SEO Round Table - Dominating the SERPs for Regional Services

[Dan Schulz]

What forum on search engine optimization would not be complete without a round table discussion about how to dominate the listings in a particular niche or industry once in a while? Yes, this is an SEO Round Table discussion thread. The objective is to take a real world (yet hypothetical) scenario and discuss how you would not only crush, but obliterate the competition.

For the inaugural SEO Round Table, I'm going to present you with a very real situation that many independent contractors are stuck facing with. They want to rank well for search terms related to their industry in their specific region. However, their competitors' sites are not properly optimzied for the search engines, have their pages and page elements stuffed with the keywords that our intreped independent contractors want to rank well for, and have inbound links with those terms in the anchor text pointing back to their sites.

The independent contractors believe that their internal pages can hold their own once people find their sites (either online or offline), but they're worried that their home page will be buried in the deluge of low-quality pages in the search engine results. You, being the experienced SEO professional, have been contacted by one of these stalwart defenders of quality content who believes that business ethics is NOT a joke and that people naturally prefer to conduct business with those they know, they like and they trust for search engine optimization services. This individual doesn't want you to engage in anything "grey hat" or "black hat" - just to focus on the fundamentals, which she explains is "building Web sites for people instead of search engines" (yes, it's obvious this person has some SEO knowledge, and isn't afraid to admit when she's out of her league).

Now, for the sake of arguement, let's say the main keywords that your client in distress wants to rank well for happen to be the words directly associated with her industry (what she does for a living) along with a word or two stating where her business is located (such as "Metropolis Waste Management And Recycling Services" for example). Remember, the other sites are filled with low quality content like "[Company Name], a Metropolis Waste Management Disposal and Recycling Company..." repeated enough to gag even a maggot, and rely on targeted anchor text to prop them up in the search listings (and they have so many of them that your chances of ranking well using great Web copy that people want to link to won't be easy).

Your job, as the SEO.com community, is simple - describe, and illustrate in detail, from start to finish, HOW you would get this site to rank well for these competitive keywords in the face of of these low quality Web sites that just aren't doing anything but begging to have a knight in shining armor (such as the independent contractor in this scenario) come in and save the people searchiing for a real local service provider in this industry who cares about the community from yet another drive-by competitor? And how long do you think it would take?

(And just because I can - you have to do this using natural organic SEO here, no PPC or other type of pay-as-you-go campaign.)

I hereby open the floor to discussions.

[Paz]

Interesting topic! I'm assumming from your post that your client is working in an "uncompetitive" market. Here uncompetitive means a low search volume and few competitors, but too often in these markets the top SERPs are dominated by a handful of spammers.

Keyword stuffing and the like doesn't seem to harm sites in Google in the same way that it does in more mainstream markets - it's like Google either has no choice but to rank these low quality sites or doesn't have the resources to apply the rigourous filtering that it would apply to more competitive markets.

So those are my assumptions, but what about the solutions?

Well you're very lucky to have a client that takes a long term view of her website and wants to maintain the intergrity of her brand and her site. She'll have to pay for that in the short term though, which is why I would recommend a PPC campaign for at least 6 months, or until the SEO kicks in.

I think an SEO campaign starts from the bottom up; starting with the website. We run about 30 "health checks" looking for duplicate pages, duplicate content on the same URL etc. One of the most important is a comparison of pages indexed in Google vs in Yahoo. Google filters duplicate content so if you have a duplicate content problem in Google you will have to find it by looking at your pages indexed in Yahoo; especially in the last few results. Any dross will show up there.

I'd also run a link checker to look for broken links, javascript/meta tag redirects as well as 302 redirects and fix these.

Once I'd ascertained that the site was helping me rather than hurting me I'd look at content, backlinks and regionalisation.

For content, I'd recommend that the client make themselves a resource in their field. That would mean putting up a mixture of light reading, academic content/statistics, images, as well as online tools people can use and add to their own sites, Facebook profiles etc.

I'd also invite people to use all of the above on their own sites provided they cite the client as the original source with the code that you would provide for them.

