I'm scared.. Should I be?

by 21 replies
26
Here's the situation.
I do websites for small business trade type companies. Roofers, Painters, Builders, Auto Shops. It's hard for these sites to compete with the major national franchise sites for the top keywords.


The sites are good, onsite SEO is near as perfect as I can make it. But the big companies have the budgets and staff to keep me out of the top spot on the first page of googles serps.


I've been reading here in the warriors for hire section about some of the back linking services provided and must say that I'm impressed with what I'm seeing regarding the amount of backlinks provided and how they're gotten.


Till now I've pretty much been doing it manually for these sites, and mainly getting the back links from the small free local ads such as yahoo, bing, google, merchant circle, yelp, city search.... And the list goes on and on.
But I see where the big franchises have huge amounts of backlinks, and know that I'm falling short in comparison to them regarding backlinking for these sites.


So here's the gist of it. I think I may want to purchase backlinking campaigns for these sites.. But am hesitant because I read here on the forums where you're not supposed to do the campaign for your "Money Site" because it would run the risk of being sand boxed by google... To do it through link wheels and 2.0 type sites cuz we don't want the "Money Site" sand boxed.



I have no money sites, and am not an Internet Marketer. I just want my clients phones to ring with people requesting their products and services, so am hesitant about google seeing thousands of newly established back links to their sites and then sandboxing them. And most of the sites I've built for my clients are only around 3-6 months old.


Here are my questions...
Does the age of my sites matter before I start a back linking campaign? Should I wait till I start some type of automated back linking campaigns? If so what would be good rule of thumb time wise?

Because these aren't affiliate selling type sites should I do very small back linking campaigns? A thousand links in a month for a mom and pop painting company seems excessive to me. What would google think?
Am I needlessly worrying about something that doesn't matter? Should I just go ahead and throw caution to the wind and purchase a campaign for one of the sites and see what happens?
#search engine optimization #scared
  • Do some fiverr gigs start out slow with 200 social bookmarks, gradually move up I would not blast with 1000s of links but those fiverr gigs discussed in some of the threads work
    • [1] reply
    • I've looked into the fiverr gigs, and was thinking a few small campaigns for these sites would be the way to go.
  • DON'T PLACE A REAL BUSINESS AT RISK by falling for the hype in the "warriors for hire" section. Quantity doesn't equate to better rankings, in fact, if done wrong: it can cause more harm than good.

    You need to brush up on your SEO knowledge before you purchase a single backlinking service.
    • [ 3 ] Thanks
  • The websites you are trying to rank (i.e. the ones you are building for clients) are the "money sites" in this context. You should seek quality backlinks to your money sites, then you'll be fine. It is advised to avoid spammy, 50k Scrapebox blog comment blasts type of backlinking campaigns directly to your main site. Such blasts are fine for your 2nd-tier (Web 2.0) links because they are already established domains with PR, so it won't harm them. And also we do not care much if the 2nd tier pages did somehow get sandboxed.
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
  • Build quality backlinks. Let me give you some ideas, others will chime in I'm sure...

    1. Buy some blog posts on high PR blogs (private blogs, make sure to use small networks that survive multiple PR updates).
    2. Buy a few PR5 homepage links if you can.
    3. Contact other blogs/sites in similar niches for guest posting. Offer $25-$75 per post.
    4. Submit to high PR directories. You can score some very nice PR4/5 links this way.
    5. Manually comment on high PR blogs in your niche (and similar niches). This is pretty powerful if done right (but also quite time consuming).

    You can also try building a small site network around your clients site. But this might require a bigger budget.

    Don't send large blasts to a clients site.
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
  • Hmmm, I find that ranking locally for such companies is relatively easy depending on the which keywords you are trying to rank for.

    And I would do it myself, not hire someone. Plus, most the people you hire, the backlinks disappear very quickly.

    Post some quality articles for syndication and you tube videos that include your local city and state in the title and keywords and that get you a great start.

    Also, put those other sites in the Google keyword tool to see what keywords they are ranking for and include those in your tags and titles as much as possible.

    Also, look them up in Alexa and see the top 10 sites linking to them and get backlinks yourself on those sites, if you can by commenting.
  • Well the fiverrs are not ALL good but I went from 2 wayyyyyyyyyy down about 3 weeks ago since I lost 20% of my backlinks on one site, this was due to my not renewing a few domains, dumb on my part, (had nothing to do with fiverr)

    My resort had been number two prior to this but stayed way down like number 7 for long time

    then
    I did that fiverr gig for linkwheel powerhouse forgot the link and about 2 weeks later i was up to number 2 again. Not saying that did it, but
    I still do not have those 20% backlinks I lost so something helped

    http://fiverr.com/volarex/build-a-li...-search-engine
  • Local small business is all about google maps/places/local.

    If you aint on that, you aint $#!^

    Even more so, as google morphs results for the searcher.

    Backlinks don't matter. Websites don't matter. You
    don't even need a website.

    Paul
    • [ 2 ] Thanks
    • [2] replies
    • All of these small business's need google, yahoo, bing, merchant circle, local sites that are maxed at 100% completion. And I provide that service as part of my basic website package, along with listings in the 20 local online directories.

      But these companies still need good websites with individual service pages for the small outlying cities they're associated with and do business in. They can't have more than one google local ad and I always make it for the biggest city they're associated with. Also Google local gives extra weight to a company that has a link from their local ad to their stand alone website.

      Google local already rules the small business internet world... Honestly, I think they will eventually try to monetize it some day. How I don't know, but they're very focused on it these days... I fear that it's just a matter of time.
    • Paul is correct, I didn't pick up on the local, small business part... You need to educate your clients about this as well.

      edit: nvm, I see you have this part covered.
      • [1] reply
  • Great advice from all of you and it's much appreciated. I suppose what I wanted more than anything was reassurance that what I was doing and thinking were correct.

    Thanks for taking the time out on a Sunday to provide me with a few minutes of attention.

    I suppose I will keep doing what I'm doing and be a little more patient. Maybe a few small Fiverr campaigns with one site just to see how it goes. I have a few that I own and lease for a percentage of the jobs that come in through them, so they would be the ones that I would throw caution to the wind with. After all I own them, not the companies that are leasing them.

    Thanks again to all of you!
    • [1] reply

    • Looking to Fiverr for SEO for real companies is a bad start. You can post caution to the wind for your own sites and it may on some occasions work for a little time but they are garbage links most of the time. Its one thing to run them to an adsense site but I would hate to be the SEO guy explaining to a plumber depending on business to feed his family that he won't appear in Google anywhere getting traffic for a few months when you get him either a penalty or his site goes into siberia due to the algo bouncing him/her down
      • [ 1 ] Thanks
      • [1] reply
  • i'd say not really but do more reading of replies above. i'm somewhat newby
  • What i would do is create some quality backlinks by buying some blog posts.

    Thats how i did it.
    • [1] reply
    • Buy blog posts?

      I've not heard of this before, could you elaborate some?
  • I'm glad you found that white hat techniques worked for you. However, when it comes to targeting keywords against the "big" competitors, remember you always have the option to focus in on local online marketing strategies.
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    I'm scared.. Should I be?

    Here's the situation. I do websites for small business trade type companies. Roofers, Painters, Builders, Auto Shops. It's hard for these sites to compete with the major national franchise sites for the top keywords.