Noob needs help on Local SEO problem. Any Advice?

[Stripe]

I really would appreciate ANY solid advice on solving or overcoming some of these issues. OK - Here is the setup.

I have been "fiddling" with SEO for a local company over the past 6-8 months for a friend of mine and now it is time to get serious. It started because I told him his company's website was really bad. Consequently, he asked me to build him a new one and I have been trying to improve his rankings since that time.

He is on the 1st page locally, but we are looking to be #1 in our market for several key words. I have learned a TON but somehow all these pieces in my mind don't seem to be creating a clear picture of what I need to do.

Here is my problem. There is really not very much competition in our market so it should be pretty easy, right? Unfortunately, our main competitor has the top spot on almost every keyword and they don't have that strong of a site. (PR 2, and about 60 backlinks, they do have a better domain name because they list what they do & it is part of many search terms, [for example jonstreetrimmingservice or something like that] and also about 260 pages of indexed material because every photo on their site is indexed separately. Other then that, not a lot of content.)

Other sites that rank are listings in Merchants Circle, Yelp, Dex, City Data - local business directories. Some are his and some are ours. There are really only two business sites that come up, his and ours. We show up under every major keyword, but usually in spot 3 or 4 and sometimes even in spot 9 or 10 under several of our business listings. I want our site at the top - period.

This is what I have done... so far. (Not completely in order)
1. I have been adding content to his site and I have written 5 or 6 articles and posted them to his site's blog page.
2. I have taken those article and rewritten them and posted them on another blog related to our business and pointed links to the main site.
3. I have updated our business listings on the local directories and made sure we have links coming from them and added pictures.
4. I have submitted our business listing to DMOZ - nothing from them yet.
5. I posted a few articles at Squidoo with links to our site.
5. I have tried building backlinks using Unique Article Wizard - SLOWLY - no more then about 15 to 20 per day. After the run of the first couple of articles, we showed about 300 backlinks - now about 4 weeks later NONE of them seem to be indexed any longer.
6. I used a tachbique to add higer PR links through Tumblr and a couple of those show as higher or top links to our site.
7. AND I claimed our listing in Google Local. (Somehow our competition has an Metro or Area-Wide Google Local listing without an address. Since we are a service business and we come to you, that is fair. I just don't know how to get a listing like that.)

My main focus has been on writing a few articles and trying to get a good quality and quantity of backlinks. I figured if we can add enough backlinks, we should naturally jump in the Google rankings.

Right now our site is hosted through Intuit, but I am going to be moving it over to a WP site because I will have more control over it. I will be working on that this month. Our site is a quality site with advice, testimonials, information, a store, blog, and pictures and videos.

Regardless of all this activity - in my spare time - I can't get his site to improve in the Google rankings, and I can't seem to improve his PR or overtake our ONLY competitor. (To be fair, our competitor now ranks in the top nationwide for several keywords when you don't add our city or state to the search. I honestly don't know how he ranks that high.)

Clearly, I don't know what I am doing but the problem is I don't know what I don't know.

Because this is a business site, I do have some funding for tools. I have been using the Unique Article Wizard and Market Samurai. However, after the past 2 months and the funny results with UAW, I am thinking I need to look elsewhere for a tool, or I need to use this one differently. Advice on other possible tools you ARE USING to improve your success?

So, this is a lot, but I wanted to give you all the BIG picture before asking for advice.

What would some of you professionals and gurus do to improve things for our humble little site?

[spoiledkid01]

Use man power instead of tools. Higher a quality backlinkbuilder who understands SEO as well. If interested skype me ... lolx ... (:
I can help you with that or at least can advice you specially for google local and google places.

[Stripe]

Originally Posted by spoiledkid01

Use man power instead of tools. Higher a quality backlinkbuilder who understands SEO as well.

Thank you for the kind suggestion.

I guess I'd better be a little bit more clear when I spoke of a business with a budget. The budget for this is part of the overall advertising expense and really amounts to about $80 or so per month. That has to cover our site, hosting, software and tools. This business is a two-man service business, not a large booming brick and mortar commercial enterprise, though who knows with proper SEO, right?

