[Thomas the Rhymer]

This is a quick how-to guide to get yourself on the first page of google for a location dependent business.

After struggling to get my business on the first page of a localised Google search, I thought I'd share my experiences and give some tips so that other people in the same boat can get their business going faster and not struggle with an invisible website for months, like I did.

I am not an SEO expert! This is just what worked for me and I wish I had a list like this when I got started, it would have helped me immensely. I am now number 1 in a local google search for my service in my area, so I'm not sure what specifically worked in what I did, but it worked, so I'm hopeful it will work for you too.

This guide makes a couple of assumptions:
- You are location dependent (sorry all you travelling internet business types)
- You have relatively few competitors in your chosen area of operation (you are not aquaponics installer no 100 in the area)
- You are relatively niche, that Google will not confuse you with other business types
- I'm assuming you know how to get hosting and a wordpress site up. There are plenty of beginner friendly guides if you don't, so I'm not going to cover that. I guess any site software is fine but wordpress is the most beginner friendly for a startup business - it's simple enough to learn for yourself, or if you are unwilling to learn, there are plenty of people who can set up the site for you for a fee and then you can easily maintain it yourself or hire someone to maintain it from time to time.

STEP ONE - Get a search engine friendly name for your business

Choose a name for your business that contains the geographic location you want to service plus the actual service you provide. This makes your business an obvious choice for google searches when people search for a business in a specified area.

Random examples:
Houston aquaponics installers
New York plumbers (already taken, by the way)
London electricians (also already taken, by the way)

If your geographical location + service name is already taken, consider naming your business after a suburb that represents the centre of your service area/location or even a street.

Run your chosen names through Google just to make sure that the names are not taken yet. If all your possible names are already taken, you may be trying to get into an industry with too much competition.

STEP TWO - Make a site

Your site should consist of only one page.

At the very top of the page, should be a headline consisting of the name of your business, eg HOUSTON AQUAPONICS INSTALLERS

Just under your headline should be a short call to action/elevator pitch, and your contact details.

Then following the contact details you should give a short description of your services, in more detail than the elevator pitch.

Then below that, you write a long essay about what you do and how you do it and why you do it and what you charge and so forth.

Followed by an essay with some biographical details of yourself.

99% of people are never going to read your long essays on your website but you need it for Google to analyze and decide that you know what you are talking about. Also, 1% of people are only going to hire your services if they can read your story in detail, so you may as well rope them in. Most people are just going to read your call to action and see your contact details and decide then and there whether to call you. I've had calls for people asking for details which are already on the site but they are just too lazy to read.

I advise against making multiple pages, such as a blog page, a social media page, a contact page, etc. Google seems to rank one page with a lot of info more highly than a lot of little pages carrying the same info but spread apart. So stick everything on one page.

Make sure the website reads nicely on mobile phones. A lot of your website hits will be from people googling 'such-and-such business near me' on their phones. Make sure it's readable and a pleasure to scroll down on.

You also probably want to get someone else to proofread it.

STEP THREE - Use Google my Business

Use a google account (or make one, if you don't have one) and access and activate the Google my Business option. Register your business and your site on Google, and be sure to confirm the location either through a smart phone or through Google's postcard service.

Update your business profile with all the relevant info required, such as working hours, address, etc and most importantly make sure that Google my Business has a link to your website.

STEP FOUR - Run the cheapest Google Adwords campaign

Once you are registered on Google my Business (or at the very least are waiting for the Google postcard in the mail), log on to Google Adwords and run the cheapest possible campaign for your site. This is not to try to get clicks, but rather to force Google to prioritize the indexing of your site. Basically, it forces the Google engine to crawl through your website and learn it. Until Google does this, your website is basically invisible to Google. While Google does seem to run random searches, and will eventually find your website, running a Google Adwords campaign speeds up the process dramatically.

STEP FIVE - Update your email signature

Make an email signature on all your email accounts which mentions your business and has a link to your business page.

People are curious and your friends and family are likely to click on your website address just to see what's there. These idle clicks will likely be your first trickle of traffic to your website, and Google does seem to prioritize websites that are actually looked at, even if only by such idle clicks.

STEP SIX - Update your YouTube channel

Make a YouTube channel if you don't already have one, or if your current YouTube is not business appropriate. Make sure your website address is prominently displayed in your YouTube channel description.

Make a few simple slideshow videos using powerpoint discussing some aspects of your service offering. If you don't know how to do that, you can watch this guide:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiQr5efiW7o

STEP SEVEN - Update your LinkedIn

Make a LinkedIn profile if you haven't done so already (for good advice on how to make a good LinkedIn profile, see: thread-7895.html )

Update your Linkedin to have you as 'business owner of such-and-such' and be sure to put your business website's address prominently in your linkedin profile. Also throw in a link to your YouTube channel.

STEP EIGHT - Update your Twitter

Put your website address into your twitter account description. If you don't have a twitter account, make one and make about 10 innocent tweets, spread out over a few days/weeks, to make it look more like a real account. The tweets don't necessarily need to be about your business, unless you plan on twitter being part of your marketing strategy. For now, the twitter account exists more to convince Google you are a real person.

