14 {{ upvoteCount | shortNum }}
14 {{ upvoteCount | shortNum }}

Pole Barns again

by paulywallnuts
11 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Some time last year there was a thread about an outfit which had websites with hundreds of localized web pages.

http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...s-per-day.html

Google "pole barn" in just about any city and state and they're usually on the first page of results. For example google "pole barn sandusky ohio" and they are right there pro-polebarns.com/SanduskyOhiopolebarns. Even Compton California LOL, pro-polebarns.com/ComptonCaliforniapolebarns.

The "Pole barn" pages are just one example of this technique. Similar sites include "Asbestos Removal" etc etc.

I'm a programmer and can localize page content on the fly so that a url similar to the pole barn examples would display automatically localized content. For example a site called widgetgrommets.com would display a h1 heading of "Widget Grommets", but if you typed in the url widgetgrommets/SanduskyOhio, the header would read "Widget Grommets in Sandusky, Ohio". Other text content in the pages is similarly localized... just like in the "pole barn" site.

My question is... how do you go about getting those pages indexed? Would you need some page on the main web site which has a link to every possible combination of city and state? Then hopefully this page would get indexed by search engine bots and every link would be followed and indexed? Or does someone manually submit each localized url to google and bing?

Any ideas much appreciated!
#barns #localized content #pole
  • Profile picture of the author jinx1221
    It's possible they pinged each one, pretty easy with a multi pinger. Might have been enough to index them since the sites had zero competition.
    Signature

    The Ultimate Private Network Management,
    Visualization and Automation Tool



    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[9146251].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author DeskCoder
    I would use an xml Sitemap. I would also have a page that lists every state with a link to the cities in each state. Kind of like a silo structure where your states are your categories, and your cities are all nested under each state.

    Might be better for SEO if you did (not 100% sure though):
    hxxp://domain.com/Ohio/Sandusky

    Having a database with all the cities and states would make this real easy to do.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[9146297].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author paulgl
      Pole barn? What the frick is a pole barn? Who in their right mind is
      going to be searching for pole barn?

      I'd search for pole barn right after I'd search for wet water.

      Now if you want a real world example, search for dress barn.

      FYI: I took the bait. Searched for the ridiculous pole barn. I got
      wikipedia pole building framing. Google obviously thinks pole barn
      is also ridiculous. Like searching for rod iron.

      Okay, did the other. Searched for pole barn mycity, got the yellow pages
      and a whole slew of mixed and matched EMDs. Which proves nothing.

      pole barn searchers of the world, unite!

      How about pole dancer? Pole dancer in a barn? Barn dance with poles?

      Paul
      Signature

      If you were disappointed in your results today, lower your standards tomorrow.

      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[9146384].message }}
      • Profile picture of the author yukon
        Banned
        Originally Posted by paulgl View Post

        Pole barn? What the frick is a pole barn? Who in their right mind is
        going to be searching for pole barn?

        I'd search for pole barn right after I'd search for wet water.

        Now if you want a real world example, search for dress barn.

        FYI: I took the bait. Searched for the ridiculous pole barn. I got
        wikipedia pole building framing. Google obviously thinks pole barn
        is also ridiculous. Like searching for rod iron.

        Okay, did the other. Searched for pole barn mycity, got the yellow pages
        and a whole slew of mixed and matched EMDs. Which proves nothing.

        pole barn searchers of the world, unite!

        How about pole dancer? Pole dancer in a barn? Barn dance with poles?

        Paul
        I helped an older friend that had a very successful construction business building pole barns back in the late 80's, trust me, there's big money in that business.

        It's mostly rural/suburban areas looking to buy those buildings. The largest pole barn we built you could drive a semi+trailer into the barn, do a U-turn & drive back out of the building. I'm not sure on the price of that particular building but we built a similar/smaller pole barn for a small business that used it for manufacturing (completely finished building) that dried in building cost a little over $100,000 in the 80's. We also built a bunch of those long self-storage buildings with all the overhead doors for small businesses.

        Anyways, you can laugh about the niche but there's people out there with real offline businesses that have been banking for years, long before the internet ever existed.

        Call around & get an estimate on a building, you'll probably get an estimate close to the price of building a small house depending on the sq. feet. Morton was our direct competition, call them up & get an estimate, lol, hope your rich or have access to getting a 1st or 2nd mortgage.
        {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[9146626].message }}
        • Profile picture of the author paulgl
          I'm not laughing about the niche. I am laughing about the example.

