TECH Will pay for SEO help. Screen shots and URLs enclosed.

MartyFukstein

MartyFukstein

OT Supporter
May 10, 2005
9,634
My business and website - http://www.acecars.net - is underperforming in search engines. Specifically, our biggest competitor, a detailing shop named Autobella in Portland (http://www.autobella.com) has a very strong Google presence.

Screenshot of google search "Portland Auto Detail"
google01.jpg


We pay handsomely for Google Adwords spot number two. We appear organically on page 3. Our Google local listing usually appears on page 3.

Autobella for some reason has 4 listings in Google local. They have the top spot organically as well.

My goals:

1. Secure a spot on the first page organically.
2. Secure a spot on the first page in Google local business results.

How long would it take to reach these goals and what would it cost?

Also, I have created a video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPuJ3Pfzjao

How could I get a screenshot of this video to appear on the first page of Google search term "Portland Auto Detail"?
 

pkr

You need a LOT more content on your main page. Use less images and more text when possible.
 
symptic

symptic

I run companies
Oct 12, 2003
13,692
Some ideas:
  • Create a series of videos teaching the basics of detailing
  • Create a blog for your site and post daily. Promote the blog by giving away a free detail a day if the person lets you take pictures (hiding the license plate of course) of your work/process
  • Re-design your website to be have a much heavier emphasis on SEO and content (I can help)
  • Host small events and put out press releases often
  • Invite radio stations to said events
  • Print out little tags you hang on each customer's rear-view mirror giving a little info about the company and including a few coupons. They have to take it down and put it somewhere, odds are it will be left in their car for passengers to see, or on a table/desk somewhere.
  • Contribute heavily to detailing communities, giving links to your blog posts as help to some newbies or something of the sort
  • Find a unique core competency your business can take on and run with that sets you apart. This way you're not JUST a car detailing company

In the end, SEO is about generating more revenues for your company, which is your ultimate goal. SEO as an industry is a farce, but being aware of the tactics is important. Your main goal it to generate revenue, so don't discount non-SEO methods because your competition doesn't do them.
 
JesterFX

JesterFX

Active Member
Oct 10, 2004
4,513
good advice so far. But start by registering PortlandAutoDetailers.com ;). Keyword domains tend to be much easier to rank for regardless of content. Adding good content, preferably using your main keywords randomly, will help get and keep higher spots.

Adding updated content often will help make your site look relevant for google...meaning a blog that is updated once or twice a week would help a lot in gaining the higher positions as well as grabbing a lot of other keyword traffic (though may not be as targeted as you want when that happens). Blog post could be as simple as quick tips, customer spotlights, product reviews whatever as long as it relates to your theme.

As mentioned already by the others, try to get your local customers involved. Ask them for reviews and highlight them on the site/blog...they will be proud of it and tell their friends about it, link to it and maybe add long term links to your site from their sites/profiles...the type of links that are better than any kind of paid linking you could do.

Also try to get some of the other local related, but maybe not competitive, businesses to exchange links with you. Not only would their related traffic be potential customers but it will also help with your indexing.

Lots of basic things you can do that will definitely help. Shouldn't be all that much to at least get you on the first page...basically all the type of info you can find on any SEO blog or forum about SEO.


PM me for paypal address for the advice ;)
 
Falconer

Falconer

Well-Known Member
Jun 23, 2006
65,534
your competitor's site didn't open. Then I realized you typed their URL wrong in your post.
 
Morgan06

Morgan06

Active Member
Jan 19, 2006
4,174
ELM, MA
First, I'm no pro at either web design or SEO- but I am in the same industry.

+1 for a wordpress blog, how to detail etc. I don't know if repetition helps, but each one of my posts has 'auto detail CT' and a linkback for in state service for residents. Took me a week to get on first page search results.

Be careful when joining forums to promote your site or business. The ones worth your time may not let your username be 'AceCars' or allow you to post links. And anytime I see a competitor take a straightforward approach to this- they get banned. That means 'to fix that, try XXX, youre welcome' and not 'Im Joe Six Wax from AceCars.net'

Use the alt tags for images and links. The only page that is ahead of me on search results has 'CT' 15+ times just on their index at whateverautodetail.com and 150+ linkbacks

+1 for link exchange and joining detailing directories. Autopia/DetailUniversity/RVDetailServices/etc.
 
Yahdude

Yahdude

New Member
Jun 21, 2006
1,204
PC, UT
I missed the part of this thread where he asking for promotional/advertising advice...

Anyway...you want to increase your rankings for a given keyword...