For backlinks I'd look at a few authority links rather than quantity. I'd get the client to get links from her trade organisations, associations and other partners - I'm sure these would be authority links. There are a few good directories out there - business.com is a bargain at 300 US a year and will certainly bring top rankings for your chosen title if the site is set up properly. You can also approach blog owners in your niche,

For regionalisation, in addition to the usual on-site factors such as keyword text, zip codes, and telephone numbers I'd look at other localising factors such as registering with Google Maps, Yahoo and other local news portals, classifieds and blogs.

That's not the detailed answer you requested but it's a start for this round table discussion.

Cheers,
Paz.

[Dan Schulz]

I knew I forgot something, and thank you for bringing it to my attention. While this is not a hyper-competitive niche (the client isn't selling Viagra, folks), it's also not a bottom feeding niche either (such as suntan lotion marketed to Eskimos). While the hypothetical client's niche does have a lot of competition (a lot of competitors), the quality of their Web sites are well... basically in the gutter.

So what your hypothetical client wants can be done, but it won't be easy (it won't be super-hard, but it will take some serious effort).

[loredan]

Well...this is the best thread I've seen on these forums so far...I wonder why all the "specialists" around haven't joined this discussion - at the same time I think I know the answer and you two guys should know as well :)

Dan, congrats for taking time to set up this scenario, I know you for quite a while from the other forums where you gained my respect. Paz, my respects as well for the valid answers posted here.

I do agree with Paz's PPC campaign proposal if the company affords it and they're looking for visibility from day one when it's obviously to early to talk about natural results.

The on-page part of the job stated by Paz is a valid answer...something that every decent and respectable guy should do...I will only add building a sitemap if there is none.

When it comes to off-page optimization there is usually no patern to be followed. Everything has to be done in accordance with the way the website responds to the changes vs. its improvement in rankings.

I would start off with a press release campaign as from my experience this might work well on most of the cases and should ensure a steady and constant number of backlinks over the next few weeks as well as media atention.

Let's divide the whole project into two big sections as Paz previously did: content and link building - for easier understanding (even if generally these two should not be divided as quality content might get some quality backlinks in)

So...for content...I would set up a blog on the website from the begining...to post informative stuff and news from the industry. I would also add a sort of teaser on the main page with the titles and a bit of description of the ...let's say last 5 blog posts. Some other things I'd do: squidoo lenses, facebook, a few relevant articles submitted into article directories. Apart from what has been mentioned by Paz already I would also arrange some excellent tutorials on the niche...making sure they will get known by the students from universities (obviously niche related). I did this on a couple of campaigns and students found the tutorials very useful, reffered them to other students and linked to them as well. The best part of this story is that in many cases these students have their own University blogs and if they will link from there it means you already get some .edu well targeted backlinks :) I did that on a medical related website and I managed to get 11 .edu backlinks from 3 tutorials. Obviously it is debatable on how much a .edu link might help and how powerful it is but I think that getting a few of them won't cause any damage to the campaign :)

Link building: I will also divide this into two big sections - general links and contextual links.

Paz stated the need of getting links from her trade organisations, associations and other partners which is just an excellent thing to do.

I'd also make sure I have a long term plan of web directories submissions...starting from the local, regional and niche related sources and finishing with quality general directories. I will also divide this into free and paid for review directories with an obvious accent on the paid ones as they often provide additional deeplinks (excellent stuff), editorial integrity and faster approvals.

Trying to get the related blogs from the niche to talk about the site it is a must do as Paz mentioned. I would also go for contextual links from blogs...as manny as better

Another thing I would do is creating 3 different videos for the site...one generally talking about the niche in a regional context, other one about the company itself and the third one should be obviously related but made in a funny way - cartoons perhaps - or anything else funny. Every video should target a different category of potential viewers and bloggers (more backlinks)

Posting these videos on all the big video sharing websites should get some extra visibility, potential backlinks and they'll also help in rankings.

Well....I'm sure I've missed some other things...pretty hard to try to set up a plan while writing a forum comment :) ... anyway I made my small contribution to this excellent thread...who's next ? :)

Thanks

Dan

[KingPin]

Interesting. I'll post something when I get time.

I have a lot more that everyone has missed.

KP