Ranking Local Websites

It has. No site ranks easily now. If a few links are from home pages with high PR they may but that costs money. And thin sites are not what google seems to want now. Though of course that may change without notice

When it comes to ranking local sites, it's not just about PR links...you also want to ensure you have good citation flow in authority sites like Yelp and other business directories. When listing the business, make sure you keep the name, street address and phone number in the same format each time as well.

Local websites are all about local directories such as wickid said.

The work is NOT "easy"... no. Well, maybe after you figure out what you're doing. Then it just becomes a lot of work to launch and maintain a local site.

About 75% of my income comes from local lead gen "sites"... but when I refer to a "lead gen site" when I'm REALLY referring to is the >>> FUNNEL. And a well established lead gen funnel takes A LOT of time to build and maintain.

But if you execute properly you can make really good money for yourself. Every funnel I create averages me about $2k / month.

I maintain 4 lead gen funnels right now (about $8k / month... sometimes less depending on the weather) and this is what I do just for 1 site:


1) Create a high quality website. I usually put a full days work just into the home page.

2) Write 30 high quality articles with graphics, videos, links, that target all my main keywords.

3) Spin, transcribe or write 150-400 geotargeted pages that target every county, city, township and town within a state.

4) Manually "spin" between 150-400 geotargeted YT videos that target every county, city, township and town within a state. I usually rank these with GSA and do NOT direct link back to the site. I just write a version of the url that people can copy and paste because most people call directly from the videos and don't even go to the site. Plus I don't want the crappy GSA spam pointing to any page on my site.

5) Do my top 50 citations manually, then outsource another 300 (drip fed over 2 months).
This takes me usually a couple of days (I put a lot of time into the profiles I do manually).

6) Social buttons on the site like g+, g local, facebook, twitter, vimeo, youtube, etc.

7) Get some twitter followers, facebook likes.... my youtube videos usually get liked on their own slowly over the course of a year or 2.

8) Regularly update my facebook page and I usually boost a post ($5) everyday.

9) Once most of the funnel is complete, then I start SEO. HOWEVER, 90% of the time, just by building out a huge funnel there is this "effect". I still don't know quite how or why it happens. But if you do all this properly, your local sites will rank on page 2 or 3 of Google WITHOUT any backlinks at all. And I like to wait these days for that to happen before I start building links (it always happens).

10) So the site is now ranking own its own, I'm slowly drip feeding PBN links and this will push them into the top 3 within a month or 2.

11) To push my G locals into the top 3 it call comes down to reviews now. All the citations are done and ALL I do at this point is reviews. I get them on yellow pages, yahoo local, yelp, kuzdu, insider pages, and g local. For yellow pages, yahoo, kuzdu and insider pages I do the reviews on my own (I have 2 different methods for that). For G local and Yelp I always have the customers leave the reviews. And here's a "trick" I learned for getting reviews. You do NOT have to sell a job / lead to get one. If someone merely calls up a company, and that company gives them good advice over the phone, I pester the hell out of the customer till they leave a review.... even if no work was done. On average I have to text message or call a customer 3-4 times before they actually leave the review (people are flaky like that so you need to keep reminding them every week).

12) After about 20-30 reviews my listings begin to display prominence. It's relative to the competition but this is usually enough to get in the top 5 of G local. Then I usually push for 50 reviews to rank #1. But the point is, reviews are what's going to rank you in G local. Moreso than citations. Because I have some sites where I only did like 50 citations, but it was the continual drip feeding of reviews that wound up ranking them in G local. One 1 site I have 52 reviews just on the G local. That site has been ranking #1 in G local for almost a year now. It's unbelievable how stable the listing ranks. Then there is the fact that so many people who call usually talk about the reviews. Like "I saw your reviews online and you guys look like the best". I'm always being told by my broker and my brother how valuable these reviews are. They sell the shit out of people.


For each of those 12 points, I could probably write 10-20 pages just going through all the specific details of everything I do. I also try to post on classifieds as often as possible (I have 14 craigslist accounts on my server for that). I try to post on local sites, forums, anything.

So there's A LOT of work involved.

I'm not the type of dude to just try and rank a site and get leads. Because that model sucks donkey balls. Especially for home improvement niches which don't tend to get a lot of traffic in the first place. You need to be EVERYWHERE, ranking EVERYWHERE and do EVERYTHING to generate a lot of leads.

I do not do any Google adwords because that will quickly triple or quadruple the cost per lead. So my cost per customer usually starts at like $6 / customer (the first couple months when I'm actually spending money on random shit). Then after that point I stop spending, and the funnels drive leads as the cost continues to drop (this is that "sweet spot" where everything starts to run on autopilot [mostly autopilot, there's always a bit of manual work that needs to be done], costs drop to almost nothing and the money starts flowing in).

Like one of my sites right now it's costing me about $.35 per lead which is absurd for home improvement leads.

Then I don't sell the leads. I broker them for commissions. Even though I can make profits selling the leads it's A LOT more profitable to act as an affiliate and collect commissions. Plus most business owners I speak to would rather give me 6-14% the total cost of a job rather than pay for lead after lead after lead after lead after lead that doesn't convert.

If I worked on a per lead basis, I would not qualify and throw away as many leads as I do.

Like I get a lot of tire kickers to my sites and I don't keep them on a list or anything. I don't push them to call. I don't use any autoresponders. I usually don't deal with real estate agents. I don't deal with homebuyers, etc. I only deal with people who already own the home. All the leads that get forwarded are pre-sold, pre-screened and pre-qualified.

They're nothing like the shitty leads you'd get from homeadvisor.


But the point is, ranking local sites isn't as profitable as you'd think. Building out a massive funnel aka casting the widest net possible... that IS profitable.

So you either go all the way or you don't do it at all.

That's my motto.

-Rob