National Brand Needs Local SEO Help

Hi, that's interesting. I have similiar concerns with my site which is similiar to what you are doing but with dentists in the UK.

I am thinking of having a hierarchy based on cities and counties so each county and city will have a landing which then links through to the individual clinics. The clinic lists would in effect be the individual content on each page. I have built a price comparison function into the site as this is the USP. Also the clinic description will be additional content. Would you not do this for the plumbers? Also, why are limiting it to 30?

You will have to build backlinks for each different city to the optimised landing pages then which will benefit the site as a whole.

Have you looked into google local seo so as you will show up in local searches? For this I think you will need an address in each city for google to confirm you operate there. Would the plumbers pass the confirmation card onto you?

Dentimplant - thanks for your reply.

30/35 is about the total I can have, as I give them territory rights.

Again, I was thinking of doing separate pages for each of them, which would included all their contact info. My concern is putting enough unique content on each page, that will get those pages ranking locally on page 1 of Google (provided I do some link building).

Do I have all 30+ pages linked in the side bar of my site?

Note to admin: when you moved this post to this section, would it have been terribly difficult for you to ALSO move any replies along with it...? (sigh)

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Your stats (low Alexa rank, low traffic) combined with your high spend on ad networks ($3k) clearly illustrate that you're wasting time, energy - and money.

But let me briefly give you a few general ideas, for what they're worth.

To improve your SEO results:

1. Start by doing deep keyword research. Preferably use a WSO on here called "seolater" because it really tells you how to do it well. Otherwise, use Google Keyword Tool and Google Search and divide your keywords into 3 groups: easy/low search volume, average, tough/high volume.

2. Launch your keywords (i.e. publish your articles centered around your keywords) starting from the "easy" ones and gradually on to the harder ones. Post daily. Don't rush to conquer the harder keywords until you know it's ok.

3. To know it's "ok", MONITOR your SERP positions for all your keywords, but especially for those you've used. If you start ranking high and quickly, this is an indication that Google's Trust Rank for your site is climbing. At that point you can switch to the next keyword group. And so on.

4. Your site, if I understand you correctly, is in one location, but it aims to service users in many geographical locations across the country. With that in mind, all the keywords you discover will also work with regional place names appended. And you could optimize individual articles just for those, e.g. "plumbing in Toronto", etc.. But this is not the only way, and perhaps not even the best way. Make sure you have all your service locations listed in a sidebar (i.e. a static area on your site). This way each post/keywords will always automatically be linked to each of those locations as well. Follow up with manual linking (in and outgoing) using high quality links only.

5. If you plan and execute well, you should reach about 1000-3000 visits from organic searches within the first month - easily. Make sure you track your keywords carefully as well as your conversion pages, because this will give you a broad idea of what level of conversions to expect once you start paying for targeted traffic.

6. Continue growing your keyword set gradually.

7. After about 1-2 months of doing this you will have not only very healthy and steadily increasing traffic, but you'll also be ready to resume paying for targeted traffic. In other words, please STOP paying - for now. You're obviously wasting money.

8. Do some research regarding not only ad networks but also sites which are frequented by your most likely targeted customers. This way, when you start testing your ad networks you'll only go for those which also serve these and similar sites - or - you can also approach these sites directly.

9. Once you think you know which ad networks and sites are "ideal" for you, run some tests with them. Budget between $100 to $200 per network, but start with only a couple or three or so.

10. Before you do that, however, make sure you've done pro-quality creatives (hire someone - it will be worth it), along with pro-quality headlines and copy. Include in that banners of various sizes, text ads, solo ads (for the few cases of solo ad vendors who might cater to your market AND for a number of eZines in your market). Make sure all your creatives make you smile.

11. Have your landing pages (if any) beautifully done with clear calls to action, etc. If you're just sending people to your blog without "pushing" an action, make sure your interactive forms or whatever are clearly visible and inviting. This way you can monitor how well they convert. Have multiple versions of your landers, so that each campaign can be sent to a different one - or - so that you can get your ad tracker (a program which keeps track of where your traffic comes from, e.g. Hypertracker, etc) to rotate these and you'll soon know which one converts the best. Incidentally, do the same with all your creatives too: split test them in the same way, until you know.

12. After you run your first few tests, make sure you've accomplished your goals (which could be getting signups or making sales, etc). Establish your bottom-line benchmark in this manner. In other words, if you scale up, or run another test, you'll have something to compare it to.

13. DO NOT SCALE UP until it makes financial sense.

14. If a given network fails to deliver the quantity and quality of traffic you expected - abandon it (assuming you did everything else right). In a normal situation you should only ever have to spend $1-2k to get everything rolling without having to re-invest.

15. Make sure you have a clear budget. Multiply your overheads by two, divide your incomes by four. If it still makes sense - you're on the right track.

Hope this brief recap helps!

That sounds a bit ugly. You could put them in the footer as well. Why not use a map?

If you only have one plumber per region, why not give the plumber a profile with peronsal information, work experience, areas covered (this would be good for your SEO), and specialist areas.. etc etc

That URL is a parked page & the only page indexed in Google (US SERPs). I guess that was a real URL & not an example?

MktCoach - thanks so much for your detailed reply, lots of info there.

Just a bit of further info on my site. It's been running for 12 years and is profitable. I use to use TV listings channel and radio to promote, but radio was to expensive and TV listings has died completely.

About 3 years ago I went to PPC. Have started learning more about SEO and realize that I'm wasting a lot of money and not getting any organic traffic.

I've put together a detailed list of kw's, but the main ones all revolve around using the city name.

Your point #4 - Yes, I have one site that caters to all of Canada. Right now a person has to input the city name into a search box to take them to the landing page I use for PPC.

Each landing page is identical for each city, other then contact info for the plumber.

I want to be ranking organically for each city for the 2 main versions of the kw's. So what your saying is, put a link in my sidebar (such as Calgary Plumber) for each city? And as 'Dentimplats' suggests, provide a profile/personal info about each one and throw in my kw's?

Again, I appreciate all your other info and your points are well taken!

Just trying to wrap my head around how to start ranking organically for each city, other then creating new sites for each one?

cheers,
Jerry

Yukon - that was not a real url, I'm not in the plumbing business. Didn't want my real url out there.

Mkt Coach

I really do appreciate your advice and love the idea using a dynamic widget.

Keywords is key and I'll work on that.

Thanks again!

Jerry

yes got to try names of big cites that there near also in your meta tags the names in synomins then need to start a drip blog on a spin cycle 2days or 5 days then increese it give them to difernt urls but make them pay for that work / hey i need to learn how to build landing page were do i go /email me @olsrace@gmail.com asap frank hey i want to start a usa leed site for contractors want to jv it on this