I will post as much helpful information here as I can. I will include many helpful tidbits that can also be used or applied to many other internet business's and social media types.
Topics to include basic Search Engine Optimization, social media, examples of actual code, on page and off page SEO, and much more.
I currently own and operate over 20 successful websites most of which are on the first page of Google for multiple keyword searches.
One of my main sites http://www.professionalfleet.com is on the first page for over 17 different keywords! These sites have maintained these positions for almost 2 years now. I currently have my Grape Vine site on the first page for multiple keywords as well and it took me only a few weeks to accomplish and is a progress in the works.
Anyone who reaches the first page of Google for their respective category knows the amount of money that can be and is received from that first page ranking. My primary business receives an incredible average of $30k a month in sales volume that is generated directly from the internet!!!
Researched and written by Sam Postema, Professional Fleet Services Lansing, MI 48912
Here is a general outline of how to proceed with strategic website development and search engine optimization, further referred to as SEO, and keyword relevance.
Everyone wants to be on the first page of a search engine. Everyone knows that the amount of money to be made by showing up on the first page is phenomenal. I have read 60% of people do not search past the first page when they do a search! Companies and business's alike are paying thousands of dollars monthly and annually to be listed on the first page. You have 2 choices- pay per click or SEO and show up in the organic search results FREE.
60% of people who search click on your local maps or local directories to find you.
It is so important to show up in the top 10 of your local search directory.(top left corner of search engine) 20-30% of visitors will click on organic list( the list under the local directory) 10-20% click on paid for click searches that you are paying for!
You first have to start off with a plan for your site. How many hours will you commit to this project daily? Do you need a local, state wide, national or international website or a combination of two? Your approach for each of these is very different.
Write out a plan just as if you were writing a business plan for a bank or an investor for a physical business because your virtual business is just an extension of a physical one.
Do a search for the program called WEBCEO, it is free and 90% of it is open for use without having to pay for it. I have the paid version and love it so much I continue to pay for it on an anual basis. All other seo programs out there are junk, a scam and a waste of money. Until I find one other than WEBCEO I will continue to stand behind this statement. I have wasted many thousands of dollars on other programs that were junk.
Download it and get familiar with it, you will use this every day and then weekly for rest of your life if you want to thrive on the internet. Once you have mastered this program I can put you in touch with some of the more advanced systems out there if you would like.
Ok guys here is what I discovered about adding your own meta tags and keywords to the site.
You can not add them the way I initially did. What happens is you get 2 sets of meta tags! I don't know what Google will do with them. Never tried that before. Didn't seem to hurt my site any but any ways. Our site has 2-4 ways to change content on the home page!
Do not add the meta tags this way... sign into support side of site, select home page, select edit link, select box to right, grab corner and drag towards bottom of your screen to open box, find and add meta tags. Use this only when editing your upper portion of the home page.
Do add them this way sign into support side of site, select go to admin panel, select edit options, select "site" from the box on the right and then select "edit settings" Here you can change and edit and add any and all keywords, meta tags, meta titles, meta description, site tittle, ect.
Head, Title, Meta, Tags, Keywords, Content, Meta Description Bold, Placement, Writing, and Pictures these are all topics that we will cover.
Get familiar with them, you are going to see and hear them over and over again!
Meta Tags
I am going to post my meta descriptions that I use. I would recommend staying close but substituting your city in place of mine and also you can use your own creativity or personality if you choose. Otherwise copy away!
Meta Keyword
meta name="keywords" content=" lansing community, lansing jobs, lansing events, lansing news, michigan classifieds, classifieds, lansing michigan news, grapevine community, Lansing entertainment, jobs in lansing
Alright you have now arrived at the precious keywords
you need to include in your site so you can be found.
Write down all of them.
You will find some sites have 5-10 others mayhave 100.
On average only 25 will be searched or used maybe
even less.
They are no longer used by search engines to rank you
they are only used for SEO purposes
Next I would search each of the keywords on different
Start placing those keywords in the Site Title,keywords, and description positions.