As nice as it would be to just hire someone to do what is quickly becoming my job - and I use the word "job" lightly since I am really trying to help my friend out in my spare time though he does pay me a few much-needed $$ - that simply is not possible.

Thanks again for your kind offer even if it was simply in jest.

[tylerjaysen]

For the local google places..add more content on the google page ..comments..photos...videos....go crazy here ....the more the better.

Also for more broad rankings..youtube videos with link back to your site. Facebook fanpage...hold some contest here and get people to like the page.
Have more articles written that cover the 5 main keywords and update to directories and spin articles and place on other soclal high PR sites with anchor text of keywords point to various pages on main site..not just home page.

On page SEO....titles, H1 tags, meta tags, descriptions for each separate post are all crucial to help rankings.

Also set up main site a WP site so people can comment and also link back to other sites in same niche.

[outwest]

ARe the EMDs taken for all the kws your competitor ranks for? I bought about 20 EMDs for my beach resort about a year ago. Many of them still rank and pump traffic to the main site. I am number 2 million on Alexa
my main competitors are 5 to 10 million on Alexa. Most of my traffic I think comes from my pumper sites

[seoampsteve]

Originally Posted by Stripe

I really would appreciate ANY solid advice on solving or overcoming some of these issues. OK - Here is the setup.

I have been "fiddling" with SEO for a local company over the past 6-8 months for a friend of mine and now it is time to get serious. It started because I told him his company's website was really bad. Consequently, he asked me to build him a new one and I have been trying to improve his rankings since that time.

He is on the 1st page locally, but we are looking to be #1 in our market for several key words. I have learned a TON but somehow all these pieces in my mind don't seem to be creating a clear picture of what I need to do.

Here is my problem. There is really not very much competition in our market so it should be pretty easy, right? Unfortunately, our main competitor has the top spot on almost every keyword and they don't have that strong of a site. (PR 2, and about 60 backlinks, they do have a better domain name because they list what they do & it is part of many search terms, [for example jonstreetrimmingservice or something like that] and also about 260 pages of indexed material because every photo on their site is indexed separately. Other then that, not a lot of content.)

Other sites that rank are listings in Merchants Circle, Yelp, Dex, City Data - local business directories. Some are his and some are ours. There are really only two business sites that come up, his and ours. We show up under every major keyword, but usually in spot 3 or 4 and sometimes even in spot 9 or 10 under several of our business listings. I want our site at the top - period.

This is what I have done... so far. (Not completely in order)
1. I have been adding content to his site and I have written 5 or 6 articles and posted them to his site's blog page.
2. I have taken those article and rewritten them and posted them on another blog related to our business and pointed links to the main site.
3. I have updated our business listings on the local directories and made sure we have links coming from them and added pictures.
4. I have submitted our business listing to DMOZ - nothing from them yet.
5. I posted a few articles at Squidoo with links to our site.
5. I have tried building backlinks using Unique Article Wizard - SLOWLY - no more then about 15 to 20 per day. After the run of the first couple of articles, we showed about 300 backlinks - now about 4 weeks later NONE of them seem to be indexed any longer.
6. I used a tachbique to add higer PR links through Tumblr and a couple of those show as higher or top links to our site.
7. AND I claimed our listing in Google Local. (Somehow our competition has an Metro or Area-Wide Google Local listing without an address. Since we are a service business and we come to you, that is fair. I just don't know how to get a listing like that.)

My main focus has been on writing a few articles and trying to get a good quality and quantity of backlinks. I figured if we can add enough backlinks, we should naturally jump in the Google rankings.

Right now our site is hosted through Intuit, but I am going to be moving it over to a WP site because I will have more control over it. I will be working on that this month. Our site is a quality site with advice, testimonials, information, a store, blog, and pictures and videos.

Regardless of all this activity - in my spare time - I can't get his site to improve in the Google rankings, and I can't seem to improve his PR or overtake our ONLY competitor. (To be fair, our competitor now ranks in the top nationwide for several keywords when you don't add our city or state to the search. I honestly don't know how he ranks that high.)

