Want to help out a friend...But need help

by No7to4
6 replies
I just started learning about internet marketing in late November & have learned A LOT, staying up like a crackhead. Anyways I want to test my skills on a friends website but am puzzled on how to go about helping him. He owns a Party bus company in San Diego but the domain name has nothing to do with Party bus. His site is nowhere near 1st page of google. He knows what I've been up to and said that he would let me try to rank his site up to get more customers and if he does see an increase in customers he would pay me. So my question is how would I rank it for Party Bus Services if the domain name and site is not optimized for that?

Thanks
#friendbut
  • Profile picture of the author rarnold
    I would start with on page seo. It sounds like he might have just thrown up a site for him to direct people to and not for the search engines. If the site is Wordpress start with All In One SEO that will help a lot once filled out.

    Look at the keywords he is trying to rank for.
    Create backlinks.

    Don't worry about the domain name, what does Amazon, Ebay, and Google have to do with what they do.

    SEO is a process. The only other thing is him paying you IF he gets more customers, I would rather see him pay you for a better page rank, like 1st page. You have no control over people buying his product, he could be over priced, or just doesn't have what the customer is looking for.
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  • Profile picture of the author UMS
    The domain name isn't very important, but obviously the content is.

    Without seeing the site in question, it would be hard to say what needs improving onsite.

    Are you saying there's nothing specifically targeting "party bus services" on the site?

    Personally, if I was trying to rank the site, I would target the keyword

    san diego party bus

    That get 1000 exact local monthly searches and is specific to San Diego.
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    • Profile picture of the author Nick Lawless
      Hi,

      The domain is not that important. What's more important is the content in the website. Use high traffic keywords for the content. Do some on page SEO work as well to help get his site ranked. Again, there are tons of things you can do to help him increase his rank in Google.

      With regard to paying you only if he sees an increase in customers, that might be unfair on your part. What if you were able to rank him on page 1 but he still isn't getting enough sales? Even though he's your friend, you should not let your efforts put to waste. You're here to earn money and he should realize that.

      Best,
      Nick
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  • Profile picture of the author lucidsuccess
    make sure he is doing on page as well as off page seo.
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    • Profile picture of the author No7to4
      Originally Posted by lucidsuccess View Post

      make sure he is doing on page as well as off page seo.
      He isn't doing any of that, he paid someone to setup the site for him.

      Originally Posted by Nick Lawless View Post

      Hi,

      The domain is not that important. What's more important is the content in the website. Use high traffic keywords for the content. Do some on page SEO work as well to help get his site ranked. Again, there are tons of things you can do to help him increase his rank in Google.

      With regard to paying you only if he sees an increase in customers, that might be unfair on your part. What if you were able to rank him on page 1 but he still isn't getting enough sales? Even though he's your friend, you should not let your efforts put to waste. You're here to earn money and he should realize that.

      Best,
      Nick
      Nick you make a very valid point about getting paid even if there isn't an increase in customers, I'll have to bring that up to him.

      Originally Posted by UMS View Post

      The domain name isn't very important, but obviously the content is.

      Without seeing the site in question, it would be hard to say what needs improving onsite.

      Are you saying there's nothing specifically targeting "party bus services" on the site?

      Personally, if I was trying to rank the site, I would target the keyword

      san diego party bus

      That get 1000 exact local monthly searches and is specific to San Diego.
      Yeah the site is not optimized at all. It has pictures of events, parties, tours, and the buses. Thats what I wanted to do was go after "San Diego Party Bus" but I'm not sure how to go about it since it's not optimized for anything.

      Originally Posted by rarnold View Post

      I would start with on page seo. It sounds like he might have just thrown up a site for him to direct people to and not for the search engines. If the site is Wordpress start with All In One SEO that will help a lot once filled out.

      Look at the keywords he is trying to rank for.
      Create backlinks.

      Don't worry about the domain name, what does Amazon, Ebay, and Google have to do with what they do.

      SEO is a process. The only other thing is him paying you IF he gets more customers, I would rather see him pay you for a better page rank, like 1st page. You have no control over people buying his product, he could be over priced, or just doesn't have what the customer is looking for.
      You make a good point about Amazon, Ebay, and Google, and I will talk to him about the payment information. It does look like its a wordpress site but the blog they have, has nothing to do with the party bus service. They just have random content on the blog.

      If I put the website up here, I would probably risk someone trying to contact him huh.
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  • Profile picture of the author Mike Linley
    I agree with UMS - start with geo-targeted keywords like what he mentioned! Start building links by getting the site indexed through web directories and search engine directories. And then you can work on articles and other offline link building techniques. And then you can request your friend perhaps to optimize his website.
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