Goals

At the start of any project I am involved in, I list my goals for the project and sketch out a rough timeline. For now, let’s focus on goals. In this project, we want to get a local business organically recognized on the web, without paid clicks.  What are our goals?

1. Get listed in Google Local business search results.
2. Rank for local keywords based on location and niche.
3. Get listed in other local business directories.
4. Direct local traffic to fill out a form, resulting in a quality lead that can be sold to your clients or used for yourself.

5) Analyze the data to calculate estimated clicks and conversions per day or week, giving yourself or your client a clear view of the conversion rate and how many conversions to expect per week.

Let me tell you that businesses will be more interested in number 5 than the others, but it is the others that help get you to 5.

Getting Started

Let’s get right to it. We will be using Jack’s Beauty Salon in Pennsylvania as our example throughout this series. Jack’s is a made up business and not one of my clients or sites.

1) Choosing a Domain. Note that this step is needed only if your client does not currently have a site or you are getting a new site up. If your client already has a domain, it still might be a good idea to get another one and rank both sites. As long as both sites lead to the main money site, you are good. When picking a domain, I usually go for the main keyword that I want to rank for and make sure that is in the domain.  So, if we are aiming to rank a beauty salon in PA, let’s call our domain Beautysalonpa.com.

2) Design Layout. Your site design is key, and I am not talking about graphics or logos here, even though those can also be important. What I am talking about right now is your layout. You have to think about what you want to accomplish with the site. We are looking for leads, plain and simple. That is why the form must be placed where it will not be missed and can be easily filled out. I have one layout that works well for quite a few local sites and I tweak it to use on lots of projects. The layout can be done in Wordpress or basic HTML. It is a matter of whatever you are comfortable with updating.

3) Design Art. For the most part, this one is up to you. You have the choice to do it yourself, outsource it, or download a Wordpress theme. The thing to remember is that layout dictates design, not the other way around. Keep in mind what is important, which is usability and a natural visual progression. Do not go messing around and put white text on a black background. Keep it simple.

4) Content. Content is king, right? In my book it is, along with links. In this series, we are talking about Jack’s Beauty Salon in PA. For local businesses, reviews make great content, but before we use reviews as content we should get some general information up about beauty salons in PA. I usually outsource this step, so contact me if you are looking for some good content writers, because there are plenty out there. Start out with 5 posts. When giving instructions to the writer, be sure to include:

• Title
• 1 Main keyword
• 4 Secondary keywords
• 500 words

You can Use the Google Keyword Tool to search for your keywords. Include at least one keyword that you are trying to rank for in each post title. We will use these keywords later as anchor links to these posts, so we must remember everything we are doing. It is crucial that you stay organized. You can do anything if you are organized. I use an Excel sheet to remember this information, with the following as column headers:

• Post Title
• Keyword
• Traffic
• Current Rank for Main Keyword
• Incoming Links for Main Keyword
• Outgoing Links
• Leads Article Generated

This will help us keep up with what is happening in our quest to rank for these keywords. I touched on links in this step only because it is needed for the Excel sheet. I cannot repeat how important it is to stay up to date on the sheet. If we do not keep up with the sheet, it will be useless. A little trick that works well is to set an alarm on your phone for once a week to remind you to update your sheet. The sheet will also come in handy for your client once we get to reporting.

5) Links. SEO gurus will tell you that this is the single most important part of optimizing. Your budget and goals will dictate how much work you will have to put into this. For the less competitive keywords, it will take much less work and links to get you ranked. I will be supplying you with a few ways to get some nice starting links, and talk about a service I have used before, with no affiliate link of course. An older post I wrote on where to find links can be found here. Here is a quick list of link sources as well:
i) Web 2.0 Directories (Squidoo, Hubpages, etc.): These are free ways to submit articles and can be linked to your site. That is a double bonus. When linking to your post, remember to use your main keyword as your anchor text. You can either post an article from your site or a unique one from your content writer.

ii) Blog Commenting: Make a list of dofollow blogs and start leaving comments, using your main keyword as your name, as long as it doesn’t sound too spammy. The link will pass some juice regardless of what the anchor text is, but it is best for it to be the keyword.

iii) Link Services: There are plenty of link building services out there, and these might be much more beneficial if the keyword is tough to rank for. Red Virus from WickedFire has a great service going, just take look at the dude’s itrader ratings!

iv) Local Directories:  Below is a list of local directories and links that you should familiarize your own and your client’s sites with. Eventually, you can outsource this part as well like I do.

A List of 56 Local SEO and Search Resources for Business

6) Analytics. Since we are going white hat on this project, we will be using Google Analytics with conversion tracking. This will show us what keywords people are coming to the site from, so we can focus on those keywords as well as find new longtails. You want to focus on the keywords that are bringing you targeted traffic by analyzing where you rank for these keywords and whether more links would raise those rankings. Not only will this raise your search rankings, but it will also help you find and rank for longtails of that keyword. Don’t forget to use your excel sheet. When you see a keyword that is gaining traffic, make note of it in your sheet as a higher priority.

