Competiting In the Small Business SEO Market
-
I deal with primarily small businesses in the construction and maintenance industries and I'm looking for some advice. Traditionally in these categories you find absolutely awful websites with the below attributes, all ranking 1-5 in the SERPs.
- Weak/Limited content
- No blog
- Awful title tags
- Minimal backlinks
- Poor on-site optimization
- Ect.
In most cases I am going to assume that these sites have been indexed for the last ten years, and that is why they are retaining such high rankings. My issue is trying to compete with them!
So far I have worked to have my client's website submitted to and accepted by all of their competitor's backlinking site (which didn't take as long as you might think). I've also listed my client in several of the top paying and free directories (dmoz, joe ant, ect.) and still I see limited results. Lastly and most annoyingly my clients website, according to SEOmoz is currently leading the domain authority race in every category.
Does anyone have a suggestion as to what is going on.
-
Depending on the type of listing, well optimised Places listings could help significantly, particularly if you can get your client to work with their clients to post reviews on the listings.
In almost all cases where we've actively engaged the client, more reviews and high rated reviews helps us easily outrank competitors - a single review where there was none before often gets our Places listing on the first page of serps for some of our target keywords.
-
Try these tips too:
-Ask for video testimonials from your client's customers
-Add industry trends, studies and analysis and make sure you email a relevant group of people letting them know that you have this study in place.
-Build twitter/facebook streams and invite your client's customers.
-Do some tight PPC based on exact matches and pin pointed geographical targeting. That will tell you what opprtunities you maybe missing
-
Do some more keyword research and also ask your friends for search suggestions by building user scenarios. Explain your client's product/service to them and get from them what they might be typing on Google/search engines. Do a research on whether your same set of competitors appear on that set and its related set of keywords or not.
-
Update your client's user base with newsletters which are actually useful to them.
-
-
Hi Saibose,
Thanks for your response! I thought I'd give you some more information as to what has worked and what hasn't.
- So far I've submitted to every niche directory that is available which quickly increased my websites domain authority (As I metioned in my last post it has given me the top domain authority vs my 5 main competitors)
- I've also submitted to my list of the top 10 Canadian directories, hotfrog is included in the mix.
- I've commented on industry specific blogs, although they tend to be few and far between. Also, all of them thus far have been nofollow.
- I've created a blog page, writing content with keyword rich title tags. This has been extremely effective for generating postitive search engine results.
- I've also personally emailed some of the authority websites in my clients industry which hasn't had much success.
I plan on writing a case study on this in the near future as I think it's an excellent example of feeding on the scraps.
Anyway thanks again for commenting, if you have anymore feedback I'm all ears.
-
If you are competing in the local space, you might consider enrolling into local directories, Google places and ask people to write reviews on them. Company directories like hotfrog could be beneficial to you as well.
Sadly, domain age is still a factor in ranking and age old websites tend to rank better due to ranking history in Google.
Construction agencies have mocks, build ups and all kinds of work models which they can showcase. That is something you can identify and do well on.
Also, construction niche is a very less explored niche where you do not find local blogs catering specifically to that niche. It would be a good idea to start a blog giving advice, tips and all.
At the end of the day its all about engagement and I am sure that one day, you will be able to make it through to the top.
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
-
Keyword SEO
Hi everyone! I am pretty new to SEO so all the help would be great. Does every webpage on our website need a focus keyword for example like tructiepbongda Just to note that I am using Yoast on Wordpress. Many thanks,
Technical SEO | | yenu0 -
Express js and SEO?
Hi fellow Mozzers, I have been tasked with providing some SEO recommendations for a website that is to be built using express.js and Angular. I wondered whether anyone has had any experience in such a framework? On checking a website built in this and viewing as a GoogleBot etc using the following tools it appears as though most of the content is invisible: http://www.webconfs.com/search-engine-spider-simulator.php http://www.browseo.net/ Obviously this is a huge issue and wonder if there are any workarounds, or reccomendations to assist (even if means moving away from this - would love to hear about it)
Technical SEO | | musthavemarketing2 -
SEO of Social Media Pages
I have noticed something odd about how Google ranks social media pages, and was hoping someone would have a good explanation. When I search for a particular name in Google, the first two results are Twitter pages of two people who share the same name. #1 is an older account with more Tweets, but it has fewer followers, no external backlinks, and the URL is unrelated to the name #2 is a newer account, but it has more followers, a few external backlinks, and the name itself is in the URL. It has fewer overall Tweets, but has Tweeted more frequently over the past several months. #2 is also happens to be in the same City as I am. Given my understanding of Google's ranking factors, I would not have expected #1 to outrank #2. In fact, I would not have expected #1 to even be on the first page. What could be causing #1 to rank so highly? Does it make sense that the age of the account or the number of Tweets would affect SEO at all? Really, I am just trying to understand what are the main factors that determine the ranking of social media profile pages. Thanks
Technical SEO | | timsegraves0 -
Is all in one seo getting rid of my google authorship?
is all in one seo getting rid of my google authorship? I had it before and after installing All in One it is not coming up anymore. I have nothing in the google plus field of the main All in one settings, and I have it inserted in my user->your profile. When I view page source it is there. But it does not show up in the search, see: https://www.google.com/search?q=chicago+nightlife+superstar It even works in the rich snippet tester: http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.howlatthemoon.com%2Fdueling_piano_bar%2Fchicago-nightlife-superstar%2F&html= Also my title has changed. It is correct in the tester but not in Google. Please help!!!
Technical SEO | | howlusa0 -
Any recommendations for small businesses
I'm currently helping a bunch of small business owners with using internet marketing SEO etc. A couple of them are just starting out and cant afford to pay for someone to build the site for them etc. If someone wants to use one of these Free / cheap websites (live vistaprint, 123 reg, Moonfruit, etc), which one would you recommend? Are any any better and giving the foundations to build some decent rankings on?I Do the ones where you drag and drop to build the site normally create a flash site? Has anyone done a study on which ones work best? Any recommendations would be appreciated. Ant
Technical SEO | | Ant710 -
The best way to organize a gallery for SEO?
I need to redo the following gallery
Technical SEO | | UnderRugSwept
http://goo.gl/PFvjE
because besides the fact that it looks ugly, it's an SEO mess. Since all the pages are comprised of images, and the only text is the navigation, I'm getting duplicate content issues. I tried adding a little paragraph of text on some of the pages, but this thing needs a total revamp. My main question is this: is that menu being repeated on all the pages really a good thing? What good is it to, say, on the fire patches page, to have a menu that includes all these keywords for sports patches? Would it be better to just have a main gallery page that lists the main patch types: applique, motorcycle, Scouting, ect, and then once you get to that page, list all the different sub categories?0 -
Linking to related business?
If your working with a local business, is it a good idea to reach out to similar businesses in other states and ask for a link? Example: I own a paint shop in Minnesota, and I reach out to a paint shop in California to see if we want to link to each others site to help our SEO. Because we aren’t in competition with each other wouldn’t this help us both?
Technical SEO | | marker-3115280 -
Thesis Vs Yoast Wordpress SEO Plugin
Hi All. I've noticed some issues between the thesis themes and Yoast's plugin, namely, thesis doesn't recognise Yoast's plugin in for title tag and meta description. Is there a way to overide this?
Technical SEO | | PerchDigital0