A challenge! What off-page strategies would you employ first when ranking a brand new small business website?
-
I'd love to hear what you guys do. I think the game has changed now in the era of Penguin. Gone are the days where you can build a few quick links and suddenly your new site is ranking fairly well.
Obviously, the first steps are to get the on page SEO right - titles, good keyword use, etc.
Eventually, the goal may be to build some content that will attract natural links. But, we all know that is going to take time.
So, here's the scenario:
You've got a new client with a website in a fairly non-competitive niche, say, a piano mover in Seattle. The site is indexed, with no external backlinks. You're happy with the current on page SEO. The site is currently ranking on page 3 for "Seattle Piano Mover". What would you do next?
-
I would also suggest claiming and tidying up the Google+ Local/Google Places entry for the business (or creating one if it does not exist) and ensure that the business is listed consistently in all the major directories in order that it is clear where they are and how to contact them.
Asking satisfied clients/customers for reviews or feedback, or pointing them in the general direction, can also help.
-
These are great! Thanks!
-
These might not work for piano movers but for small professional office here are some low-hanging fruits that I can think of for links.
- landlord (some brag about their tenants)
- chamber of commerce (often link to members, write blog post, become an officer for profile link)
- community directories (they feature local businesses, write blog post)
- professional associations (link to members, write blog post, become an officer for profile link)
- clients (write a blog post for them)
- suppliers (often link to local product vendors/customers or write blog post for them)
- professional schools (often link to successful grads, write blog post)
- license boards (link to licensees, write blog post)
- other local businesses with synergy (write blog post, become one of their "recommended")
- local newspapers (write article for online edition)
- local BBB (get in directory, write blog post)
- write for professional journal online edition
- local city government/organizations (directory, blogs, supporters, volunteers)
-
Good additional strategy is to purchase and 301 redirect an expired, aged domain (or several) that already has a few dozen authoritative domains linking to it, preferably a domain with history in the same niche.. this usually results in a nice boost - but it may take several weeks to take affect. Fire a few links at the expired domain to speed up the process.
-
He probably just needs a handful of links from local sources. Maybe local business associations, etc.
If it is very niche and local, you have very little work to do compared to a site that needs to rank for a competitive keyword nationally. But you already knew that!
-
Is this a test Marie .... or are you after advice
As for me, I'd kick back and pat myself on the back and say job done good ... Number 3 aint nowt to be sad about
I once did a site for a client, and offered basic SEO as part of the build, clearly stating that I would insure the site structure would be fine, proper use of heading tags, good meta description, the basic stuff.
Anyway, he said he would love to rank high for School Cleaning Ireland, the phrase itself was so niche, as soon as the new site was indexed, he ranked number 2 in Google.ie
The guy was over the moon with me ... Got three new jobs from referrals (just web build) ...
Anyway, the moral, I have not done a thing with his website in over 8 months, my job was just to build it for him, I have just checked Google.ie, and he now ranks number one for that very phrase, without an iota of content changing on his website, I know that for sure as it is a static HTML ...
Sometimes niche words need very little work at all
Regards
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Canonical - unexpected page ranking
We are getting good ranking for an unexpected page, rathewr than the one we were trying to get ranking for. Should we put a canonical on the 'unexpected page' to the page we would like to receive the ranking for - or do we risk losing the ranking? Any suggestions welcomed. Ian
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Substance-create0 -
Does having alot of pages with noindex and nofollow tags affect rankings?
We are an e-commerce marketplace at for alternative fashion and home decor. We have over 1000+ stores on the marketplace. Early this year, we switched the website from HTTP to HTTPS in March 2018 and also added noindex and nofollow tags to the store about page and store policies (mostly boilerplate content) Our traffic dropped by 45% and we have since not recovered. We have done I am wondering could these tags be affecting our rankings?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JimJ0 -
INTERNAL LINKS strategy on our website
Hi Moz-ers, Currently doing an audit of our website. I have two questions on links. How can I see the current state of my internal links? Also, how can I improve our internal links on the website? what is a good framework to follow what should I avoid Thanks, looking forward to learning more on Moz!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Eric_S
Eric0 -
Website No Longer Ranking In Google:
My website was on first page google couple of months ago, now nothing. Shows up in Bing page one. Some queries/pages still showing OK, but some not at all. Example "residential elevators illinois" found nowhere. http://www.accesselevator.net is the website. Have found 900 poor quality links and used disavow tool. Any further suggestions? Their Page Rank also went from a 3 to a 2. Implemented nofollow on all outgoing links. Need advice.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | trailblazerzz90 -
Branded Links : But not got any ranking..
Hi there. I'm SEO expert myself. I am building quality and authority backlinks with branded anchor text. My website has now over 1.5k backlinks with branded anchor text and generic keywords. But my website still not showing in SERPS with my targeted niche or anchor text. Do i need to build backlinks with exact match anchor text if yes then how much? Thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | globalitsoft0 -
Interesting PAGE RANK flow
I have a website with PR2 at the home page. In the top menu, i have a link to 4 different pages. All but one have PR1. The only difference is that the page that doesn't have the PR1, is a page where the content has been loaded using Ajax. This page says "Without qualify" Strange or logical?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Barbio0 -
How do I increase rankings when the indexed page is the homepage?
Hi Forum, This is a two-part question. The first is: "what may be the cause of some rank declines?" and the second is "how do I bring them back up when the indexed page is the homepage?" Over the last week I noticed some declines in several of my top keywords, many of which point to the site's homepage. The site itself is an eCommerce site, which had less visits last week than normal (holidays it seems, since the data jibes with key dates). Can a decline in traffic cause ranking declines? Any other ideas of where to look? Secondly, for those keywords that link to the homepage, how do we bring these back up since a homepage can't be optimized for every single keyword? We sell yoga products and can't have a homepage that is optimized for keywords like "yoga mat," "yoga blocks," "yoga pilates clothing," and several others, as these are our category pages' keywords. Any thoughts? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pano0 -
One Website - Local + National Ranking
If a client (e.g. a winery) wants to rank both nationally and locally, what are some best practices for doing this on one Website? So the goal is to: Rank nationally for their wines, wine varietals, etc.so they're found by restaurants, distributors, customers (could include national directories, content creation ,etc.) Rank locally for their tasting room and wines for people looking locally or looking at that specific region (this could also include include Google places, local directories, etc.). I'm wondering if the site would need to be subdivided (or "siloed") where one section is heavily focused on national and another is on regional? Also, for the home page, which focus would be most important (maybe national because it's harder)? Thanks a for any ideas! Tom
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DirectionSEO0