Bold keywords-
have been found to rank higher than un bolded keywords (the actual text its self) (auto repair) vs. (auto repair) use whenever possiblebut do not over do it or it will become a nuisance and a deterrent for thereader. I have found dark back ground web pages tend to work best the bolding does not show up as much but the bots can pick up on it no problem.
The use of underlined keywords or italicized keywords also
helps. This is done throughout the website within the content
and wording of the website.
Site Title and Page Titles.
This is what is displayed at the top of your web browser when opened up. It also gives Google an idea of what your site is all about. Without this and the other Meta Tags you stand no chance of showing up on the first page of any search results!
Use keywords throughout the titles and they should be an accurate description of what the website, webpage or paragraph is about.
Site Title- Lansing Events | Lansing Classifieds | Lansing News | Jobs In Lansing MI
This is the few lines that show up under your title on search engines
You will need to do the same thing here. Write up a short paragraph that is to the point and full of keywords. I have found usually 1-3 partial sentences seem to show up. I currently am working on this right now. I have noticed Google will show a partial phrase of first sentence then a random sentence from your content further down. Make a note of exactly what it is that shows up under your title line for the description. Locate those phrases on your web page and tweak them so they are keyword dense in those locations thus loading the description full of keywords which otherwise would not have been there! Do not over do it can or can count against you.
Meta Description- Lansing Grapevine is a Lansing community that connects you with the Lansing events, Lansing jobs, Lansing classifieds, business listings, Lansing Entertainment, Lansing latest news and much more
Pictures
Yahoo, Bing and other search engines will use pictures,
video, RSS feeds, ect to determine relative content.
Make sure you correctly name these files. Name them and
describe them so that they also will be named after your
keywords and key phrases.
Here is an example of how to correctly tag an image
Remember to describe the picture or alt tag or image as if
you were describing it to blind person and use
relative keywords in the description. Keep it short and
sweet.
Some of the search engines rely heavily on this source of
text to rank you on their sites. Never use Java Script if at all
possible. Java loads slow as well as it is not considered
text so it will not be searched by the robots or cell phones.
Most photo software or Photobucket.com, Grape Vine. will allow you to name the photos before saving them. Facebook does the same thing. This will save you time and the need to know how to correctly tag them. These sites or programs will do it for you. Then you can post them to your sites.
Remember to always copy all your code and paste it into note pad or text document. This is in case you screw something up you can always go back and fix it with the original copy by pasting it into the page again.
Now copy and paste this code into another text document so you can edit it. You will need to change it to match your Grape Vine community. So where ever it says "Lansing" you need to replace that with your location.
Hope this helps everyone and for those who are not Grapevine owners. Pay attention and you will get the basics of how to duplicate this for any business type.
Links are so important that nothing else we do to our websites even compares to the importance of this. We need back links to our site.
Hundreds and even thousands of them. Links are when either someone list your website address on their website or in an article, newsletter, blog post, forum post, Facebook post, Tweet, advertisement, video, banner, picture, text link or whatever and when someone clicks on it, it goes back to your website.
The more you have the higher you will rank on the Search engines such as Google. This is how you truly will reach the first page of Google for the keywords you choose to show up for and stay there.
You also want links to multiple pages on your website so Google will know many of your pages are worth listing not just your homepage.
Now here is where it gets a little complicated the link that links back to your site also if at all possible needs to have what is called "anchor text" in it.
Example normal hyper text link to my site would be: http://www.lansinggrapevine.com
This is the big secret that you will pay thousands of dollars for, here it comes.
If you want to place on the first page of any search engine for a specific keyword or phrase, all you have to do is have more links than your competition with the anchor text of the keyword for which you want to rank on the first page.
And if you want to place on the first page for multiple keywords you have to have multiple keywords in your anchor text links.
Example: Grapevine sites could rank for these keyword searches local events, classifieds, jobs or employment, entertainment, and/or news.
Now it becomes even trickier if it was that easy everyone would do that right!
1.) You need links from other websites or blogs, forums articles, ect. that are of importance or have higher page rank score than you.
2.) You need links from sites that are relevant or similar to what your site is about 3.) You need an anchor text link with a keyword or phrase that links back to your site.
