Questions about “Local Search Engine Optimization”???

[Darrell25]

I have my own website hosting but have never been able to place top 10 in the search engines. I have read about Search Engine Optimization and even tried to optimize to achieve better positioning without any results.
Can anyone point me to the right direction? I really don't know what I am doing wrong. I am not a professional developer, I am self taught, but have been writing html for years.

Any help will be greatly appreciated..

[eukrobert]

Hello Darrell,

Unique content works a treat 1000+ indexed pages by google with unique well coded content would be my first challenge.

After this would be getting direct links (not 2 way links) from content related web sites.

There is many many more factors and it takes alot of time and optimization to get it right results wont appear over night or weeks takes months/years but with effort you can do it

Hope this helps you in right direction.

Kind Regards

Robert

[DPS Computing]

I would concur with what Robert has said there - especially regarding the unique content. Its hard to knock a well established website hosting from its position if your using the same or similar content. If you have got a niche of unique content that you put on your web site hosting you are destined to reach the top!

[paul]

I would suggest to optimize your website hosting for local search engine for specific keywords/ search terms. Also create a location authority page and try out to get around the following which will help you to generate organic local traffic:

* Local Directories
* Yahoo! Local
* MSN Live Local
* YellowPages
* Google Maps
* Citysearch.com
* Switchboard.com
* Local.com
* Local Classified Sites

[Site]

Nice list there Paul

[freeflyer]

if were talking natural placement its not all about unique content.. in fact very little of it is. Despite the old saying 'content is king' its not exactly true anymore.

You can get to the first page of google for a competitive term with hardly any IBL's and with little content in the pages, without spamming or breaching any guidelines. Seeing as you already know good HTML and presumably have a degree of common sense it wont be that difficult.

But, you have an e-commerce web site hosting i'm guessing ? E-commerce sites are inherent in their nature that they can put a stop to a good placings unless you put measures in place to stop it. This can be tricky and time consuming, especially after the event, and its too much to go into here unfortunately.

[paul]

Originally Posted by freeflyer

if were talking natural placement its not all about unique content.. in fact very little of it is. Despite the old saying 'content is king' its not exactly true anymore.

You can get to the first page of google for a competitive term with hardly any IBL's and with little content in the pages, without spamming or breaching any guidelines. Seeing as you already know good HTML and presumably have a degree of common sense it wont be that difficult.

But, you have an e-commerce web site hosting i'm guessing ? E-commerce sites are inherent in their nature that they can put a stop to a good placings unless you put measures in place to stop it. This can be tricky and time consuming, especially after the event, and its too much to go into here unfortunately.

In such situation, I think instead of targeting very competitive term one should focus more on local search terms, the adword geo-targeting might be one of the method which can be used to target specific demography. Also one should evaluate few advertisement option that can bring new business, for example if you sell custom T shirts, people wearing your t-shirt walking around advertise for you! that is just one example how online advertisement can be submerged with offline promotions.

[freeflyer]

in this case possibly.. but i always thought of that as a cop out answer.. ie we cant rank you for your main terms, so were going to focus on your local village traffic instead. Unless they specifically request it of course.

However, he did ask for 'local Search Engine Optimization', but to be honest that could mean anything

[paul]

A demography is not limited to a village, it represent a large area- a metropolitan city or a region or even could be much bigger, by filtering the keywords as per the demography followed with the current trends of search terms and search pattern will certainly help to cater a big market as a whole.

[freeflyer]

Originally Posted by paul

A demography is not limited to a village

i know it wasnt meant to be taken literally, there was actually a hint of sarcasm in 'village'.
I was referring to any localised area, small or large. The point was that its much easier for people to say 'we'll target your local traffic' than concentrate on the more difficult aspect.

[paul]

Originally Posted by freeflyer

The point was that its much easier for people to say 'we'll target your local traffic' than concentrate on the more difficult aspect.

Because it is easy going and tested method to start over, being newer in online marketing, you should not experiment each technique hitting your target without any specific goal, it would be more precise to start over through local contact from a demography which is well known to you. If you are missing the users searching for "birthday cake" + "Boston.", you're losing the local traffic by overlooking the local search options that means you are missing out on a substantial amount of business.

[freeflyer]

thats just sales talk and were at cross wires i think....

[Scothorse]

Html knowledge is advisable Important points:

Title tag is v. important use keywords here
Page filename
Keywords in h1 tags and bold scattered on the page, unique topic per page, don't dilute.
Lots of back links
Don't submit to search engines, let them find you.
Alt tags, use them widely
mode rewrite to change "?" queries to straight forward urls (ya know what I mean huh!?)
once you're ranked, and it can take weeks. DON'T change anything!

Also good, let people optimise the web site hosting for you!
HTH

[freeflyer]

agreed apart from i say once you're ranked.. tweak and see if you can rank better. If it gets worse, reverse, and try something else.. but most of all just improve the site, technical and content.