carlsore

Hi Everyone,

I'll keep this one really short and simple. Here are 3 tips you can do for your website to help SEO your site in less then 30 minutes.

These tips assume you have a website already built along with access to make some very simple changes and the knowledge to do so. If you're not that far along yet save this for later.

#1. Submit Your Website To A Community Directory - Most communities have one or sometimes several community based websites, business directories etc. You want to have your business profile and website links on these sites. These backlinks are looked upon favorably by the major search engines and are especially useful for getting ranked locally. This is not a link for traffic, it's strictly for SEO purpose but you may pick up a small trickle of local traffic.

#2. Change Your Index/Homepage's Title Tag - All too often I'll surf onto a contractors website, or any other website for that matter and the dreaded "untitled" appears in the blue bar at the top of my browser... This is search engine suicide. The title of your page is one of the first items a spider looks at when crawling and appropriately indexing your website. It's critical you have two things in your title.

A: You want your location and areas you serve in the title.
B: You want what you do in the title.

eg...

Dallas Texas Remodeling Contractor | ABC Remodeling Co. | Serving ABC, 123, XYZ counties.
Los Angeles Plumbing Contractor | ABC Plumbing Co. | Serving ABC, 123, XYZ counties.

These are better keyword targeted titles as opposed to just your company name. Do this for your homepage most importantly, but also if you have the time on all of your sub-pages as well and title them appropriately for their content.

#3. Add Your Own Links Page - You just want 1 page with a listing of other contractors in your field, from non-competing areas of your state, country or worldwide for that matter.

Title the page "Construction Partners" or "Contracting Partners" etc... Whichever you like, just don't call it a "links page". You can place a link for this page somewhere at the very bottom of your homepage near your copyright or other info... Keep it out of the way.

So if you were a painting contractor in Alabama it would be beneficial for you to exchange links with other painting contractors outside of the areas you serve. These highly targeted backlinks will improve your search engine ranking faster and for longer terms then any other seo practice.

1. Go to Google.
2. Type in your trade "add url" or "add site" or "add link" (eg. Plumbing Contractor "add url")
3. This will pull up a list of websites related to your field that are actively or appear to be exchanging links.
4. Follow their instructions to swap links. (usually involves you adding their link to your "partners" page and then you email or fill out a form with your link details. (for your link details keep tip #2 regarding titles in your mind.
5. Rinse and Repeat with the next targeted website you find actively exchanging links.

The exchanging of highly targeted links is the most time consuming process of effective and concrete SEO but make no mistake it works and it works well. If you invested just 30 minutes a week into your SEO efforts using tip #3 you would see positive results in less then 6 weeks.

This is really grade #1 SEO information but it's a very confusing world when you want to start marketing on the Internet and these small nuggets are some of the most effective.

Hope this helps!

Carl Sorensen

MattCoops

Couple things.

You should definitely have good <title> tags that define what the page is about. This (and the <meta=description> tag) should be different for each html document within your directory.

About directories. Some will help. Others will hinder. If you have a bunch of miscelaneous directories linking to you it could hurt your search result rankings.

And having a bunch of links on any page lowers the "weight" of content on your page. Each outbound link you have you are giving away from your page. And let's say your page is all about roofing, and you have a few plumbing links it will hurt your page a bit, as far as keyword searches.

If you really want to start optimizing your contractor website, simply make your site more "useful" for your visitors.
If you don't have a Google Analytics account, get one. It's free, and an integral tool in tracking results of search marketing.
Then, in a month's time check your bounce rates for different pages. The higher it is the more effort you need to put into making it better.

If your site has great content, is organized, easy to navigate, looks good, and is informative, you will get links from people without having to ask them or set up "reciprocal link" deals. THAT is how you want to get links.

carlsore

Hence why I am saying use the smaller, more community oriented "local business directory" type sites. Contrary to what you say, these will NOT hinder your rankings. If you're going out and getting links from random link farms then yes... it's a waste of time.

No this is not entirely true Matt. Yes, having a gaggle of links from a homepage is going to hinder you. Part of the reason why a "partners" page is only linked to with ONE link via your homepage. This does nothing to lower the page rank, or ranking on the homepage. And you can create additional partner pages to keep a smaller # of outbound links on any one page.

FACT: Having highly targeted relevant backlinks from established websites will raise the "weight" and link popularity of your page.

If you're a roofer, and you are exchanging plumbing links then you didn't really read the instructions... If you're a roofing contractor and exchange links with a plumbing contractor you won't be hurting your SEO. It's a related link exchange... Not focused on plumbing, but contracting/construction.

If you are a plumbing contractor exchanging links with a video game site then yes... waste of your time.

Yeah... In a perfect fantasy world everyone will link to your contracting content... Ideally YES, you want to be generating ONE-WAY links but it's not that easy Matt and I'd love to see a site get ranked soley on it's content in a competitive niche without any backlinks.

