Trying to help Mom & Pop with their business.

Hello gurus,

I've recently taken a dive to learn SEO in order to help my parents establish some online presence with their house cleaning business. I'm been helping them clean, but I think I can do more good with online help.
I've been learning a lot, but there are so many "tips" and "should-dos and should-nots" that I don't know how to build my plan of action properly. I'd really appreciate it if you can guide me through.
The goal is for the site to be seen on Google when someone types in "cleaning company in ----" or similar keywords.

Here's what I've done so far -
1. Set up modern looking a site
2. Optimize pages for keywords, titles, tags
3. Set up a blog
4. Make Fb & twitter accounts and be active
5. Post to several local directories including Google Places, Yelp etc.

At the moment, the site is ranking nowhere.. What can I do?! How would I build safe & quality backlinks? Please share some tips.

My current plan of action is..
1. Keep writing content, post on fb/twitter
2. Submit to more directories. (Maybe try those 500 links for $20?)
3. Find where the competitors are getting their backlinks and try to copy.
4. Press releases, create more bookmarking/web 2.0 accounts -
5. Maybe buy one of those $200/month deals from power users on BHW forum. or those $5 deals on Fiverr.

Oh, and if everything is done right, how long can I expect till the site can be on 1st page of google? Is 3 months realistic?

with the kind of what you do. expect it happen in next 5 month.

All depends on the competition of the keyword. Have you checked it?

what terms are you going for/is it local/how big is your city

if you are going up against a lot of comp in a big city it will take a lot longer to rank high on google, but if its a small city without much comp you can rank in under a month.

Yeah it seems like the most competitor's keywords are "cleaning service", "house cleaning service", "maid service" which is pretty much I'm trying to rank for too.
There are lot of cleaning companies out there, but most of them aren't tech-savvy so I'm betting I can beat them eventually. Just don't know how exactly I'll do that yet..

youtalkmedia said:

what terms are you going for/is it local/how big is your city

if you are going up against a lot of comp in a big city it will take a lot longer to rank high on google, but if its a small city without much comp you can rank in under a month.

Click to expand...

I'm in Toronto, which has about 2.5mil people. I am going for the terms like "cleaning service", "house cleaning service" and also with the city name added "cleaning service in Toronto" or "maid service in Toronto"
Do you think my current plan of action is okay?

kostar said:

I'm in Toronto, which has about 2.5mil people. I am going for the terms like "cleaning service", "house cleaning service" and also with the city name added "cleaning service in Toronto" or "maid service in Toronto"
Do you think my current plan of action is okay?

Click to expand...

hey, same city as me

going for Toronto will be hard, there is a lot of comp, and a lot of them are more tech savvy then you may think..

You may be better going for "Etobicoke", "North York", "GTA", "Mississauga" and terms like that. It will have less comp and will be an easier rank.

Always make sure to put the locations on your website, so say something like: "Serving Toronto, Etobicoke, North York, and Mississauga for xx years"

best of luck!

Okay, I'll make sure to do that!
Other than that, is my current plan of action okay? That's what I really want to know.. what should I really focus on? Is it okay to buy services or will google just destoy me in the long run?

Make sure you set up a GOOGLE + account for the business, they are now allowing and using "Author" tags.

So the element should look like this:

<link rel="author" href="https Colon - Slash - Slash plus DOT google DOT co m/115369062315673853712/posts"/>

Where the Google+ link should link to your Google+ profile. It's really that simple.

It's a simple three step process:

Add the above link to the <head> of the URLs you'd like your face to appear on.
On your Google+ profile, you need to make sure to have a link pointing back to the site you want the author highlight to work on.
Make sure your +1′s are public on your Google+ profile or it won't work.

better start building a random website and try to rank it.
if you're going to start with your cleaning site you will make some seo mistakes that you will regret and then you have to start again.
I had to learn the hard way.

here are some threads that helped me.

and these two are on my list but I know they have some good advice.

Read and implement that is the best way to learn it.

Just my 2 cents,

Read up on authorship, social signals, and also work guest blog posting and press releases into your game plan. Good luck!

if you buy the HQ stuff here, it will helpfor now, and the long run.. If you buy cheap link blasts it can hurt you.

Best way to go is manual web2.0 sites using tumblr, yeebe, wordpress, blogger, and similar sites.

Hey youtalkmedia, I'm just north of Toronto myself. How can one tell the difference between the high quality stuff and the cheap link blasts? Everything I see posted seems somewhat fast, dirty, n cheap. I have a site I really can't afford to have hit by penalties etc. Any suggestions of services that you're referring to?

shikodo said:

Hey youtalkmedia, I'm just north of Toronto myself. How can one tell the difference between the high quality stuff and the cheap link blasts? Everything I see posted seems somewhat fast, dirty, n cheap. I have a site I really can't afford to have hit by penalties etc. Any suggestions of services that you're referring to?

Click to expand...

Yeah that's what I want to know.. a lot of the services look awesome but I can't really afford to have this site get penalized.. Anyone knows a service you can buy thats safe? Or is there such a thing..