I am looking for some advice on Local SEO

My dad has owned his own carpet cleaning company since 1998 and it is 2014 and he has not created a big internet presence at all except for a sub par website made by some one with no wordpress skills or they made it in a day and a facebook page which could use some work. I am going to make his website look better and try my best to target some keywords. After I do this what plugins should I install for seo, on site seo, local seo, etc? After this I am going to create a google places, and submit it to several local directories that are popular and have him ask clients to leave good reviews. Then I plan on buying some links on here to help his seo. I don't want to spend more than $10 or $15 though, I know this probably won't rank #1 but can still help. For this much money what kind of links would be most helpful for local rankings? And overall how is my plan?

Still looking for some advice

Does anybody have anything? This forum is normally helpful!

Starting your own private PBN could take you to the top if done right. I would be very careful after the last update and get safe links since it is a offline branded business.

Honestly, you already know the basics to get started. I would get those rolling then come back and ask how to fill out citations. In your case, Your website ranking organically isn't as big of a deal as you ranking in Google local 7 pack. Don't get me wrong, it is good to work on your website seo as well. Just don't forget about the clientele you can be reaching through Google places or otherwise now known as "Google My business"

Don't add in too many citations a month (Citation = Directory listings across the web including your N.A.P.W information)

Make sure you only have 1 phone number and 1 business address on your website!

SkylerJarman said:

Honestly, you already know the basics to get started. I would get those rolling then come back and ask how to fill out citations. In your case, Your website ranking organically isn't as big of a deal as you ranking in Google local 7 pack. Don't get me wrong, it is good to work on your website seo as well. Just don't forget about the clientele you can be reaching through Google places or otherwise now known as "Google My business"

Don't add in too many citations a month (Citation = Directory listings across the web including your N.A.P.W information)

Make sure you only have 1 phone number and 1 business address on your website!

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I am not completely sure what citations are I have heard of them though, what are they?

I'll give you some step by step help.

You'll have to do a bunch of work but it won't cost you anything

KingZack said:

I am not completely sure what citations are I have heard of them though, what are they?

Click to expand...

Citation = Your Name, Address, Phone number, Website posted on directory websites. Other wise referred to as your NAPW information.

BassTrackerBoats said:

OP, shoot me an email, [email protected], and I'll give you some step by step help.

You'll have to do a bunch of work but it won't cost you anything

Click to expand...

Aaaaand here's the helpful in BHW! Greg saving the day again. Good job mate, and OP, do take up the offer. He knows what he's talking about.

You gotta diversify now more than ever. Everyone says "G local" and yeh, I was KILLING IT prior to the pigeon update with G local. But the pigeon removed 90% of my 7 packs and naturally I lost #1 rankings for A LOT of my main keywords.

I also had my site ranking #1 back in the days organically. We made a lot of money thanks to that too but again, Sept 2013 an update wiped out our organic rankings (that's when we started to focus on G local which got wiped out too).

So these days I'm trying to branch out and rely less and less on Google. The problem is though, Google always gave me the best ROI. Like now I'll be diving into direct mail, solo ads, facebook... but it's gonna take a lot of work, a lot of copy, a lot of testing offers and I have 0 idea what to expect. I've also set up a fully automated system for small scale spamming on CL.

Let me warn you though. NEVER EVER try to build a "business" on just Google rankings or G local rankings.

I've been told this for the last 3 years, and even after the first slap I went back and did the same thing. I just switched from organic to G local. But I was still putting wayy too many eggs in 1 basket. Now my G local is wiped out and it's starting to hit home for me: "I will NOT build a business that's more than 50% dependent on Google".

You can have #1 rankings organically AND in G local and have both wiped out in the course of a few months.

Cheap traffic is awesome, it's addictive, once you're ranking it can make you a small fortune.... but it can also wipe out your business overnight. If I don't find some new target markets fast, I'm gonna be in some serious trouble. We went from selling 3-6 jobs / week to 1 job / week and it's getting worse. These next couple weeks we have no jobs lined up at all.

Like I said, it feels AWESOME when your site is #1 but it feels 1000xs worse when that shit goes bye bye and you realize you built a business on quick sand.

-BB

Your plan is good. Don't forget about anchor diversification. Build some quality citations. Build/buy only quality contextual links.

KingZack said:

My dad has owned his own carpet cleaning company since 1998 and it is 2014 and he has not created a big internet presence at all except for a sub par website made by some one with no wordpress skills or they made it in a day and a facebook page which could use some work. I am going to make his website look better and try my best to target some keywords. After I do this what plugins should I install for seo, on site seo, local seo, etc? After this I am going to create a google places, and submit it to several local directories that are popular and have him ask clients to leave good reviews. Then I plan on buying some links on here to help his seo. I don't want to spend more than $10 or $15 though, I know this probably won't rank #1 but can still help. For this much money what kind of links would be most helpful for local rankings? And overall how is my plan?

Click to expand...

Firstly, if you are making your website in Wordpress then you can use ?Seo by yoast?plugin for on-site SEO its pretty good I've installed this plugin in all my Wordpress sites.

Secondly, if your site has a Facebook page then use it properly by engaging more &more targeted traffic plus you can also share some daily or weeklydeals for users, as by this your Social media Campaign will grow eventually.

Thirdly, Yes make sure to includegood client reviews because these will boost your site services withtrust & legitimacy.

Lastly, for SEO purpose you should keep in mind to build only high quality &niche relevant backlinks for your site & don't use one backlink strategy for several times. Follow RELEVANCY & DIVERSIFICATION while creating your backlink profile & anchor text.

Your plan is simply superb,your benefits are not at the arms length but to make more money use best content with relevant backlinks,by and by improve the target traffic in social media...which will give you unique outcome.

Don't buy any links, earn them.

Build quality citations, if Greg doesn't cover the onpage SEO let me know, I will go over it with you, start really trying to get reviews from happy customers.

When you build your social profiles, be sure to use your business NAP on the public description, not just the profile. Don't kill yourself with backlinking, tiers, and PBNs until you get all the fundamentals down. If you do not need them to rank, there is no reason to expose your site to the risks.

Put out a real press release, find something to publicize with it, even if you announce a "widening" of your service area to include local communities.

Keep a look out for ways to leverage the events in your dads (the business owner) life into a local human interest story. Small newspapers always need filler material, and a story about "Local business owner bowls a 300!!" or "Couple celebrates 50th anniversary", or "Man jumps out of plane for 55th birthday" will get picked up locally and often result in links from the local community, and these are priceless for a local business. Write a little mini press release for these human interest pieces, and send it to these local entities directly, separate from any PR you put out.

Create a quality consumer freebie (not a jigsaw puzzle) and go to the higher quality freebie sites and submit it. (some will even post coupons) These sites have HUGE authority, and the links stick and have power because you cannot spam them. The site owners will not accept anything shady because they want to keep their readership, and everything is highly categorized, therefore related to your niche. I have some 6 year old PR5 links from these sites and they bring in traffic too.