4.) The fewer the links on that website page the better the link is for you
The thing to remember here is no matter what Google does to change their algorithms the more links you have the more stable your website will be and the less likely it is to be in jeapordy of loosing first page status. So build as many links as you can but make sure they are from good credible sources.
Here are a few really good software programs I use to track my sites, build good links and stay on top of thins. They are not very expensive and all serve a purpose in what I do with my sites. I have checked out hundreds of programs and 99.9% are a scam and worthless to you. These are the good ones I pay for!!
HTTP//:WWW.SHEERSEO.COM
So to wrap this lesson up you need to always post a link to your website whenever you post a blog, article, Facebook post, tweet, business directory listings, search engines ect. ect. and don't be afraid to link to other pages on your site. Trade links with as many websites as humanly or "computer programly" as possible. Try to find like websites to trade with. After all we are all doing this for the same common good of the community.
We as Grapevine owners are in a unique position to be able to trade links amongst each other thus creating a very strong linking structure that no one else can duplicate!!
To get hundreds or even tens of thousands of links like I have done for my www.professionalfleet.com or www.lansinggrapevine.com it takes time, patience, persistance and money.
You can get links from social network sites, video sites, article sites, directory sites, search engines, blogs, websites and many more I can't even think of right now.
I will give you some good information as to where and how to achieve this with the best results and least amount of wasted time and money.
I had to learn this the hard way over the past few years through trail and error.
The fast way.....
I have a guy who I have used and for around $1000.00 he can get you thousands of solid high end links to every site you can dream of. He was able to do for me in a few weeks what it took me 2 years to do 5-6 hours a day which equals thousands of hours, many of which wasted on worthless links that did me no good.
His program is a 6-12 month program that will give you about a 90% chance of being on the first page of Google in a few days or weeks depending on how competetive the keywords you are trying to rank for.
Make sure you check the option to have him set up unique accounts and passwords for all of your accounts. He will send you a regular progress report with all the links and information he has entered for you.
99% of the people out there offering this service are scammers and will do nothing for you.
Contact me for his information.
The slow and steady way...
The slow and steady way...
Always leave a link back to one or more pages of your website whenever possible if you are posting something on the internet.
Use anchor text links whenever possible.
Become more involved within the online community by commenting on blogs, writing artciles, posting on social network sites, uploading video or photos and anything else constructive that is going to move your website forward.
Local Business Search Directories AKA Google Places!
MAKE SURE YOU CLAIM YOUR BUSINESS ON ALL MAJOR SEARCH ENGINES AND FILL OUT THE PROFILES COMPLETELY.
If your site is not listed you will need to submit it. Once submitted you then need to claim your listing in many instances. I WOULD ONLY DO THIS FOR THE HIGH RANKING ONES.
ADD PICTURES TO ALL OF THEM AND ADD VIDEOS AND WEB LINKS TO ALL IF YOU HAVE THEM ALSO ADD A COUPON IF POSSIBLE, RANKS VERY HIGH ON SERCH ENGINES.
Below is a phenomenal website full of the top ranked directories to submit your business to.
http://www.wordsinarow.com/wheretogo.html
Or for a small fee I can save you 2 years worth of work and thousands of hours of back breaking labor!!
Popular Packages
SEO Starter Package
Keyword Promoter Package
Keyword Research
4000 Directory Submissions
1200 Unique Social Bookmarking
300 Article Marketing
200 Press Release Submissions
DMOZ Submission
Squidoo & Hubpage
1200 Regular Social Bookmarking
3x300 Article Marketing
200 Press Release Submissions
Completion Time: ~4 Months
Completion Time: 1.5 Month(s)
Local Search Results
When someone searches for ‘Kalamazoo Pizza' Google and Yahoo! are going to display at the top left of the page a list of local pizza businesses. From my experience 40 - 50% of the clicks on that page will be in the ‘Local Business Listings' section. The Paid Ads on the right side of the page will get 20 – 30% of the page clicks. The Organic search results shown below the Local Business Listings will also get about 20 – 30% of the clicks.
For companies selling local goods and services it is critical to be listed on the first page of the ‘Local Business Listings' for the keywords consumers use to search for your good or service. My previous articles explains the basics of how to get into the Top 10 results shown on the first page.
