Local SEO
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Im trying to rank well for a local search. im trying to rank for my city plus lawn care. Its not that competitive, because people in this field dont know about seo. Im trying to just rank well for it can someone give me suggestions to do that. Should i create blogs and use the comments to hyperlink to my page. Im doing research on my competition and seeing what backlinks they are using. and off page seo ideas would be great as well We have a great google places page same with yahoo. We are trying to rank for different city's i rank well for the city i live in and my address is in, but i dont rank that well for other cities. Even tho they are less competitive than mine competitive under 500k results for my keyword
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Hi John,
Considering I don't know where you are in terms of site development, I will offer some suggestions in general terms.
1. Do you keyword research to determine how your customers will find you. Include your city and/or state name in your searches. Build pages that your customers will find beneficial and optimize for those.
2. Use your city name and/or state in title tags and on page where appropriate.
3. Make sure you use your local area code, zip code, street address consistently in all your local directories and Google Places. Visit getlisted.org for directory submission ideas.
4. Put your address in the footer of your site.
5. A blog is a great idea for lawn seasonal lawn care tips. Take photos/videos of your work and post them on your site/blog to beef up content. Example: "Here's what we can do about chick weed starting to show during the winter months." - I called my lawn guy about it last week :).
6. Leverage social media (Facebook specifically) for connecting your customers and allowing your customers to share with friends.
7. I wouldn't have one picture on my site that was not a local picture. Name your files with localized tags and use proper alt tags.
8. Its okay to include surrounding communities in titles, meta descriptions and on-page etc. as Google will pick those up as well depending on the competition.
9. If you have relationships with local vendors ask them for a link.
10. Don't do more for your site than you can effectively manage. If you can't keep your site, blog, facebook page etc. fresh, don't do it. Scale it back, keep it simple and ALWAYS keep your customer's benefit the motivation for what you do.
Good luck!
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Set up all your site business listings on Google Places, yelp, bing business, etc.
That will help a lot.
And if its not all that competitive as you say than basic on page optimization should do the trick . If it takes moer than link build. I suggest guest blogging
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