          I searched for pole barns and got nothing like the nonsense stated.

          I got real businesses doing those type of buildings.

          I also pointed out that for me, google changed the keywords,
          similar to what they do for many searches, like for rod iron.

          Paul
          Signature

          If you were disappointed in your results today, lower your standards tomorrow.

          {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[9146778].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author paulywallnuts
      Originally Posted by DeskCoder View Post

      I would use an xml Sitemap. I would also have a page that lists every state with a link to the cities in each state. Kind of like a silo structure where your states are your categories, and your cities are all nested under each state.

      Might be better for SEO if you did (not 100% sure though):
      hxxp://domain.com/Ohio/Sandusky

      Having a database with all the cities and states would make this real easy to do.
      Great suggestion. Thanks!
      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[9146856].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author CyberAlien
    Doing this type of thing is simple by just importing all the cities and states into a database. Then create a table with pagination on your website that has links to all of the pages. Submit the table to Google and let them crawl it to find all of the links.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[9146401].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author paulywallnuts
      Originally Posted by Escalate Internet View Post

      Doing this type of thing is simple by just importing all the cities and states into a database. Then create a table with pagination on your website that has links to all of the pages. Submit the table to Google and let them crawl it to find all of the links.
      Thanks Escalate Internet... I'm already doing that and I already have a generated page with links to all the localized pages. I didn't think of submitting that specific page to goog & bing.
      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[9148305].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    The domain/URL in OP is doing pretty much what I'm wanting to do, target a single niche across the entire US. He's going about it a bit different than what I planned.

    He's still selling leads to small business owners. He has Adsense on the site but I doubt that's his main goal, the money is in the leads he's selling to pole barn builders. Personally I would remove Adsense to help keep traffic on the lead/form page.

    All those lead forms are homeadvisor.com affiliate links. Looks like homeadvisor might be low balling him on the leads he generates, this is a snippet from their CJ affiliate application:

    Group A: $10.00 Group B: $8.50 Group C: $5.00 Group D: $1.50 Commissionable Lead: A lead is commissionable when consumer completes a request for service from HomeAdvisor's network of home improvement pros.
    Keep in mind those pole barns are built for around $10,000 for a low end 2 car garage. So homeadvisor isn't paying out much per lead. He would see a better profit working directly with a construction business owner.

    The keywords are all longtail.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[9146874].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author paulywallnuts
      Originally Posted by yukon View Post

      The domain/URL in OP is doing pretty much what I'm wanting to do, target a single niche across the entire US. He's going about it a bit different than what I planned.

      He's still selling leads to small business owners. He has Adsense on the site but I doubt that's his main goal, the money is in the leads he's selling to pole barn builders. Personally I would remove Adsense to help keep traffic on the lead/form page.

      All those lead forms are homeadvisor.com affiliate links. Looks like homeadvisor might be low balling him on the leads he generates, this is a snippet from their CJ affiliate application:



      Keep in mind those pole barns are built for around $10,000 for a low end 2 car garage. So homeadvisor isn't paying out much per lead. He would see a better profit working directly with a construction business owner.

      The keywords are all longtail.
      Thanks yukon. That makes sense.
      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[9148296].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author shockwave
    I actually built a pole barn website back in Jan-Feb ish of this year for a building contractor that wanted to get leads for a whole state. I talked him in to paying $50 per call/email (calls needed to last over 1 minute 30 seconds and email leads were pretty in-depth too - requiring the prospect to receive a call back). Even now, it still generates leads every month (usually 3-4) and it isn't even ranking well in Big G or the other search engines for that matter and I haven't even did any SEO.

    Long story short, the guy chumped out and never signed my Lead Generation Agreement, but I had already built the sight and did a bit of video marketing. So, I thought "no biggie, I'll offer it to someone else". (btw, I was only asking $150 up-front on a pre-paid lead program).

    I called some of the leading Pole Barn contractors in the state and some that were small mom/pop operations and I emailed them as well. I even offered to sell them the site for a flat fee (under $500) - No takers on buying the site or buying just leads. Some of them were even people I knew were buying leads from HomeAdvisor.

    So, to bring this back around full circle: It's just like any other "lead gen" site. Not hard to get results - the challenge is finding a buyer(s).
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[9150137].message }}

Trending Topics