There are just a couple more tips to cover before wrapping up for now. One is to make sure to sign your site up for web development tools on Google. This will allow you to upload your sitemap XML. You can create your sitemap on a few different sites and there is also a Wordpress plugin that does it for you automatically. We want our sites to be indexed even if we did not submit it to Google as a new site. What should happen is for Google to crawl one of your incoming links and find its way to your site. Your site should then be indexed fairly quickly if you have some good content and initial links up and running.

Remember to keep your Excel sheet updated and you should be on your way to getting your site recognized. The next part of our series will be on reporting. What do you or your client need to know about your traffic, and how much information should you give them? Look out for that.

Recap:

To start out, set goals to get an idea of what to aim for and expect in terms of traffic and conversions. Choose a domain name with your main keyword in it, and design your site only with your user conversion goals in mind. Build up content yourself or through outsourcing that focuses on keywords, and create an Excel sheet to organize those keywords. Use a variety of sources to get links with your keywords as anchor text, and use analytics tools to track which of these keywords are performing best. Build on your strongest keywords and keep your sheet updated!

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How do I get my Link Love?

1) I will try and ask a question on each post.  Find some posts that you know the answer for, and answer it with the best of your knowledge! It will not only provide the readers some more information about the topic, but also will give you a start on getting your link love, because although it is a no-follow, other commenter will click on your comment, and diggalive.com loves comments!  

If you notice, on every page of my site, I have the Top Commenter Plug-in installed, what exactly is this?  It’s only the coolest plug-in ever, besides that, it will display the top 10 commenter for the current month.
How does this help you?  It gives you a link on every single one of my pages and posts.

I’ll introduce some more ways later, anything to help you guys out.

Hopefully soon there will be a Google page rank update, and it will be more beneficial to us all!

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What are some benefits in doing this?

Well, to start, you are contributing on a site that may help you, or has helped you in the past. Contributing, develops a communication between you and the site owner. The site owner is always checking comments, believe me, and if you say something informative, or useful, he may check out your site, and if he likes it, write a post about it. You are also getting a link on there site. If it is a no follow, who cares, you still have a backlink, and they may have Top Commenter plug-in installed, which leads me to my next one.

Top Commenter can get you hundreds of backlinks fast. If you find a blog that has the top commenter plug-in installed, you can gain a link on everyone of there pages. Just don’t go on and spam there site with your comments. Keep them relevant to the post, and they will reward you with a link, abuse it, and they’ll just remove you from top comments, and also the page itself!

Another way, similar to commenting, is taking part in forums. Placing your link in your signature is a great way to get your site out there. That is another way you may have been brought to this page.

If you don’t believe the power of signature and comments, check out how many backlinks Diggalive has in yahoo, and it has been live for 2 weeks:

http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/search?p=http%3A%2F%2Fdiggalive.com&bwm=i&bwmf=u&bwms=p&fr=yfp-t-105&fr2=seo-rd-se

What are your experiences with comments? Does it bring traffic to your site?

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1. Submit to PR Directories. Refer to this post:
Although, the weight of page rank link juice that it gives out has declined since directories started, it still is a great way to get your site crawled for a certain keyword. You can outsource this, however, make sure you get a detailed report, to what ones were submitted, the ones accepted/rejected, and also the anchor text used. Make sure you get one that is “manually submitted”, and high pr directories.

2. Link Exchange. This one may not be the best way, because you can end up linking to a harmful site that has been penalized in google, and this can weigh on you, so use this one as last resort. This way however can work with friends that have sites going, and know they are legit. Another way is to offer some content to another site in return for a link back to yours. You can also search around WickedFire, and DP. You can find me on there too.

3. Link Bait. I got this method from Mr. Chow. Basically , you lure them in with a post like:
“Review my site for a free backlink”, or something of that nature. On your post, you simply tell your readers that if they do a review of your blog, you will link to there review. Give them an incentive to write a good review too! Tell them the best writer gets a prize! Who doesn’t want a chance at winning, whatever it is. Just look at the Contest posts in DP, you will be amazed the quality of work you can get done, as long as there’s a prize for the winner.
Note: Read this post: http://www.johnchow.com/its-all-about-pushing-the-limit/
Seems like the man actually got penalized for using this technique. He no longer holds number one for his name. This maybe because he used the same anchor text each time when requesting the link.

4. Write Articles. This one takes the most time, unless of course you do like I do and outsource your content. If you have money in the game, and have enough time to write all the unique content it takes to get ranked now a days, and keep a kick ass blog like this (kidding of course) , then hats off to you, but just remember there’s kids on wickedfire/dp at your fingertips with English majors that are ready to write an article for you for .3c a word. However you get your article, submit it to article sites Like ezine.com. People that use your article must include a link to your website below the article. Chaching! Don’t get too excited, you need to make sure not to put the same article on your site. Use the article only for article purposes, to avoid duplicate content, from the article site, and others posting your article!