You can have the best content in the world with zero backlinks and nobody will ever find you aside from totally obscure keyword phrases that likely won't lead to any sort of prospect.

Unique "Sticky" Content is GREAT but without the backlinks letting the intraweb know you even exist your website is a dead duck in the water.

The easiest way for one way links is to write and submit articles to some of the major directories. Not too many though as you'll get dinged for duplicate content.

You can disagree and I'll continue to keep doing it to garner #1 positions in Google. Without exchanging targeted relevant links you will NOT generate any link popularity to your site.

The days of exchanging links with 100's of irrelvant websites are long gone... However, exchanging targeted backlinks will NOT hurt nor hinder your website. By placing a link to your resources page on the BOTTOM of your site it's likely it will be visited by less then 1% of your visitors yet ALL of the search engine spiders will visit.

In fact... on my main website (over 1000 uniques a day) my "partners" page has been clicked on twice in the last 3 months and those were likely link partners checking on their links. This site has held the #1 ranking in Google and every other search engine for 100's of related keyword phrases for more then 4 years.

Thanks,

Carl Sorensen

CF Construction

This is a great post. I must admit, I was somewhat guilty of #2. I only had our site titled "CF Construction and Remodeling, Inc.". After reading your post though (obviously a huge oversight on my part), I've taken the appropriate steps and will have our web designer make these changes immediately. Kudos for the information.


I have a very good question that has to do with internet marketing:



Prior to us having www.generalcontractorinmiami.com (this is our main site) we had www.remodelinginmiamibeach.com and www.commercialremodelinginsouthflorida.com. Those 2 sites were designed to have content strictly pertaining to residential services on the remodelinginmiamibeach and commercial services with the other one. Since we completed our main site, we have forwarded the other 2 sites to this new one. Since the other 2 have very good rankings in many searches, we want to leave them around for that sole purpose. My question is, when we do updates from time to time to any of those 2 sites, as far as keywords, or meta tags, will the spider recognize that these 2 sites are different sites, acknowledging the content within these 2 sites, or since these 2 sites are now being forwarded to www.generalcontractorinmiami.com, will the spider automatically check for whatever content that this site has?


If you go to the other two sites now, you will no longer see how it looked once before because as I mentioned, the visitor now gets forwarded to our main site. So because of that, is the old content in these 2 sites non-existing to the spider because of the forwarding, or does it overlook the fact that these sites are being forwarded and still recognizes the original content these 2 sites have inside of them?



I hope that wasn't confusing, lol

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CF Construction and Remodeling, Inc.
"Your Vision Is Our Commitment"
General Contractor In Miami

Ivinni

Good stuff.

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Ivinni

...

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carlsore

If you've forwarded your domains to GeneralContractorInMiami then "where" is your old content being hosted and any new content you ad to these 2 sites? How is a visitor accessing it if the domains are forwarded elsewhere?

Search Engines (especially Google) would now likely view this as 3 seperate sites with the exact same content. Because the sites were indexed and already ranked, spiders were likely visiting these urls daily so if I were you I would have 3 seperate sites or pick one and go with it.

With your current setup they will likely index ONE of your urls and could even "de-index" the other two... Usually the page that was indexed first would be the one that would be indexed. So the traffic and any benefit they are bringing now will eventually dry up as the duplicates get dropped and no longer appear in searches.

It might have been better to keep those sites active especially if they were already generating some business for you... It would be more work but you'd also have 3 seperate funnels feeding potential clients into your sales process.

Carl Sorensen

carlsore

CFConstruction,

Now that I've had a closer look at your website you need to make some changes.

#1. The "loading" aspect of your website is the pits.... You'll lose most of your traffic before the page even loads.

#2. Your homepage has ZILCH for spiderable content. It's simply a flash menu and some images. You need quite a bit more written content about your business and the services you offer.

This is simple info... I am sure if you posted a site review here you could get a wealth of info.

Carl Sorensen

CF Construction

Calsore, I have done so in the Technology forum and many of the feedback I've received (one being the load time) is being worked on at the moment. As I indicated, I am guilty of the second point you touched on in your initial post, which that's being worked on as well at the moment.


If there is further feedback/input you want to give based on what you see, please, feel free to throw in your $.02. It'll greatly be appreciated.

__________________
CF Construction and Remodeling, Inc.
"Your Vision Is Our Commitment"
General Contractor In Miami

tinner666

Thanks for the posts Carl. I learn something new every time. And make achange here and there to reflect it.

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Aiken Colon

Carl

How well do you think google is indexing the flash sites? I know 6 months ago, Adobe and Google got together and worked out the ability to index them. I know absolutly nothing about flash, and have wondered how you index something like that, if it is actually the case at all.

