Trying to rank for "local SEO services" - Need Advice...

BHW members,

I have been working for a little while now to rank for in google for SEO services in my city.

The competition for my phrase is 1.3million. The number 1 spot (my competitor) is an established PR4. I am a big PR0 (site is a couple of months old). :bling:

I have made lots of progress, I have moved from page 35 up to page 27 (yes, I did that all by myself. I am that awesome. **Geeze, don't laugh that much**). I obviously still have a long way to go.


My primary link building activities have been with Article marketing, Bookmarking and SENuke.

I have been analyzing my competitor and the vast majority of her 63 backlinks are all through link exchanges mostly with other local area sites.

I have always heard so much bad stuff about link exchanges, so I am hesitant to do anything with them. However, this competitor is ranked #1 in google for my keyword. (**bastards**)

The link exchanges don't look like super spammy as they all seem to be local area business or similar. I think I could pretty easily follow all of the competitor's backlinks and get most of them with the link exchange.

What do you think? Should I do it? Will it harm my beautiful "White Hat" site?

Is it worth doing anything, um, "devious" (i.e. Google Bowling) to get the competitor sandboxed?

Or should I keep on with the one way linking from article marketing and SENuke?

Thanks in advance for your advice.
There's a "Thanks" button waiting for whoever can give me some good advice.

~The Internet Viking~

If the other local webmasters are not that smart, you can still get one-way links using link exchange. Just make your page where you put the others' links inaccessible to search engine robots - using robots.txt and .htaccess

@sikandar,

Good idea with the robots.txt. "Thanks" button coming your way. So that way, it is an actual page that they can go to and see that we "exchanged" links, but Google won't index it and hurt my rankings?

Are there any other side effects that could come from using this method?
So, you think I should go ahead with the link exchange with the added bonus of the robots.txt file?

Thanks,
~The Internet Viking~

The competition is not that bad actually

allintitle:local seo services (1,490)

There is one company on the front page who only have 31 incoming links according to Yahoo.


1. Do you have the phrase "local SEO services" at the start of your title?
2. How many incoming links do you have?
3. How many of those incoming links have the anchor text "local SEO services"?
4. How long has your site been live?

If you vary the anchor text on your incoming links (variations on local SEO services) and make sure you have that phrase in your title tags then you should rank.

If you want to know more about local seo, then I'd recommend this guy, his posts are pretty comprehensive.

http://www.davidmihm.com/blog/

@hivo22700,

More good information. That was helpful. "Thanks" button coming your way! I am checking out that guy's blog.


1.) My keyphrase isn't actually "local seo services" (although I may go for that now too!), it was "Search engine Optimization" + my city. Yes, so far I have my keyphrase in the titles and other "onpage" seo seems to be on par.

2.) 275 backlinks so far from articles, bookmarks and SENuke

3.) About 75-90% have my keyword in the anchor text.

4.) Site has been live for about 3-4 months. I have only started seriously building backlinks for the past month.

This is really helpful bhatters, thanks. Please keep the ideas coming!

Thanks,
~The Internet Viking~

If you have a litle bit of money try this:

- Register in Yahoo Directory for $299 i think.
- Ask to a freelance to make a little app for u and then create a PAD file and submit it to Software directories.

If you don't have money to spend, then try other linkbuilding methods, like free PR submissions, link wheel, etc.

@m0nd0,

Is the Yahoo Directory $299/yr? or is a one time? How well does it work to get you ranked over other methods? Is it fast?

Thanks for your input!
~The Internet Viking~

The competition doesn't look too bad at all. No offense but if you can't at least hit the top 3 then I don't think you have any business offering SEO services...

Just focus on the classic stuff, build backlinks and optimize your site.

So let me get this straight, You are asking how to get your site ranked higher, But yet your site is SEO?

:noidea:

wowhaxor said:

No offense but if you can't at least hit the top 3 then I don't think you have any business offering SEO services...

Click to expand...

My point exactly

@wowhaxor & xplicit,

Lol, yes thanks. I figured I'd take a few punches and I don't mind. Seems to be kind of a conundrum doesn't? I was more looking for input on the link exchange idea mentioned above and wanted to know other people's experience with it. I was also looking for more SEO ideas as they pertained to ranking geographic sites.

:eyebrows:

It seems that there is no "right" way to do SEO, there's just always your method and somebody else's method that's better. That's what I'm searching for (and I'm sure most of the rest of forum members), "the better method".

If you got one, then share it. I prefer stuff that is automated, free brings me lots of instant cash. But, since I know that won't happen I'll resort to working my butt off and taking the automation where I can get it.

Have you made G00gle your bitch yet? Good for you, tell me how you did it!
LOL.

~The Internet Viking~

Well what I would do is get myself a copy of IBP, (search its here) and compare your site to your competitors site.

I feel like helping you would be screwing over tons of people. Learn some seo before you offer it as a service.

With respect to the seasoned hands in this thread...almost anyone here knows much, much more about SEO than the usual brick-and-mortar retail or service business owner.

I agree that you shouldn't honk your horn (too loudly) until you get to at least the FIRST PAGE of google. But until then you can still talk about stuff they probably know absolutely nothing about: backlinks, local business search, some of the milder grayhat stuff, etc.

Heck you can be on the first page of Google today...if you choose a long tail keyword phrase (maybe "SEO on noon Thursdays on main street in Omaha"). They don't know that.

I was telling a business owner in my area about how he could keep in touch with all his clients at once, by sending one email, and he thought I was kidding. We call that an autoresponder (or phplist, if you're cheap) but he called it a miracle.

If the OP has balls enought to go out and talk to people about working for their business, he's miles ahead of people who can't talk to strangers.

Just my $.02!

xplicit said:

So let me get this straight, You are asking how to get your site ranked higher, But yet your site is SEO?

:noidea:



My point exactly

Click to expand...

Registering for Google local listings is another good idea. Google local listings are always shown above the organic SERPs.

You can create multiple subdomains - Google considers each subdomain separately and you can register all these subdomains for different keyword stuffed titles such as 'SEO Consultancy in City', 'SEO Company in City' etc. You will need a few mobile numbers for registering each subdomain apart from the top domain.