5. Add Your Link to Wikipedia

6. Digg stories- This one should always be done when first introducing a site to google. Digg gets crawled every single day, most of the time more times than one. As you were reading this post, Digg most likely has been crawled. Okay, you get the idea, submit to Digg, but what do I submit? Submit articles that you think Digg users with Digg. Do some research, see what stories are making it to the front page, and capitalize! If you’re on the front page, that M O N E Y . You will get enormous amounts of traffic. John Chow used techniques to get himself on the front page, and you can too.

7. Trackbacks – You know that option in WordPress when you’re writing a blog post and always skip, well if you are citing a site, don’t skip this part! This will notify the poster that you have linked to their post, and will most of the time , if they see it, they will link back.

8. Participate in Forums – There are thousands of forums out there just waiting for your link. The only problem is, you sign up, spam your site, it will most likely get removed. You have to be a ninja. Yes, a ninja, don’t make it so obvious your spamming. There are techniques you can do , one popular one, is ask for a review of your website. But remember, to add your correct anchor text! As stated in my directory post, don’t use the same anchor text each time. Switch it up.

9. LinkXL- If you have any budget at all for your project, this site is for you. Their main goal is bringing you quality backlinks on sites relevant to yours, with your anchor link. You can do a search for your niche, and find a relevant site that is selling a link on their page. Some are extremely cheap, like $1.00, and some are expensive, like $36.00. It is by a monthly subscription, and most of the time the renewal price is cheaper.

10. Comments – One quick way to get a link, is to search for a ranked blog, preferably in your niche, and comment away, remember to use your anchor text

10. Top Comment Plug in - This one is so good, it had to have its own post, check out:
Commenting isn’t everything but it got you here.

12. Social Media - This has blown up recently. Social Media is Internet and mobile-based tools for sharing and discussing information.  Sites like Digg, Reddit , Del.icio.us and Yahoo’s new Buzz are some social media sites. Make sure to install a plug-in on your blog to make it easy for your readers to submit your sites to these sites.  Doing this can gain you “votes”, which can maybe get you on the front page.  The more people that bookmark you sites like , Del.icio.us, the better for your site link popularity. Here are some other examples.. Flickr, Zooomr, Photobucket, SmugMug , YouTube, Vimeo, Viddler, Revver , epinions, Yelp , Avatars United, Bebo, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Orkut, Skyrock, Netlog

More techniques welcome, I’m always looking for more, and I’m sure so is my readers ..
Just Remember: Links Aren’t Everything.

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Finding the Directories

There are plenty of sources of directories of course, but you want the ones that are going to add your link the fastest, and ones that have at least a 1 page rank. Install the Google toolbar, and set it to display page rank. Some sites have pending links of 1,000+ , we’ll skip those.

Some other sources besides Google:

Digital point has a great category for directories and they are on their daily approving links. They will also welcome any site as long as it’s in their guidelines, with a fast approval.

Also sharing directory lists with others can prove to be quite helpful, as long as they are high ranking and active.

Submitting

Name: -Is not displayed to the public and/or is not indexed therefore it is not so vital.
URL: – This is your link-period. Make sure that this is all correct or you will have to spend extra time correcting the problem, which will set you back. As always directory links are do follow.

Anchor Text: This is very important part. There are two ways to accomplish this. One, is to submit them all with the same anchor text, ie your keyword. Or the second, which is doing it for multiple variations of the keywords.

Description: Take the time out and write a drafts, this way for each one you have something different to avoid duplicate content. Don’t even use text from your site, make it completely unique.

This should get you going on your submitting.  You can do it yourself, or pay someone to do it for you on WickedFire. 

Do you submit your sites do Directories?
What approach do you take?  Pay or do it yourself?

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Once the first review is submitted, I will post a current review contest deadline.  This deadline will always be 1 week after the first review is received, and will be posted in the category for that specific contest.  You can always view what the current contest is, status, and when the deadline is here on that post.

First prize is review featured on the featured article on the front page of my blog.     

What are some things I am looking for in the review?

Unique Ideas, and useful, and thought out comments.  Grammar and good English will of course be a big part in me picking the best review.  It can be a design review, content review, SEO review,  any skill you have, you can apply it to your review, and more than likely that will result in a quality review, and will be very helpful for DiggaLive, which consists of not just me , but you, the reader as well.

If you do not win, I will still feature you under, the Reviews Category.  If writing reviews are not for you, and you still would like to take part in the site, you can also submit your own article.  I will be installing some Ajax forms, to make it easier for submission.  For now, both contests can be sent to my email at, digga121@gmail.com.  In the future, I am planning on offering nice prizes for the best articles, and best review articles.

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