Do I need adwords google to rank highly?

Hi everyone...I have managed to get myself on google maps and some various free advertising places, but I am still hard to find..I was looking at adwords but you have to pay,,I dont think it's alot,,But is there any alternative? I appreciate your help people,,I feel so comp illiterate with this stuff.

I did adwords for 3 months - at their lowest amount available.
It does put you at the top of the page..... but it's in the sponsered link space.... I don't know about anyone else but I tend to skip over those links and scan down the page....... also you have to monitor it constantly to see if your showing up where you should be and that your keywords are working for blah blah... I did get more calls for work but it didn't equate into more work... I just got a lot of calls becuase the listing had my phone number and they hadn't othered to click through to my site so they were ringing for prices and trying to bargain me down..... it really gave me the sh*ts. I just canceled it as I have plenty of work.
If my work dropped off again I would consider doing it again - but it was more moeny then I wanted to pay - like $300 for 3 months.... not really inour advertising budget.
You need to make sure you have Meta Tags embedded in your site so google can find it and list it properly - and you need to make regular updates to the pics and to the wording so it seems fresh or google will push it down in ranking.
Hope this helps

That reminds me... time to refresh my own site! Thanks for that kick in the pants.

Thanks Tash..I'll check out my meta tags!!

This just killed my dreams, I was hoping I could finish my site and rarely have to update it so much to do , so little time it seems.

if you don't update your site often, it won't rank well ... part of the ranking programming has to do with the frequency of updates and how recent the material is.

As far as adwords, I have mine set at a maximum of $75 per month and it has definitely turned into more bookings. But you don't have to start with it... I'm not an expert on the topic, but here's something I wrote up on my experiences http://perrynoia.blogspot.com/2011/06/helping-your-search-results-freely-or.html

I have pretty good ranking through some of the free sites but what was funny is that my facebook page has the best ranking of them all pg. 2 ..... won't be long til I hit pg. 1

On the google listing I am in the top 5

No ... you definately don't need Adwords to get top ranking ..... all you need to do is to be the BEST site for whatever search terms your ideal customers are using to look for someone like you.

To do that ... know what search terms to use, maximize your page(s) around that with off-page and on-page strategies (url, content, meta tags, inbound links, intrnal links etc).

There is no reason at all that you shouldn't show high on the first page of Google, MSN, Yahoo etc for your market.

John

I think Im gonna have to hire somebody to do this. it sounds so confusing!
anyone working for paint here?

Really old thread, but I was wondering if anyone has found key search words that their clients are using in their areas. My wife's webpage is a using a blog format, so it would be interesting to hear what keywords other people have had success with. We heard from one client that they found us searching "face painters in champaign." Thanks!

My metatags are set with the word 'facepainting' (in Dutch ofcourse) spelled wrongly in every possible way, as well as my name spelled wrongly...
My name is Tineke, and in some regions people spell my name Tieneke or Tinneke....
Since my business gets a lot of word-to-mouth advertising, I just wanted to play it safe so that they would no doubt be able to find me if they google me...

Although its older, This is still a good thread to read. I just signed up for Ad Words today so will see how it goes. I have it set to a pretty low amount per day so may only allow 3 hits for now, but I will know pretty fast if it is working...fingers crossed.

Well, so far my website hits per day have doubled (from 4-7 to 8-16) and I have recieved quite a few enquiries for rentals. The relay for life is going strong and people are fund raising so I have had lots of interest in tubs of cotton candy for that. Have sold 900 tubs so far just for that cause . I think Google ad words is making quite a bit of difference in directing people to my site. The season is coming up fast so we will see...

Yeah Google Adwords Marketing is the preferred way by the website owners to display their ads on top of the results without waiting too long. The results are almost instant in this technique but as a newbie you can find procedure of Google adwords quite difficult and puzzling so I would suggest you to hire the expert services.

Why does this forum not have a way to report spam, which this last post clearly is?