Clearly, I don't know what I am doing but the problem is I don't know what I don't know.

Because this is a business site, I do have some funding for tools. I have been using the Unique Article Wizard and Market Samurai. However, after the past 2 months and the funny results with UAW, I am thinking I need to look elsewhere for a tool, or I need to use this one differently. Advice on other possible tools you ARE USING to improve your success?

So, this is a lot, but I wanted to give you all the BIG picture before asking for advice.

What would some of you professionals and gurus do to improve things for our humble little site?

I'm not clear what exactly is your intention, do you want to Rank higher in Local Searches? Or get Keywords Ranked Nation Wide?

Why don't you use our service.... You Don't Rank, You Don't Pay .... PM me if you require further assistance...

One more thing if you are looking for a linkbuilding solution and use article, why don't you try Linkvana . com.

[googlepage1]

no one will work for free, no matter how much little or humble your website is. its better to contact some webdesign/seo firm to do the job.

[Juvv2096]

The question I have is how old is your domain? Im guessing this competitor has a old domain which has been sittin ghtere for ages so that could be contributing to the issue. Yours is new, theirs is old. I think if you can build some decent quality links, make sure the on page SEO is Perfect, you should be able to take him out pretty easily.

[spoiledkid01]

HEHEHEHE ... I think i have not suggested any thing ... (:
What you want to rank for google places or google organic?
If you dont have an EMD. Write a keyword optimized article and add to your site with keyword in url and build anchor text backlinks to that url. i-e http://yoursite.com/key-word. Use " - " hyphens in your url do not go for http://www.yoursite.com/keyword.
Add me on Skype ... Advice is always FREE and i love Helping Others ... (:

[NEseO]

Youshod keep building links to the site, high pr will give you the best results. You can do this by high pr blog comments or join a network like mine in my sig (shameful promotion, I know!!). I have added a local company to my network and within a week it went from page 5 to number 1!! Should work under the gold membership.

Alternatively you should be building some web 2.0s and then build tiers to them to give them some more strength. What tools do you have at your disposal?

[WakondaMarketing]

Do not rely on any automated tools. Why don't you hire SEO experts instead?

[Stripe]

Originally Posted by seoampsteve

I'm not clear what exactly is your intention, do you want to Rank higher in Local Searches? Or get Keywords Ranked Nation Wide?

I just want to make sure we are the top organic result in our market. I am less concerned with the 7 results Google local throws up but I want those too. The reason I am less concerned with those 7 results in our market is because there are really only the two of us competing for those spots. I am adding other listed locations because we work with some other companies here locally. That should give us 5 listings in our area and most of them should come up in the listing.

HOWEVER, does anyone know how to get a listing in Google Local without an address? This would be used for a service business like ours where we come to your house and you would never come to ours. I know it can be done because - well, yep, you guessed it - our competitor has a listing like that in Google Local.

The reason I mentioned that our competitor ranks nationally is because whatever his SEO person is doing is also working nationally. I think they are ranking for keywords without the local city or state attached to it.

The reason I don't care about a national ranking is because we are a local service business. I don't want to create calls for our service two states over though some of that cannot be helped.

The way I have bee targeting keywords is "city keyword" or "state keyword" or "keyword in city" or "keyword in state" things like that.

[Stripe]

Originally Posted by Juvv2096

The question I have is how old is your domain? Im guessing this competitor has a old domain which has been sittin ghtere for ages so that could be contributing to the issue. Yours is new, theirs is old.

Our domain is four years old. They changed their domain within the last year and it shows up with no age advantage. It has not even been around for a year yet.

The main advantage their domain has is the it matches our industry and the location. WF will not allow me to post those yet, but if I keep commenting they will and I will post that here. Basically their domain is made up of the state abbreviation followed by a description of what they do.

As a made up example - lets say you are a mobile dent repair company from Schenectady and the name of your business is Schenectady Mobile Dent Repair Services. Well, you might have a domain that gives your local area and tells what you do in the same breath. www . schenectadymobiledentrepair . com, or something like that.

