Local SEO Question

It doesn't matter - you can still beat anyone you just need to be focused and get a LOT of links.

I agree Andy, a lot of quality links will do the trick. Also if you client has a google places page, find a way to get positive reviews, they will also help the ranking factor

Do you mean Lake Buena Vista?
One of the most important factors in ranking is the proximity to the city centroid, i.e. the geographical center of the city. If you are further than 10 miles away from this center, your chances of getting to page 1 are relatively small. However, there is some chance.

The town is approximately 18 miles away from the center of Orlando, which makes the task extremely difficult. Orlando is a very big city and there are more than 5,000 places ranking for the keyword "orlando landscaping".

Why not ask the client to register another exact phrase match domain if it is still availble. why do more work than is required.

While you still can rank your orig site above the google places.. also have you have your clients google places page start ranking up....
Have you tried getting this clients biz regisered in some of the verticals...so they can help him get the exposure tooo.....
when I take on a client (if he is willing to stoke big checks) I form a strategy not just to rank on page 1, but to totally dominate page 1 with several listing from all different mediums.
ART OF WAR: Its not just enough that I win, you must lose big too for the victory to be meaningful.

Dont let your prospects eyeball the competition.
Radical...yeah.... but we live in radical times now...
For what its worth

I agree with most here, get backlinks to your places page with the targeted anchor text.

Also, make sure that your KML and geo-sitemap files are up to date and submitted to google via the webmaster tools. This way google can find and index your client's location as well.

Keep in mind that you get indexed/ranked in Google Places for the industry keyword; not product or services.

So, if you are a lawn maintenance company they have a local Places listing for that. However, they (Google) does NOT have one for landscaping services. If you want to get your customer ranked for their product/services, then you need to get them listed by providing good quality SEO and SEM.

Someone above mnentioned an exact match domain which is a GREAT idea. In fact, get a bunch over time. I have a customer who is an author and he's written 4 books. He has about 95 domains for those books and makes a KILLING because of them.

What cheap advertising! (of course, you still need/should have backlinks)

So say I get the EXACT domain match as you are mentioning...do I just 301 redirect the domain to my current?

anyone answer the above?

since the exact domain worth more, why not focus on your exact domain?

Redirect the original domain to the exact match domain name (EMD)

You should focus your SEO to only one site, which is ... the EMD

ok so say the company name is "wilimire landscaping", would you purchase

orlando-landscping-wilimire.com
orlando-wilimire-landscaping.com

or other? I wasn't sure if the order of the keywords made a huge difference..

Thanks!

I think you need to dig deeper here. Landscaping is a pretty broad topic. Is your service for residential, commercial, golf courses and so on. You need to narrow the funnel here and find the exact niche you want to deal with. You can backlink for a year and I'll bet you will still struggle with ranking for orlando landscaping.

The exact match domain idea for these smaller and smaller niches makes a lot of sense. And no you don't redirect the sites, what good would that do? You need a basic site with some content so it will be FOUND in a search. If it just redirects nothing will ever happen to those EMD sites.

Hey everyone, I am working on building an article writing and distribution business for SBO's to eventually build them up to my SEO services. The problem that I am facing is a mental one. Because of Google Places and Local listings is it truly necessary for local businesses to hire an SEO expert. I mean wouldn't reviews and on page optimization do the trick? In other words, what can articles and SEO do for their local businesses? And is anyone experiencing objections from SBO's regarding SEO?

Thanks.

Hi,

am a newbie in internet market, kindly explain to me what SEO stands for and how it is applied in internet marketing. thanks

Kui

One way to work out this issue is to get a PMB private mail box in that city. It will cost perhaps $100 / year. We've done this successfully for a client expanding into different cities. Works wonders.

I built a site for a farm here in Oklahoma and there are millions of farms in Oklahoma. The site is was brand new 6 weeks ago with no page ranking. After 6 weeks they are on Page 1 listing for many keyword phrases and specific keywords.
search this: tomato varieties okla farm
the site Hawkinsspringsfarm

I used google analytics to see what keywords people used to find the site and that is how I came up with that term but I am sure that if you use the keywords you are trying to rank for the same thing can happen for your client.

I know this procedure I list below works. For this site there has been absolutely no off site article marketing etc. and except for setting up the site and advising the client how to write and where to use Keywords the client does all of the work and maintenance. The site has the WP plugin All in on SEO.

For every article, every posting make sure to use the keyword 'Orlando'. Make sure Orlando is in the Page title, make sure Orlando is in the keywords. Another good practice is for the client to blog about everyday things and not just pushing product but informative articles about how people can care for shrubs, flowers and grass in you know where, "ORLANDO". Blog and post at least twice a week.

Good luck

So let me get this straight. I currently have a chiropractor in a small city (about 20K) I am working with. I can rank them for city + chiropractor pretty easily using their Google Places listing. But if I also want to rank them for other nearby cities (also about 20K) i.e. "nearcity + chiropractor", based on this thread it seems like I have three options:

1) Create geo targeted back links with link text of surrounding cities to their main places listing (i.e., create backlinks with link text "nearby city + chiro" directly to their Google places listing). I understand their listing will appear in the places listing for "city + chiro" but I wonder if I do this where they would appear for "nearcity + chiro" - in the organic section of the results or in the places listing of the merged search results?

2) Create additional geo targeted content on their website (listing nearby cities in title tags, blog about it, etc.) and then create backlinks to those pages with "nearby city + chiro" in the link text. These pages should then appear in the organic results for "nearcity + chiro".

3) Have them rent a PMB in that small nearby city and create a second Google places listing with that PMB address. (not exactly sure how to do this - need a second phone number too, additional reviews, citations to this new location address, etc.?)

Or maybe all that needs to be done is to put the nearby cities and zip codes in the "areas served" section of their Google places listing - has anyone tried that?

Again, I am talking about small cities and towns here, not the big cities.