1. More targetted inbound links.
2. See above.
3. Pick up some social links, find some detailing/car related high PR digg pages and drop your link, preferably a deep link. (Use an SEO type firefox addon, seach site:digg.com "auto detailing" or something similar and let it show you the page rank of each page...drop 3-4 links. Same can be said with youtube etc.
4. Solidify basic on page SEO. (you don't need to hire someone for this, is very cut and dry...read up on it)
5. Use keywords in your urls, not only helps rank them but they are bolded in the serps.

If you're going to hire someone hire a good copywriter and give them basic outlines on what you want written and what keywords you want to focus on and let them do their job. Give the site a good amount of keyword rich (not over done, natural, just make sure to USE the words) unique content. You don't need to go as far as creating a whole new blog, you're site is basically your business card you don't need a day job to keep it updated. If you want some automated/updated content look into some RSS feeds, but GOOD unique keyword rich content with good inbound links WILL increase your rankings...it really is that simple.

Take a look at your competitors linking strategy, learn from it. They have what you want, they did something right to get it.

EDIT: OK I just took a look at your site...less pictures, more content.
 
95vr4

95vr4

OT Supporter
Oct 6, 2004
2,503
Weddington, NC
ace.gif

18mb??? :eek3::eek3::eek3: Do I really even need to tell you this is way too big (thank god for gzip)

Get those page sizes down first, it has some affect on SERPS, but it's more of a usability factor. I'm on pretty fast broadband (as are most people these days) and if anything about a site annoys me, I leave almost immediately (as do most people). Waiting 60 seconds for one page to load annoys the shit out of me :squint:.

Open the images in photoshop and use the File-->"Save for web" option. If you save all your images on the site into a zip file, I've got a photoshop droplet I'll run them through for you to automatically do that.

This image is from your site - 263k
rr_armrest_after_.jpg




This one I downloaded and ran through photoshop on Medium quality - 32k
ace.jpg



And that image above brings me to my next point. Never ever put any text in an image, for the simple fact that Google can't read it. The text in the image above isn't that great of an example, but the image below is a perfect example and a critical problem

ace-car-nav-bar02.gif


This is what google sees for your current link to your automotive interior repair page
<area href="auto-paint-repair.htm" shape="rect" coords="19, 18, 103, 37">

It should Ideally be
<a href="auto-paint-repair.htm" title="Automoive Paint Repair">Automoive Paint Repair</a>

Next most important things are title tags, header tags (h1, h2, h3, etc), and keywords in filename. Your filename and header tags actually look ok (although I prefer putting my keywords first and Company/Site name second in title like this <title>Auto and Car Detailing in Portland | Ace Car Reconditioning</title>). Header tags should be placed around titles, in the order of importance. For Ex
<h1>Most Important</h1>
<h2>Second Most Important</h2>
<h3>Third Most Important</h3>


Most advice posted by others are all good and correct suggestions, but before you worry about any of that you need to take care of the basics such as the one's I pointed out. Also....HUGE +1 on JesterFX's suggestion on PortlandAutoDetailers.com, I'd go ahead and get a few like more domains like PortlandAutomotiveDetailing.com, PortlandAutoPaintRepair.com etc. too

Static html pages are all but obsolete. If I were you I'd go with an open source CMS system, which will take care of most of the seo stuff for you and make your/the webmaster's life easier. I personally prefer wordpress, even for non "blog type" sites. Also Google seems to love wordpress sites for some reason and they generally rank better
random example of a non blog site run off wordpress

Looks like you already have plenty of offers, but if you can't find anyone I'm available until January. Starting a new Full Time developer job @ first of the year. Counting down the days till I'm no longer a freelancer :wiggle::wiggle::coold::coold::run::run:. Freelance web development sucks
 
Last edited:

Ami

New Member
Feb 28, 2008
15
You just need to get busy generating backlinks from relevant sites using the appropriate keywords as your anchor text

Look at your competitor's site and see where his links are coming from and what on site optimization he is doing and learn from that

Getting number one position in Google can be achieved but it will take some work

You could always hire an SEO expert but the costs involved can be prohibitive. Also you have to be careful which SEO expert you use so you don't get one that is predominantly black hat
 
Yahdude

Yahdude

New Member
Jun 21, 2006
1,204
PC, UT
Ami said:
Also you have to be careful which SEO expert you use so you don't get one that is predominantly black hat
Click to expand...

^^ Do NOT hire someone that's gunna use BH methods to promote a site you care much about keeping around.
 
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