area, none of the actual, or very little, guest house website comes up like in the past. The big guns, like booking.com, safarinow.com, roomsforafrica.com and the likes is just flooding the top rankings. It is obvious why. They spend the bucks and know all the SEO tricks. That is their game. They also jump around so much, that there is not one standing out above the rest. It is like the flavor of the hour. So joining them is also not really the answer to me, apart from the fact that they charge an arm and a leg. My cost per click in the beginning was like R2. Now sometimes I am paying up to R8. Very nice business Google has got here. But I see there is still individual guest houses in there. So I will have to make a plan to get free clicks.

Reading thru this Marketing Forum, it is clear that SEO, linking to social sites etc is some of the ways to go. Re-writing my website is also overdue. I still use frames and none of the new technology! So bots and stuff is probably ignoring me or even blocking me.

So I have to decide. Call in professional help, who is just out to milk me for everything I might save on Google is one option. Another is to buy a legal copy of Dreamweaver with all the latest technology build in, at about R4000. (I see the complete suite is like R23 grand! They must be joking...) With that I can re-write my own site and just have this once off expenditure. This way I will be able to do maintenance on my own and be able to turn on a ticky. But will I be able to do a decent job? Or will it just be another wishy washy site, like at the moment. Somehow I doubt that, as it can not be worse than at the moment.

I would love to give my web address here for evaluation, but just can not do so on an open forum. I can not afford every Tom, Dick and Harry to go Google for keywords and click on my ad when it comes up. It is just too expensive. By the way, I suspect industry sabotage like that in any case. What is easier than sitting there, clicking on your oppositions ads a few times every day, blowing his budget? So if possible, I would love to get away from Addwords. If someone really want to look at my site, honestly, PM me and I will give it to you.

So that is where I am. Stubborn as hell and want to do my own thing! But R4 or R23 grand is also out of my reach...