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Like I said, somethings very odd, and the results are definitely gamed, which is why I said it looks like a black hat campaign.

But pageviews wise, I don't know the locksmith industry, but I would have thought London Locksmiths would be quite a heavily searched phrase over 7 weeks.

My maths breaks 20,000 down as 408 views a day, we get an average of 55,000 per day, so 408 seemed alright. But I was basing it on page views not video views, so thinking about it, your right, that is a lot of video plays for lost keys!

But I've been sceptical from the start!

It's for Social Rented Housing only (ie council tenants)


I think there has been a lot of overly negative and media scaremongering, and this is definitely party politics at play, with deliberately sensationalized hard luck cases and images of mass poverty and hardship.

The reality is, it's not a tax, but a reduction in housing benefit for people occupying social rented housing who are deemed to have spare rooms. Eg, if your kids have flown the nest, and you now have 2 or 3 spare bedrooms, doesn't it make more sense to downsize, and free up the house for another large family?

Listening to older people on the TV who state it's their family home and their right to stay there, as their kids grew up there, is just ridiculous. The reality is, people in non social housing, ie rented or mortgaged live in the size of house their lifestyle, circumstances and income dictate. No doubt plenty of people would like to keep a larger more expensive house after the kids have flown the coup, but paying the bills, upkeep etc isn't practical for a lot of people.

Issues of lack of suitable soical housing stock to downsize to, sounds like more of an immediate issue, so being penalised when theres no where to go to doesn't sound right. Why Councils felt the need to sell off valuable housing stock at rock bottom prices is beyond me.

Likewise, the media keeps going on about being unfair to disabled people, or elderly who need a spare room for an overnight carer. These have been excluded.

There's always going to be exceptions to the rule, and no doubt some people will be affected who will need reconsidering.

But even with plenty of family members in social housing, as an overall policy, I think it's a good start in the right direction. No doubt it will need tweaking and amending as lessons get learnt, but it's a start.

You can get all the info here:
Bedroom Tax - National Housing Federation

I know what it is, but don't have one. 'fraid I'm a pension cynic... bricks and mortar is my plan, failing that, will sponge off the kids

The Pensions Advisory Service

Anyone have any SIPP experience?

Something definitely very odd here.

Looking at Barneys post about your video comments, and he's right.

652 comments in 7 weeks, all spammy and not a single reference to how good your services were or even locksmith related.

You don't really believe that? That to me looks gamed and certainly not natural, and unfortunately gaming results is exactly on Googles hit list, so I'd tread very carefully.

I could easily believe the 20,000 views, it is on Page 1 for London Locksmith, so thats conceivable. What I don't understand is why these views aren't turning into targeted traffic?

The website, yourlondonlocksmiths.co.uk is unranked Alexa wise, (which is only a very rough yard stick) but a site getting 20 visitors a day would at least have an Alexa rank of say 5 million (Google being number 1). So this tells me the video is driving very little traffic to the site. So customers are simply picking up the phone, which is quite a reasonable assumption, it's a great video, with a simple call to action. But some people still like to see a website, view prices, and get a warm and cosy feeling, unless the locksmith industry bucks the normal ecommerce trend?

So from 20,000 views, it looks like very little have turned into actual site visits.

But the key word London Locksmiths which seems to be what you are targetting with the video shows a company in position 4


Serious Security - which trades from the same address as you?
257 St. Helier Avenue,
Morden,
Surrey,
SM4 6JL

YourLondonLocksmith
257 St. Helier Avenue,
Morden,SM4 6JL

So is this also your company? Which means you are competing against yourself for keywords which is why I'm a bit confuzzled?? Or is it a clever marketing campaign to dominate the search results? In which case, well done But Serious Security is listed as a dormant company, so prob be better to make it T/A.

Not doubting your integrity, just more worried you may be unwittingly engaged in a black hat marketing campaign which may give short term results, but could end in eventual tears...

What an obvious sounding answer!

I guess it's the initial capital outlay of retrofitting everything, but in the long run you're right, it must work out cheaper, and keep crime down!

Maybe each street will adopt some lamposts Bring and buy sale, save up for your solar lampost!

Brian May on the Radio 2 breakfast show this morning, followed by Brian May and Kerry Ellis with The Kissing Me Song, written by the man himself.

Not bad, I think it's a grower

Well the benefit reforms have kicked in, and from what I can gather, so have local government public service reforms.

Although it's going to be painful, and no doubt there will be some genuinely needy people caught in the crossfire, personally I think it's a step in the right direction. Hopefully we can finally start to break the cycle and culture of state dependence, and the country owes me mentality.

Most of us will be affected in one way or another, which is why it's a good thing and shows how huge the welfare state apparatus had become.

So do you think you have been unfairly affected or targeted, or do you simply miss your child benefit? Do you think this should have been done differently, and if so, how?

One negative aspect that does impact us is our local councils decision to switch off all public street lighting from midnight. I think it's a good idea in principal, but midnight is a bit early to plunge all the streets into darkness, and would have thought 01.00 or 02.00 would be more sensible.

Be interesting to see if car crime increases! I know female friends are concerned over security if heading back to cars or going home after a night out.

It has gone pretty quiet now the media hype has died down.

Shall be relying on our MLF SA correspondent to keep us informed of any developments

lol fair enough. It's a bit heavy for my non mathematical brain though

Definitely, thats what I mean by a blended approach, mix on and offline.

Offline wise, by giving someone a biz card or flyer is going to potentially drive traffic to your site, which is going to be highly targeted traffic, as they are obviously already interested in your products/services.

There is also some great tricks to bring offline marketing alive and direct it to your site. Things like QR codes, Aurasma and Touchcode:

Heres a few good threads:

QR Codes & QR Code Marketing

Aurasmsa! (augmented reality)

Touchcode