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Local SEO Question, Offliners?

by payoman
10 replies
Aren't you supposed to get Page 1 of Google if the other websites don't have any backlinks and bad on page SEO?

I used market samurai to check the competition on this keyword, and it was basically ALL GREEN with no exact match domains, no on page SEO and no backlinks.

So I started a website for a this search term that received something like 150 searches per month, with the competition having NO backlinks and bad on page SEO, yet I didn't even rank in the top 100. Why could this be?

I hear everywhere how you can instantly get page one if the competition is bad and the term is rarely searched. So why wasn't this the case for me?

This is what every client I have talked to wants to know, how to get Google page 1 for 'dentist townname', and the sole reason they justify paying a hefty monthly fee for a website.

So anyone got any ideas why this test didn't work out?
#local #offliners #question #seo
  • Profile picture of the author Jon Paella
    How long has it been and how's your onpage seo like?
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  • Profile picture of the author Perestroika
    What did you do to the site in order for it to be on first page? Just because the keyword has no competition doesnt mean that registering the exact domain will get you on first page.
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  • Profile picture of the author sbishop
    has it been indexed? It does not matter what you do if google does not know about it!
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  • Profile picture of the author geolocal
    First, your on-page SEO has to be rock solid. Is your main keyword used in in the title, meta tags (keywords and description), H1, H2, H3 tags, bold, italic, underline, image names, alt text, first sentence, last sentence, and sprinkled throughout? Also sprinkle a few related keywords in your text. Make sure you offer unique quality content spread across multiple pages. Interlink your pages with your keyword. Include an XML Sitemap for the SEs and an HTML one for humans.

    Second, Google needs to know about the site, which you can achieve by linking to it from a site that's already indexed by Google (it's helpful if it has high PR and gets lots of traffic).

    Third, you need to start driving some high quality backlinks to your site from a variety of places -- social media sites, article directories, web 2.0 sites that you build, blogs, forum profiles, etc. Bookmark everything. Include your main keyword in the link text but be sure to vary the link text. Try to get .edu and .gov backlinks, there are lots of edu blogs out there where you can still leave comments (be relevant and add value).

    Hope this helps...
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    • Profile picture of the author iAmNameLess
      Originally Posted by geolocal View Post

      First, your on-page SEO has to be rock solid. Is your main keyword used in in the title, meta tags (keywords and description), H1, H2, H3 tags, bold, italic, underline, image names, alt text, first sentence, last sentence, and sprinkled throughout? Also sprinkle a few related keywords in your text. Make sure you offer unique quality content spread across multiple pages. Interlink your pages with your keyword. Include an XML Sitemap for the SEs and an HTML one for humans.

      Second, Google needs to know about the site, which you can achieve by linking to it from a site that's already indexed by Google (it's helpful if it has high PR and gets lots of traffic).

      Third, you need to start driving some high quality backlinks to your site from a variety of places -- social media sites, article directories, web 2.0 sites that you build, blogs, forum profiles, etc. Bookmark everything. Include your main keyword in the link text but be sure to vary the link text. Try to get .edu and .gov backlinks, there are lots of edu blogs out there where you can still leave comments (be relevant and add value).

      Hope this helps...

      Lies...

      If someone follows the stereotypical advice on this forum to a T, they will for sure not have any results.

      For local SEO, I would assume you're referring to google places? Google places has nothing to do with backlinks, it is a different search algorithm. Your on page SEO has something to do with it, but not as these people suggest.

      Local SEO - Google places, optimized completely with a full listing, citations on yelp, citipages, merchant circle, etc.. and reviews. That pretty much sums it up for local seo.

      Now if you're targeting local keywords organically, its a different story, but don't optimize the page completely for the search engines.. optimize it for the users. Title tag is the big one here, as well as URL. If you don't have an EMD, then you add a page /miami-dentist or something similar. People try over optimizing. There is no such thing as perfect on page SEO... because what these people consider "perfect" is unnatural.

      Send me the keyword, and your website and I can tell you exactly why you aren't ranking.
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  • Profile picture of the author SamuraiKat
    Also I wanted to add, did you also check out the PR of those pages that are listed in the SEOC? There might be a few extra things that can be added. Has the place registered on Google Places? Do the have a GooglePlus business page, etc?

    I am not going to say that you need all of this, but it might be a few more simple things that you can do.
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  • Profile picture of the author Bigfoot1
    Try building some backlinks to it and make sure ON page seo is good. Are you indexed yet?

    It really shouldn't be hard to rank for that term.

    One thing though, make sure you have relevant content on that site(which I presume you do). I remember making a local site for myself that ranked horribly because the content was somewhat general. Funnily enough it ranked no.3 in the American Google and no. 40 in the Canadian Google even though I was going after a Toronto keyword.....
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  • Profile picture of the author 919492
    The other sites probably have age also. If you just started a site and you don't have age it will take time unless you build the right type of links.
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  • Profile picture of the author Dr Dan
    Could be alot of factors involved. I try to stay away using the Google adword KW tool because it misses most of the local search terms. Remember that this tool is meant for buying adwords and not organic local searches.



    You can check out this blog post I did on this topic: Google Local Search Guide – Searching for Local Keywords | Offline RockStar Academy
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  • Profile picture of the author tdpubs
    You need to give your website time to develop some legs. You are probably competing with older sites and need some time for Google to catch up to your activities. Remember that PR, age, content, number of pages, video, backlinks, .edu, .org, and even paid links such as Yahoo and high authority links such as Dmoz all count. Quite often your are not competing against a website but a web page. YouTube videos are beginning to dominate the rankings in Google therefore having video links seem to be an important factor these days.
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