Brick & Mortar "Upgrade Path"

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I have an old high school friend of mine (I'm 33 now LOL) that started a pest control business first of this year (2010). So this campaign will just be targeted for local queries only.

Anyway, he has a website. Keywords 'pest control' are not in the domain name or company name. Domain was just registered first of the year. I was trying to come up with a game plan which we could start with. The website is a Vista Print template site so I am not familiar with what kind of webmaster privileges we have. This will be started purely from scratch. No kind of SEO has been done at all.

Here is the plan I have so far:

Optimize website Title <60 characters, Description <150 characters.
Find out if h1 tags can be created.
Some kind of search engine submission, manual, automatic? Not sure which is best?
Sign up for Google, Yahoo!, Bing Local listing. Obtain 100% profiles on all.
Sign up for Google, Yahoo!, Bing webmaster. Register both domains with and without w w w. Setting w w w as preferred. Is Google the only one that does this?
Set up domain based email. Is this necessary or would a Yahoo! email suffice? This would be for the purpose of link building in the future.
Put name of company with 'pest control' in title of local listings. Will listing get slapped?
Sign up for Adwords. Just for indexing purposes.
Install Analytics code.
Generate robots .txt and sitemap .xml. Is this necessary for a small site?
Submit site to DMOZ.

How's that for starers? Any thing you all would like to add?

I have done some keyword research and it looks like pest control with city of business is a good one. If we start link building with this keyword that is the ONLY keyword we can target for the domain? Should we create a url with pest control in the anchor text just in case we wanted to target other keywords in the future?

The only back linking strategies I have so far is scraping other websites ranking for pest control keyword and submitting to the link directories they use. And searching for keyword "notify me of follow up comments" and looking for blogs to post on that do follow links.

There is another forum that I am going to ask more specific questions about back linking though if that's not appropriate here.

Everything I know about SEO is just what I have read over the past 4 months. I have not even started to learn the social bookmarking, article submission, rss feed etc. I am just purely interested in Local serps right now.

Thanks for reading.
#search engine optimization #brick #mortar #upgrade path
  • Optimize website Title <60 characters, Description <150 characters.-

    Find out if h1 tags can be created.-this part, use your related keywords variation.
    Some kind of search engine submission, manual, automatic? Not sure which is best?

    Sign up for Google, Yahoo!, Bing Local listing. Obtain 100% profiles on all.-

    Sign up for Google, Yahoo!, Bing webmaster. Register both domains with and without w w w.
    Setting w w w as preferred. Is Google the only one that does this?-

    Set up domain based email. Is this necessary or would a Yahoo! email suffice? This would be for the purpose of link building in the future.-

    Put name of company with 'pest control' in title of local listings. Will listing get slapped?-
    Sign up for Adwords. Just for indexing purposes.-

    Install Analytics code.-

    Generate robots .txt and sitemap .xml. Is this necessary for a small site?-

    Submit site to DMOZ.-

    My recommendation..Use these local listing sites and anyone else who needs this...use these

    local listing sites..it helps in the organic business listing results:
    citysearch
    local yahoo
    insiderpages
    yellowpages
    supermedia
    webapp.com
    bridgat.com
    ExpressUpdateUSA
    yellowbot.com
    merchantcircle.com
    hotfrog.com
    kudzu.com
    bestoftheweb
    local.com
    yelp

    Do this over a 1-3 week period..you want to grow it slowly. As more competitors come on broad, you will be able to show google that you have more votes.

    I hope this helps you in your local internet marketing...Just so you know stay tuned for my local marketing product...If you liked this advice...you will love what I am launching..!!!
  • I think that's a pretty holistic game plan. However, what do you plan to do for on page content? i mean now that you have a game plan for how the SEs will find your website, but what are they going to find?

    DMOZ submission will depend on this as they are quite stringent. I would suggest submitting when you're about 85% complete as the queue takes forever and they don't allow "under construction" websites.

    Let us know how it goes! Also remember to track!
  • Yes,, track with an excel sheet. And have on page content and titles are very important, very important..

    let us know how it goes.
  • Plan looks good, for content i'd write or hire someone to write at least 20 or so 500-1000 word articles related to pest control. I prefer 1000 word articles, they look much less spammy. You could get that done for a couple hundred on elance or just write yourself (I hate writing). For the article Titles make sure you use the keywords you are trying to hit, in the titles. Then go pay 80 bucks for a joe118's packet or something basic like that and link the articles! and bam your off to a good start.
    • [1] reply
    • Thanks for the input.


      I have no idea what to do for content. I understand on page optimization and have tried to set up everything correct for that.

      When I start reading about articles, RSS feeds, social bookmarking I start to get confused. I am doing link building by submitting to link directories and posting on blogs. Do I need to bookmark every link I create?

      I have started an Excel file listing all the links created. I've only got about 60 or so links indexed with Yahoo! right now.

      Thanks
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    Brick & Mortar "Upgrade Path"

    I have an old high school friend of mine (I'm 33 now LOL) that started a pest control business first of this year (2010). So this campaign will just be targeted for local queries only. Anyway, he has a website. Keywords 'pest control' are not in the domain name or company name. Domain was just registered first of the year. I was trying to come up with a game plan which we could start with. The website is a Vista Print template site so I am not familiar with what kind of webmaster privileges we have. This will be started purely from scratch. No kind of SEO has been done at all.