If you do not get listed in the Top 10 results you may want to consider starting a Google and/or Yahoo! paid advertising program"
Local Business Search Directories AKA Google Places!
These are the most important place for your business to be listed on the internet. This applies to any business that has a physical address or wants to be percieved as having a physical address. Also if you are selling any goods or services you must be listed here.
Effective Local Business Landing Pages
What helps customers find your location, is useful for the search engines as well.
1.Optimized Title Tags – Business Name + Service Type, City, Province/State' | Keyword 1 & Keyword 2. Eg: ‘Joe's Bakery, Quality Baked Goods, Muskegon, MI | The Best Wedding Cakes and Twinkies in Muskegon'.
2.H1 & H2 Tags – Use header tags that reflect your full business name and service type. Eg: ‘ Joe's Bakery, Muskegon, MI',
3.Full Business Address – Include this in a easy to use hCard microformat. hCard may help the search engines separate address information such as business name, street address, locality, and postal/zip codes. Interested on how to create an address in hcard? Try the handy hCard generator.
4.Regional/Local Phone Number – Local phone numbers build trust – both from customers, and from search engines. Often, businesses such as plumbers only have one service location but multiple local phone numbers to gain trust from small town customers, which they then forward to a singular call centre. ALWAYS use a local phone number on each landing page in the format (123) 345-6789.
5.Services Offered & Business Hours – Services often differ from location to location based as do business hours. Save your customers time and add to your body content by adding this valuable information.
6.Embed Google Maps on your Landing Page – This is imperative to include on your landing page. Not only will it provide an interactive way for a customer to map their way to your location, it will also count towards a better ranking in the Google local ten-pack listings.
7.Include Driving Directions Anyways – Unless your customers are relatively savvy with the concept of using Google Maps to get driving directions to your location, you're best off by providing a brief paragraph of directions from the NSEW (North, South, East, West) end of your city.
8.Single Line Business Address in Footer – Having your address in the format ‘Business Name + Service, Street Address, City, Province/State, Country' can provide an easy format for search engines to pick up on your address.
9.Meta Tag Descriptions with Local Address + Phone Number – This one's self-explanatory. If you've got an additional phone tracking number handy, you can include the spare phone number in your meta tags to see if customers would rather call you via seeing the search results, or prefer to click on the results and view your landing page. This tactic is also specially useful for folks that use Skype (which makes phone numbers clickable) and on the iPhone.
10.URL Naming Structure – Last but not least, it's important to include keywords in your url. Separate keywords by using hyphen's and only include your most important keywords minus your business name, unless you have a highly recognized brand: Eg: domain.com/muskegon-grand_haven-spring_lake-michigan-bakery.html
How do you get to the top of the Local Business Results List?
Example:
You have to have a pizza business with a Grand Rapids Michigan address.
The business has to have a business telephone number.
The business has to be listed in one of the major yellow page directories. Preferrably SuperPages.com.
The yellow page directory listing has to be in the ‘Pizza' section.
A website for your pizza business with the name, address, and telephone exactly matching the yellow page listing is a plus.
A business location that is close to the post office for the zip code your pizza business is located in is a plus.
A business listing in a number of online Michigan business directories is a plus.
A business listing in CitySearch.com, JudysBook.com, and InsiderPages.com is a plus.
Taking control of the Google Local Business Listing Account and adding additional business information such as hours of operation, credit cards accepted, specials, and other things of interest is a plus.
Customers that positively ‘Review' your pizza business in Google, Judys Book, City Search, etc. is a plus.
For most small business the key question is; How do I get my business listed in the top 10 results for my targeted keywords in Google ‘Local Business Results'?
To answer that question you have tokeep in mind Google's objective in creating the ‘Local Business Results'section. They want to provide high quality totally reliable information for the keyword search ‘Grand Rapids Michigan Dentist' or ‘Kentwood Michigan Attorney'.They know this is a search for local goods and services.
Google has never published how they create the ‘Local Business Results'. However, by studying a large number of listings over time it is not hard to figure out most of what goes into the ranking algorithm.