Thanks

JJ

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Aiken Colon

Throw press releases on top of that as well. I have done extremely well with well written PR's. Just make sure you submit them through a reputable source. Not some PR service you find on a message board doing free PR sites. Generally speaking it should be around $200 per release with 10 backlinks in the release.

JJ

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carlsore

Hi JJ,

That's a good question, and to be honest I don't know fully know the answer... I don't use flash on any of my personal sites and don't usually recommend it to clients either... For page accents it's okay and can add some dazzle to a site. But for providing the meat and potatoes content I like HTML docs for their ease of use and it's also something a client can easily edit on their own if they so wish.

Yes, press releases are a great way to generate one-way backlinks as well.

Carl

BreyerConstruct

Huh.

Any reputable references for PR companies & articles?

~Matt

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Aiken Colon

Marketwire is a good one for press releases. But you really have to make it a press release. Their standards are pretty high. My partner is amazing with them, I guess 15 years of crosswords paid off finally. If you want an example and/or his contact information pm me. Providing he doesn't get a million requests to write them, he wouldn't charge anything for members here to write one.

It will end up on msnbc, reuters, boston globe, denver post, yahoo finance, market times, ibt, google news, and others. Not to mention your local news sources will see it as well and they could pick up the story. Not likely but I know a guy that happened to, and his company ended up on the 6 o'clock news.

JJ

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Blower Door
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pcplumber

Your tips are great. After reading this, I put titles on all my pages.

Are there really Search Engine Rankings and indexes. I believe the key words and title are important, but I did several tests, with several web sites. I made web sites with absolutely no key words, no title, and had the same good (maybe great) results, by putting all the key words, only on the home page.

It appears, the web crawlers take a snapshot of the home page. When performing a search, the search engine seems to only look for the closest match to these words. The search engine does not seem to favor anything.

While this seems basic, this seems to be the only way I see searches work.

For a search, type 'plumber' and my company may be buried below a million search results.

Type in 'plumber Los Angeles' and my company may be buried below 10,000 search results.

Type in 'convert floor to wall furnace', without any city, and without any company name, and my company is the very first in the search results, because all these words are on my home page. This makes it appear obvious that this is what the search engine favors. Also, I am betting no other plumber has these exact same words on his home page. So, I loaded my home page with hundreds of words and phrases. Maybe that is why everyone thinks my site is a mess. Maybe it really is.

Type in 'plumber floor furnace gardena' and my company is first in the search results, and this will work if I remove the key words and title.

Can you explain this and how rankings could be better?

curapa

I typed in what you specified and I couldn't find you on the first few pages let alone the top.

You were on the second page with 'plumber floor furnace gardena'.

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Ivinni

Relevancy and backlinks will make the rankings better. Don't know your site, but that's a good place to start.

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SquirrelNmoose

Current definition of keywords means keyword and phrases within your content. Major search engines have not supported the keyword meta tag since 2002 or before. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta_tag

The title will help search engines to verify content of the page. Example; home page has your industry, company name, etc. while your contact page would be titled contact business name, location etc.
You will come up as #1 on search the more specific your terms because the competition is less for those terms.
What matters is what people are actually searching for vs. how much competition for those set of words phrases.

Example; If I search for energy drink I get 4,850,000 results. So you would be in competition with 4.8 million websites for those terms.
If I narrow my search to energy drink green Minnesota I get 338,000 results. That narrows my competition for a number one ranking significantly. But now we need to know how many people are actually searching for those terms.
So you need to be creative when researching keyword popularity.
Keeping in mind people usually start their search with broad terms then narrow them if they don't find what they are looking for.
That will give you the most traffic for your chosen keywords.

Of course the other techniques, backlinks, content quality etc. are important for search engines also.

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pcplumber

I am almost 100% positive, there is no ranking system.

Type in 'convert floor to wall furnace' and search in Yahoo.com and MSN.com. Bestline is the very first search result.

Use Google and you I don't even know what page I am on, but add one more word, on my home page. Type in 'convert floor to wall furnace gardena' and Bestline is on the first page, the number 4, of the results.

If you add Los Angeles, instead of Gardena, Bestline is on the very top of the second page in Yahoo. In yahoo and MSN, Bestline is still the very first result.

The only reason Bestline comes up at the top is because these words are on my home page.

Type in 'bob and marc plumbing torrance wall furnace' Even in Yahoo, Bestline's search results comes before Bob and Marc Plumbing. Both companies work in Torrance, and both of us, work on wall furnaces.

In Yahoo and MSN, Bestline is the very #1 search result. In Yahoo, Bestline is the #1 search result after several internet yellow pages (or whatever you call them).

When you perform a search, you can click on the 'Cached' link in the search results and you will see the words you typed, highlighted, on the home page.