Looking for help ranking my business page

[dollicoin]

Hi all,
I've had a good read through this forum since I signed up the other day and found some really interesting stuff.
I have a hobby business I have been running quietly for a couple of years - I have a website, social media (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, all frequently updated)
I have also listed it on most of the directory sites - Yelp, Foursquare etc - a bunch of others which I can't remember as I did it a while ago.
I've had some good customers and received some nice testimonials.
Now I've quit my job (I have also been building up an income from copywriting) and am hoping to make the business a larger part of my income.
However I have never received a single enquiry through the site - it has all come from canvassing for business or social media.
I would like my site to rank higher on Google when people search for "my niche" + "my county" (I live in the UK so I guess this is the most common way that people search for local services?)
I have never got near the top 5 pages on Google. Oddly, one company has been at the top for the whole time - and they aren't even active!It is as if they did some killer SEO a few years ago, and then just closed down the business and left their site online. So much for algorithm changes, I guess? I am not even sure how this has happened.

Anyway I'm looking for pointers towards good guides on the basics here - and anyone willing to help me out on a 1-2-1 basis.

Thanks.

 

[Andrew Scherer]

How many of your targeted keywords display local maps results?

Here is a good step by step guide to local SEO but warning, it is pretty long and detailed http://www.marketerscenter.com/blog/local-seo-guide/

 

[dollicoin]

Thanks for the reply, and also to the guys who PMd me - I can't PM you to thank you yet as I don't quite have enough posts. I will get back to you soon hopefully though.
Will go through that link now, Andrew, thanks.

 

[Techxan]

I would like my site to rank higher on Google when people search for "my niche" + "my county" (I live in the UK so I guess this is the most common way that people search for local services?)

You cannot guess. You have to do your keyword research. Goggle will not differentiate county or state unless it gets search volume. Local to Google is based on cities, towns and communities. I suspect this is why your site does not generate leads, you are ranking for words with little traffic.

Watch your on page seo and remember you need a privacy policy, about us, contact us, and a sitemap to satisfy Google. Don't skip these, for all practical purposes they are required today for good seo, along with an affiliate disclaimer if you have affiliate links.

 

[dollicoin]

Thanks for that advice. I'm in the UK, and I am not sure that the traffic value for county name is as low as you think - most people will generally search for "something" + "their county", to find something nearby - particularly if they don't live in a city.

With my business (social media management and content writing) targeted at small, local businesses, I can't think of a better keyword strategy, unless anyone has any ideas - so at the moment, the search I would most like to rank for is "social media management MyCounty"
I have just worked out the Google places/business/pages for business mess, and finally got myself onto Google maps with the right address!

 

[nanavlad]

Ranking for your city should be pretty easy
make sure you have city districts as well as zip codes if you live in a large city
While you may not rank for "keyword city", you may find yourself getting traffic for "keyword city zipcode"

Its as simple as putting
Serving zipcode 1, zipcode2, etc on the bottom of you main page

 

[dollicoin]

I live in a rural area so there isn't much point in my trying to rank for a city - there isn't a city in a 50 mile radius (which is a big area, in the UK). In fact the nearest city is London - I will not be able to rank #1 for "social media management London" no matter how hard I try, nor do I particularly want to - my customers are small business owners in the local rural and suburban areas.
What keywords would people suggest I go for?

Also someone PMd me suggesting I scrape competitor's sites to see what backlinks they have, and then replicating them (and making sure I have more). How do I get this information from a site? I still can't reply to PMs (getting closer though!)

 

[nanavlad]

go for all the local towns and vilages within a 50 mile area
the biggest ones of course
and instead of using zipcodes
use village names

Trust me this works,
Keyword planner doesnt show all the keyword results especialy if there is only a small search volume
But they will show to the people searching the most relevant result
and you wont get much more relevant than the village they live in or near

 

[Techxan]

Without the research you do not know if "plumber leeds", "leeds plumber", or "plumber in leeds" is the best local search term to target. Going with what you think is usually a mistake.

Target your main niche traffic keywords too, without a geo modifier. When someone uses a local search term without a geo modifier, the results will be blended between local results (based on the IP address) and organic results based on the global algorithm.

If "plumber in leeds" is your best local keyword, and "certified plumber" gets the most non geo traffic, you should target both of them ("certified plumber in leeds")in order to take advantage of the IP resolved search queries because a certain number of local queries will use these common terms without a location.

 

[jasmeencress]

Site ranking is not easy task, in my knowledge some good ranking tips. post you product in ads, social media sits are very good sources.

 

[jasmeencress]

Site ranking is not easy task, in my knowledge some good ranking tips. post you product in ads, social media sits are very good sources.

 

[Renwaar]

I live in a rural area so there isn't much point in my trying to rank for a city - there isn't a city in a 50 mile radius (which is a big area, in the UK). In fact the nearest city is London - I will not be able to rank #1 for "social media management London" no matter how hard I try, nor do I particularly want to - my customers are small business owners in the local rural and suburban areas.
What keywords would people suggest I go for?

Also someone PMd me suggesting I scrape competitor's sites to see what backlinks they have, and then replicating them (and making sure I have more). How do I get this information from a site? I still can't reply to PMs (getting closer though!)

You should not be going on guess work. Dig into Google's Keyword Planner and find out exactly what keywords are worth ranking.

It is essentially useless for us to suggest keywords without knowing what niche you are working it.

 

[dollicoin]

This sounds good in theory but I am a bit confused about how I would do it, in practice.
I use Wordpress and Yoast SEO plug-in.
The way it works (if you don't know) is that I set a "target keyword" for each page. The SEO plug-in then assesses how well integrated my keyword (usually actually a key phrase, because I am not going for just one word) is into the page. If I was to do as you suggested, it seems to me that I would have to have "Social media marketing" Then the names of 30 or so towns/villages, repeated all over my site.
I do not think this is really what I should do, of course - but due to my lack of knowledge on the subject , I don't understand how I would go about focusing on all of those words.

Also - do I have to do it for every page on my site? For example - the "contact us" page - does it need to list all the place names too?
Any advice or ideas anyone can give will be gratefully received!

 

[dollicoin]

I would be very interested in a FAQ/primer on the basics of this task - working out whether "plumber leeds" or "leeds plumber" would be best to target. Does anyone know where a total newbie should start with this?

 

[DeadJoe]

go to adwords.google.com and register an account. It will ask you to input your credit card do it, you won't be charged for anything unless you start a campaign. Once you're in you can search for a seed keyword e.g. "your service + city" then google will give you about 800 keywords based on that keyword to choose from. This is the part where you get to see how many people are searching for a specific term every month ( data is based on last years searches )

Here is an awesome guide for introduction to keyword research: http://backlinko.com/keyword-research

For judging the cometition download a free copy of Market Samurai and look up youtube videos to determine competition. This is the hard part and will take a while for you to understand what keyword is worth going for depending on the competition. Choosing the right keywords is one of the most important aspects! Take your time and once you have an idea of what you want to target you can use some local SEO services here in the forum or try to learn to do it yourself.

Good Luck

 

[NotDysfunktional]

I can help you get more sales if you live in America

 

[Andrew Scherer]

Without the research you do not know if "plumber leeds", "leeds plumber", or "plumber in leeds" is the best local search term to target. Going with what you think is usually a mistake.

I've found this to be true as well. A cheap adwords campaign can usually be very revealing.