Here is our best guess
For the Local Business Results for ‘Grand Rapids Michigan Dentist' Google first takes all ofthe Dentist they have indexed from the website SuperPages.com. This is the online listing of all of the yellow page business listings. If your business has a business telephone number your business should be listed in the correct business classification. Google views this as a trusted source.
Next, Google includes all of the Dentist websites indexed their search database with a Grand Rapids Michigan address and telephone number.
Next, Google includes all of the Dentist websites indexed their search datable from other local business directories such as;
Local.com
HelloMetro.com
CitySearch.com
Truelocal.com
InsiderPages.com
YellowPages.com
YP.com
Yelp.com
From this list of sites Google then begin the ranking process. First, the algorithm checks to make sure the business address and telephone numbers of the included businesses match.
Only those that match the SuperPages.com and Axciom data are included.
Next, they sort the results by proximity to the primary zip code Post Office. The closer your business is to the Post Office the higher the ranking. They add in some additional informationin the listed results but it is unclear if that information affects the rankings.
Google wants to know you are a Dentistin Grand Rapids Michigan, what is your address, what is your telephone number,do you have a website, what other websites are linked to your website. Google's objective is to only list Dentists in Grand Rapids Michigan ranked by geographic location and other ‘trust' factors.
Some of this info obtained from
Bob Sorenson
Here is a link to more information on this subject http://marketing-madeeasy.com/
This will show all the links of importance to your site that are on the net.
Type in "www.yourdomainname.com" and you will get all mentions of your website address across the internet that Google considers important.
Type in site:www.yourdomainname.com and you will get all of the website pages Google indexes from your site that are considered of importance.
Type in just http://www.yourdomainname.com and you will get a list of all your back links Google considers important.
Why is all of this important?
1) Because you need to know if all your hard work is paying off.
2) If money you spent was well spent and not wasted on all of the SEO and SEM scammers and software junk they try and sell!
3) So you can out rank your competition and be able to know how far you will need to go based on their same link research you just performed on your own site.
4) So you can begin to show and prove value to your potential advertisers.
Your content is very important it needs to make sense, be interesting and most importantly have lots of key words in the correct locations.
The best advice I can give on this is to write up sentences phrases and paragraphs describing in detail what product, service, or social networking site you have. Once you have written a few paragraphs proof read them and have someone else proof them. Spelling is important but getting your point across and doing it well is by far the most difficult.
After completion go through and place your keywords throughout the entire paragraph. The first word or words should be keywords as well as towards the end if not the end of each sentence or paragraph. All other pages of your website need to be done in the same manner as your home page.
You will just repeat all steps above over for each page keeping some of the same keywords and adding or subtracting keywords based on what the page is about.
This is how you will get multiple pages to rank at the same time on the first page in return bumping your competition off the page!!
Lastly your page structure should be set up in this manner. Think as if you were writing a college term paper. Your provide a catchy title describing the page, followed by a paragraph title which describes the upcoming paragraph, which in turn is supported by a few sentences. Set up each page and each paragraph this way and your visitors will read your content as well as Google will love it.
Chinese blog spammers have become a major pain to deal with. The best way I have found to deal with them is to check your browse member status every few days. Go to your back office and view browse members section and check to see if you have any members who have signed up who are not from your state or country and change their status to banned. Also you can the take their email account and add it to your "Deny and Ban" section. Here are a few I would add asap. Ban all accounts ending in
Ban
Replacement
Added
Added By
@sogou.com
N/A
12/06/2010
Grapevine
@sina.cn
N/A
12/06/2010
Grapevine
@rocketmail.com
N/A
12/06/2010
Grapevine
@163.com
N/A
12/10/2010
Grapevine
@qq.com
N/A
12/22/2010
Grapevine
This should help or at least keep them at bay.
I would also recommend banning their IP address as well or they will just create another account with same IP.
Here is a better idea I think for combating the spammers.
I have found since I have done this I slowed them down some. Now they only use Gmail accounts and other american email accounts. I have found if you check your member section daily or every other day you can ban them before they start running test runs on your site and dumping a bunch of crap to your site. I also noticed they are adding crap to our events section since that is not approved first prior to posting.
I think we are going to have to lock down the entire site and make everything approved prior to posting.