That is how our competitor is listed. I am sure they get credit from Google for their domain AND business name being part of the keywords used to find our service. Put that up against a company called NY Mobile Choice, and you don't get the same impact with www . nymobilechoice . com.

The thing is I can't change the name of my friends business so I have to out rank the competition using sound SEO principles in other areas to the best of my ability.

[Stripe]

Originally Posted by NEseO

Alternatively you should be building some web 2.0s and then build tiers to them to give them some more strength. What tools do you have at your disposal?

Thank you. I have begun building some of these but I have not seen any result yet. Do they have to rank high in Squidoo, for example, to provide a good link or link juice to our site? Or do they just have to exist there?

Tools - Right now I have Market Samuari as my main research tool. I have used the Unique Article Wizard as well and I also have The Best Spinner.

...So this does not become a discussion on weather to spin or not to spin, I basically use a spinner to help me find alternative synonyms so I can rewrite my articles quicker, not produce unreadable versions of an original. I am pretty passionate about what I put out there and I will NEVER post anything that is spam. (I personally think calling a bunch of unreadable written junk "spam" does a severe injustice to a wonderful meat product! )

[Stripe]

Originally Posted by WakondaMarketing

Why don't you hire SEO experts instead?

Well, the truth is that SEO "expert" is me, and I clearly use the term very loosely when applied to myself. I don't know even a small fraction of what I don't know - yet.

My friend knows this is all new to me so his expectations are reasonable. I'd like to really show him what can be accomplished by doing some proper SEO and adding noticeably to his bottom line. You know - UNDER PROMISE & OVER DELIVER? He doesn't have the time to figure this out and I really want to learn this stuff for myself. I figure the situation is a win win. He gets his site up higher to increase business, and I get to learn SEO.

My goal is to eventually to become an expert in SEO and to either help business like my friend's business, or run my own IM business to bring in some extra cash - maybe enough to make it a full-time enterprise.

As a rookie in SEO, I work a heck of a lot cheaper then a bonafide expert, and I get to gain a valuable education in the process. Does that make sense?

[Stripe]

Originally Posted by tylerjaysen

For the local google places..add more content on the google page ..comments..photos...videos....go crazy here ....the more the better.

Also for more broad rankings..youtube videos with link back to your site. Facebook fanpage...hold some contest here and get people to like the page.
Have more articles written that cover the 5 main keywords and update to directories and spin articles and place on other soclal high PR sites with anchor text of keywords point to various pages on main site..not just home page.

On page SEO....titles, H1 tags, meta tags, descriptions for each separate post are all crucial to help rankings.

Also set up main site a WP site so people can comment and also link back to other sites in same niche.

These look like some great suggestions - thank you.

Can I ask how you create a backlink from youtube? We have a video that ranks very well on youtube, but my friend/boss can't remember the user name/password combo he used to post it. He posted it a couple years ago and now that we are working on SEO, we'd like to get a little boost from that video and can't.

We can post other videos under a new account, of course, but how do you get a link from youtube?
____________________________

As for directories and articles, I am working on that but seeing some up and down with the reliability of the links as mentioned in the original post.

I do think I need more 2.0 links for sure.
____________________________

On page SEO has been limited because the site was built and hosted by Intuit. That is OK if you have no idea what you are doing, but you cannot control about 80% of your own on page SEO. They want you to hire them to do it for you, and they tell you that every time you login in to make any change to your site.

"Do you want to rank higher in the search engines?... Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah... "

Because of this, I am working on moving the site to a WP site - hopefully within the next week or so - so I can manage all the on page SEO myself. This is bringing a brand new set of challenges and I expect we will loose some of our links when I move the site. I think the big picture makes this move necessary and we are willing to go through a few growing pains to see improvement in the next few months.

Thanks again for the suggestions.

[Rod Navarro]

What´s your current ranking in google?.

Have you optimized the IN PAGE Seo?,
Did you link back from some edu sites?
Did you have any good PR backlink?

I can help you submiting your article to tons of networks using Article samuari if you want, but I suggest you also look at the previous factors I mentioned.

Rod