Great Little SEO Technique For Local Businesses

[jstover77]

Here is an easy way to get yourself first page rank in Google using Backpage.com, Kijiji.com, and Craigslist (some sections). This works really well for Local business, but can also apply to long tailed keywords or phrases. For the purpose of this post, I am going to explain how I use this tactic, for local businesses.

First, you want to do your keyword research and analysis. There are a million good tools out there, but my favorite is Google Keyword tool (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal). For example, if you own a landscaping business, take the top keyword "landscaping" or "landscape", and plop it in the keyword tool. This will give you other relevant words that relate to your business, and a rough idea of their monthly search volume.

Create your self a swipe file (word/notepad) with 20-30 top keywords. You can do more or less. This is up to you.

Second, what you want to do is make a list of all the towns, cities, and counties you do business in. Put them into the same swipe file but separate them.

Next, you want to start mixing keywords, with towns, cities, and counties. For example:

Cheap, Affordable, Landscaping Doylestown, PA
Landscape Design, Landscaping, Mulch Delivery Doylestown, PA
Lawn Mowing, Landscapes, Waterscaping Doylestown, PA
Hardscaping, Lawn Mowing, Landscape Design Warrington, PA
ect..ect...ect

You can make a huge list doing this.

Now, what you do is use them as titles when you post an ad in Backpage.com, Kijiji, and Craigslist. Google loves classified advertising site, and the ads index very fast!! Sometimes within hours of placing it.

Here is an example of some ads we ran for my brothers business.

2009-05-10_1621

The key is to cycle the titles every time you post, so that you will index under numerous keyword phrases.

*Tip- You also want to put a list of keywords within the ad body, at the bottom of the ad.
*Tip- Put Your URL, Business Name, and or Phone in the title of the ad. Because the ads expire within 30-45 days, once they click on it from the search engine, it will say "ad has been recently deleted". But if you put your URL, or Phone Number in the title, they still have a way to contact you.
*Tip- If you are using image code place the keyword/s in the alt tag. For example

<img src="http://i484.photobucket.com/albums/rr209/jstover77/imagead_backpage3.png" border="0" alt="doylestown landscaping"></a>


Because the ads expire after 30-45, you have to keep up with this. Eventually the ad de-indexes, and falls off the page.

Now, if you want to get a little more advanced, you can take this a step further. Take the titles that you used, and create blogs with them. I like to use WikiDot.com, or Blogger.com. Doesn't matter, as long as Google likes them. For example:

landscaping_doylestown.blogspot.com
landscape_design_warrington.blogspot.com

Use a generic template each time, just change the title header, and tags on each page. Also include some relevant content corresponding to the keywords in the title of your blog.

You can then use Backpage, Craigslist, and Kijiji to index these pages. So, make sure you include the URL corresponding to Keyword phrase in the ad. For example:

Title- Landscaping Doylestown, PA
Ad Body- We are the best landscaping company in the world. Check out our work at doylestown_landscaping.blogspot.com

Once Google indexes your blogs, they tend to anchor and stay there for much longer than an ad does, but they are both powerful methods.

*Tip- When you are doing your research, look at your competition. If you see that they are indexing with a certain website, just mimic it. Examples of other sites that tend to index quickly. Forums , local type sites, merchant circle, any type of site that you can post on basically.

For those of you looking for a business idea. This is pretty easy to implement, and you can sell it to local businesses in your area for good money!

I hope this helps any of you small business, local business owners out there. I am sure that there are some SEO guys out there that can chime in on this, with other suggestions.

Cheers,
John

[David Raybould]

Hey John-

Nice post, that stuff works great.

If you find a keyword that makes money,
you can then really capitalize on it by
setting up a wordpress blog, hosting it
yourself and running some simple SEO on
it.

Then you can start building lists and
really making some money.

Great post.

-David Raybould

[jstover77]

Originally Posted by David Raybould

Hey John-

Nice post, that stuff works great.

If you find a keyword that makes money,
you can then really capitalize on it by
setting up a wordpress blog, hosting it
yourself and running some simple SEO on
it.

Then you can start building lists and
really making some money.

Great post.

-David Raybould

Absolutely. You can use this technique to do tons of stuff. You can basically apply this to article marketing, and video marketing too. Works great with local SEO, and large scale SEO too!

[flashgordon]

Thanks for the tips, great ideas. I'm assuming you only do one post on those mini-blogs pointing to your main site. Is that the idea? Or do you post new stuff on the mini-blogs too?

[jstover77]

Originally Posted by flashgordon

Thanks for the tips, great ideas. I'm assuming you only do one post on those mini-blogs pointing to your main site. Is that the idea? Or do you post new stuff on the mini-blogs too?

Yes, you don't need a lot of post. I do try to update the blogs..IE- change a word here and there, to keep it looking fresh to Google.

[Chuck Staff]

Great post, John!

Thanks for sharing your techniques with us.

[stevereel]

Thanks... great post. I was already doing some of this for long tail keywords, but I had never posted on Criagslist or even heard of Kijiji!

[TheCren]

Backpage and Kijiji are new to me. Thanks for the post, jstover77! I'm getting to work right away with those.

[jstover77]

Backpage, and Kijiji rank great, and have do follow tags in all their pages. Craigslist ranks even better, but they don't have do follow tags in all their pages. Therefor you can rank high with very competitive keywords with CL, but not all ads will index. Backpage and Kijiji are good for keywords that usually have 300K search results or less.

[TheCren]

Originally Posted by jstover77

Backpage, and Kijiji rank great, and have do follow tags in all their pages. Craigslist ranks even better, but they don't have do follow tags in all their pages. Therefor you can rank high with very competitive keywords with CL, but not all ads will index. Backpage and Kijiji are good for keywords that usually have 300K search results or less.

I generally go for 500K searches or less anyway, no problem skimping a bit.

My complements to your signature as well . You've got some nice tools for us. Some are pretty expensive for my taste, but maybe worth a shot.

[thomas1857]

Thanks for the info John. So basically, you have to make sure the KW you are ranking for is above the 300K mark? I see from your signature you have tools to help us new ones get started. Thanks again for the info, and I'm gonna try my hand at this SEO technique...

[bobmcalister]

I do the same and havent had the succes you have ..any tips for me ?

[instantconnect]

When your talking 300k search results, are you referring to in quotes "_keyword_" Btw loved the post and thanks for the great information.

[Lillian]

thanks for the tips - plan to try it out

[Finch]

Gumtree is also a good site for this kind of link injection.

The technique is effective, but only if you're doing it the Black Hat way. And that means automating the entire process in to one script.

I couldn't bare the thought of going through and doing something like this manually.

[debtfreehispanic]

John, this post has been very helpful. I am going to implement some of these techniques and see what happens. Thanks for the tips.

[tx4closurepro]

these tips do work, i have gotten good results on cl & kijiji but you shared some more advanced stuff i didn't know... gotta implement - and just today i was cl looking for business opportunity ideas... thx

[HouseGirl]

John,

I told myself I wouldn't go posting any silly "Thanks for the post" posts while trying to get my post count up to 30, however, seeing as I'm new to all this I don't really have anything insightful to add to your post but did want to...

Thank you for the post!

Leslie

I'm going to try this stategy out for a friend next week. He doesn't have a web site and doesn't see the benefit of building one. This strategy seems like a semi-easy way to show him some proof.

[tdpubs]

Great stuff. I use Craigs list now and find that it really does help. Thanks again.
Dennis Francis