The second option would be to not let individuals post anything to the site until they are approved in the first place and then given posting status approval. This would eliminate locking down the whole site and adding many hours of time to our already overloaded schedules.
An off the wall link building and marketing strategy
An off the wall idea for link building and building your business/website to your local international community .
A few months back I had the idea that I would start adding my business and website information to the Hispanic and Asian markets.
Why would I do that you might ask? Well after you have exhausted all other avenues for marketing your business and website to the English speaking population through internet directories, search engines, article sites, social media, video, ect. What would be the next option?
I started to think international.
All language speaking nations have their own search engines, directories, ect that are going to rank higher in their native language than in the English language. So I researched on Google to see what were the highest ranking, most popular Hispanic and Asian sites to list my business with.
Again why do this.
If you live in a community which has a large population from another country this can benefit you immensely. Think about college towns and the large number of college students. Densely populated neighborhoods or business communities that have high level of non English speaking employees. Many of them will do searches in their native language on native sites they are used to using not the English sites we use.
Once your on the site in the other language you can use Google translator to translate the entire page.
Once translated you can figure out where to add your business listing as you would do on any English site.
All you have to do is copy whatever you wrote up for other directories you submitted your site to in the past and convert them to the language of choice with Google translator. It does a pretty good job. I have had my wife read through some of my information that was converted to Spanish and she says it's pretty close.
Another reason to submit your site is just because your website is ranked on the first page of Google does not mean the same on these other sites.
Another thing to think about is you will have little to no competition on these sites because very few business owners have ever considered this marketing strategy.
I hope this will help some one as I know it has helped me!
Google has recently changed the local business search option for all users. I started to notice weird changes a month or so ago as they were working on it. My reviews kept dissapearing and sometimes my business was not being listed on the first page. I freaked out a few times last month while this was happening.
So why does this matter??
This is HUGE because the page is no longer laid out with the old style top ten local reults upper left corner followed by top 10 organic results followed by paid option to your right.
It seems as if they have taken a high bred version of the local search and organic results and blended them. They now show anywhere from 10-16 results on the page and they have linked it directly to your places page. This makes claiming your business even more important than it ever was.
Professional Fleet Lansing Auto Repair Shop Provides Auto Repair Services Lansing, MI, Imports including Audi, Volkswagen, Honda, Subaru, Toyota, ... www.professionalfleet.com/ - Cached - Similar You shared this
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It's free to use, very powerful and will do everything you need to get going and do all of your on page SEO. You can also by the paid version once you get going it is so worth it. You can submit your sites to directories, search engines, blogs. Track links and build links. Check on your competition and see what they are doing.
2. SheerSEO
This is a great service that watches all your back links, submits your site to some very good directories, shows you many of your backlinks and where they are. Shows you your rankings over time and much much more.
3. LinxBoss
Sometimes you just have to buy links, I haven't found a nicer interface or, more importantly, a better price for quality inbound links (hello, better Google ranking!)
4. SubmitEaze
You can submit to directories (still worth doing) using SheerSEO but if you want to hit ALL the directories, SubmitEaze is the way to go. Nice feature: Directory Detective–after you submit your site to a boatload of directories you can run a report and see how many submissions actually went through successfully.
Submitting your website to quality search engines, search directories and local search sites is important to receive organic traffic from them to your site.
Ideally you want 70-80% of your traffic to come from these unpaid sources.
Here is a link to a list of quality sites http://www.wordsinarow.com/wheretogo.html .
Most of the sites out there are a waste of time and will not link back to your site. Some of them are paid but they are worth it.
Here is another link to a few others I have on my website http://www.professionalfleet.com/lansing_auto_repair_review_links
I have often been asked how do I get my site to be ranked on the first page of Google, Yahoo and Bing?
The answer is why would you want to? Focus all your attention on Google and you will find that your Yahoo ranking will be the same or better. Bing, who cares.
Last month my search results for clicks to my site were as follows. Google 83% Yahoo 7% and Bing was less than 2% and I have multiple sites on the first page of all these search engines.
So again I say why would you want to focus on the weakest search engines when you can focus your hard earned money and valuable time on the one and only search engine that will make you more money than you could ever know at this time.