Also throw in a few tweets linking to your YouTube videos.

STEP NINE - Update your Facebook Profile

Put your website address into your facebook account details. (Make a facebook account for your business if you don't have facebook.)

Make your profile pic a business card pic with your website prominently displayed.

Make a few facebook posts about your business and a few posts linking to your YouTube videos.

STEP TEN - Make a Facebook business website

Basically this is a Facebook version of Google my Business, put more or less the same info here as in Google my Business and the most important part is that your website is prominently available. Make a few posts mentioning your website and give some info on the services you offer.

Also make a few posts linking to your YouTube videos.

STEP ELEVEN - Register on business forum

Register on a business forum that's focused on your region/country. Make a signature that mentions the name of your business and displays your business's website address. Then make a post in the introduction thread. Maybe even participate sometimes by sharing knowledge in the business forum - every post you make will be an extra link to your website.

STEP TWELVE - Mention your website any chance you get

Be proud of your business, and encourage people to visit your website. Have a card or business card with your website address on and give it to people and let them visit your website. Heck, maybe even make it easy for them and rather just take down their email address or number and just mail them a link to your site, you need all the clicks you can get going to your site, and you need it to look as organic as possible too (you don't want Google thinking that you are paying people to visit your site, that seems to downgrade your ranking).

STEP THIRTEEN - Check your ranking

Check your ranking by Googling yourself every week or so. You should see your site steadily climbing up the rankings. If not, make some facebook/twitter/YouTube posts, and ask people to visit your site.

I hope this simple guide helps someone on the forum. I welcome corrections and criticism to anything I've said. I'm still learning myself, so I welcome further input from the more seasoned forum members.

[roid]

How do you do this when you still hold a full time job? An employee cannot just list that he has another business on his profile.

[Thomas the Rhymer]

(12-26-2017 04:40 AM)roid Wrote:  

How do you do this when you still hold a full time job? An employee cannot just list that he has another business on his profile.

I'm guessing you could skip any steps that identify you (eg. the linkedin), create a generic business twitter, youtube and facebook account under your business or a fake name. Basically create a fake online persona to push your business forward.

By far the most important steps are the first 4, the rest is mostly link building and driving some sort of traffic to your site, so you could find other ways of doing that. You'll either have to make the website impersonal (i.e. skip the autobiographical details I suggested) or use a fake name.

Good luck!

[Thomas the Rhymer]

I got a PM that made me realise that I didn't explain the adwords step very clearly.

The idea is to run an adwords campaign for your site (no need to sell ads on your site) and to run it once-off.

The idea being that your site will go from being completely invisible to being visible to google (even though it may still only end up on page 50 of a google search).

You only need to do it once, basically to poke Google and to say, "I'm here!"

I got the adwords advice from a business podcast I listened to recently (I can't for the life of me remember which one it was) so maybe the advice is wrong, but it seemed to work for my site.

[The Beast1]

You forgot step 14, spam RVF

Great post and love it by the way.

[Ski pro]

Thanks for the info. Just registered my business on adwords and it's pretty user friendly. I could seem myself messing about looking for the most popular search terms for a while.

Pretty sure my competition aren't messing about searching for the best search terms on New Year's Day.

[TooFineAPoint]

Disagree about only creating 1 page on your site. If you do that, at least have a contact form that sends to a (2nd, hidden) success page.

Google checks out signals from users of websites. If they sit on your page for a decent amount of time, for instance. Or if they click through to multiple pages. As long as they click over to one other page, your bounce rate reduces (Google likes that signal).

Also make sure you assign an h1 tag to your headline (this tells Google that those are some of the most important words on the page).

Finally, make sure you add page title tags (that are very similar to your headline), and page description tags.

All the rest of the above info is good.

Here is a tip for Google My Business: make a simple review link so it is really easy to get your clients to leave reviews. Once you have a few 5 star reviews Google tends to bump you up higher on the results, at least on the map (they like local search signals).

To create a link, you’ll need to get the Place ID for your business. To get your Place ID:

Go to the Google Places API.
Enter your business information in the “Enter a location” field at the top of the map.
Click your business name in the list that appears.
Your Place ID will appear on the map, beneath your business name.
Add your Place ID to the following URL to create your link:

https://search.google.com/local/writerev...ace_id>


Oh, one other thing I almost forgot. You can start a free account at Google Search Console and connect it with your website (make sure you enter in every possible variation of the domain -- http://domain.com, http://www.domain.com, https://www.domain.com, and https://domain.com).

You can then put a free plugin on your site called Yoast (this will also make it easy for you to add the title and description tags I mentioned above).

Yoast can generate a sitemap, which you can then pop in to Search Console. This is the most effective way to have Google index your site (the help for rankings will be negligible, but it will allow you to skip that Adwords campaign step at least). Plus Search Console gives you great data on search results for your site.

[Thomas the Rhymer]

^^^

Great info, I hadn't heard of Google API nor Google Search Console before, thanks for bringing it up.

Annoyingly, if you don't deliver services at your business premises, you can't use Google API. So if you are a travelling service provider without a proper home base setup, this might lead to the awkward situation of people driving to your home under the mistaken impression that there is a business premises to step into. I'm not sure how commonly this happens, so maybe I'm being silly.

If I had known about Google Search Console I would have gone with that instead of Google Adwords. Only downside is that the Search Console requires some technical ability.

[TooFineAPoint]

Ah, right, I forgot how Google API was annoying if you don't list your address.

Here, if that is the case, use this tool instead: https://pleper.com/index.html?do=tools&sd...eview_link

- Enter your business name in the Autocomplete field, and then select it
- Wait for it to load your info, then click "Generate the awesome link"
- scroll down to find the long url for "In google search ( write review pop up )"

[Thomas the Rhymer]

I would like to add more steps. My mentors advised me to do the following and I have had positive results.

STEP FOURTEEN:

Make an add on craigslist or whatever is the most popular local equivalent you have (for me it was gumtree). Briefly describe your services and mention your website address in the body of the text.

This not only seemed to boost traffic to my site, but when someone googles my type of service in my city, they get my website AND the classifieds listing on the first page of the search results!

STEP FIFTEEN:

Embed your youtube videos on your website, preferably near the top of the web site so that those people that prefer not to read much can easily find the video.

This seemed to dramatically increase the youtube ranking of my videos. It seems a lot of customers prefer to engage with videos, rather than websites/blogs.

[TooFineAPoint]

More info (step by step) on making it easy for your customers to leave you positive reviews on Google:

https://business.websites.ca/get-google-reviews/

[roberto]

I came to RVF this morning looking for EXACTLY this. Thanks Thomas.

Have you anything to add regarding keywords in pages, titles, etc?

[Thomas the Rhymer]

(09-28-2018 05:50 AM)roberto Wrote:  

I came to RVF this morning looking for EXACTLY this. Thanks Thomas.

Have you anything to add regarding keywords in pages, titles, etc?

Besides making sure that my website clearly described my business in plain English and with a variety of search-friendly terms, I didn't try too hard to spam it with keywords. I'm sure there are other people on the forum who can perhaps weigh in with their opinions/knowledge.

[MajorStyles]

I use Fiverr quite a bit. If you're like me, you're swamped with work-related items and you don't have the time to research how to run an effective Google Adwords campaign. So you just pay somebody $5 to do it for you.

[Charmain7007]

(01-01-2018 09:04 PM)TooFineAPoint Wrote:  

Disagree about only creating 1 page on your site. If you do that, at least have a contact form that sends to a (2nd, hidden) success page.

Google checks out signals from users of websites. If they sit on your page for a decent amount of time, for instance. Or if they click through to multiple pages. As long as they click over to one other page, your bounce rate reduces (Google likes that signal).

Also make sure you assign an h1 tag to your headline (this tells Google that those are some of the most important words on the page).

Finally, make sure you add page title tags (that are very similar to your headline), and page description tags.

All the rest of the above info is good.

Here is a tip for Google My Business: make a simple review link so it is really easy to get your clients to leave reviews. Once you have a few 5 star reviews Google tends to bump you up higher on the results, at least on the map (they like local search signals).

To create a link, you’ll need to get the Place ID for your business. To get your Place ID:

Go to the Google Places API.
Enter your business information in the “Enter a location” field at the top of the map.
Click your business name in the list that appears.
Your Place ID will appear on the map, beneath your business name.
Add your Place ID to the following URL to create your link:

https://search.google.com/local/writerev...ace_id>


Oh, one other thing I almost forgot. You can start a free account at Google Search Console and connect it with your website (make sure you enter in every possible variation of the domain -- http://domain.com, http://www.domain.com, https://www.domain.com, and https://domain.com).

You can then put a free plugin on your site called Yoast (this will also make it easy for you to add the title and description tags I mentioned above).

Yoast can generate a sitemap, which you can then pop in to Search Console. This is the most effective way to have Google index your site (the help for rankings will be negligible, but it will allow you to skip that Adwords campaign step at least). Plus Search Console gives you great data on search results for your site.

Great points there. One of the first things I learned about SEO was knowing when to use h1 tags. Sometimes, it really is in the little things. Might I also suggest checking out alexa? It has a bunch of SEO resources and lets you keep an eye on page rank. Quite useful if one is just trying out a bunch of stuff to see what works.

[Agrippa]

I agree about the Adwords campaign. I started one last week after three weeks of little to no activity on my website. Since then I've gotten one client out of it and potentially a second one that I'll be meeting with tomorrow.

Adwords gave me a $100 credit after I spent my first $50. Since I've only accrued $92 in clicks, I'm up $8 right now. I set a max budget of clicks at $500. I think once I spend that I'll stop the campaign and evaluate where my search ranking is before I spend any more money on it.

[Thomas the Rhymer]

If you need a free and respectable extra link to your website, you can register your business on Tuugo.com.

Also, be sure to backlink, from your main website, to Youtube, Facebook, Linkedin and Tuugo and any other platform in your business ecosystem, so that you build up the SEO of all your associated sites as well, which then further improves the SEO of your main website.