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Basically, I was forced into SEO a little over a year ago: I own a PC/Apple repair company and I contacted a local SEO company to perform some basic SEO strategies to our website for a 'standard' rate. Well, they offered SEO for computer support, and after we fixed all of their server & network problems, we basically never heard from them again. So, I was forced to perform SEO for my company on my own (yes, they paid us after sending a collection's agent on them). They still consistently rank #1 or 2 (although they are also 'randomly' removed from Google completely)for a reasonably difficult search term (i.e. cityname web design), and use wordpress for their CMS. The last time that I spoke with their CEO, he said 'the only thing I can tell you right now is to use Wordpress on your site'.
Basically, here is the info:
-In the dmoz (blindly accepted on my first submission)
-crawled by Google regularly
-content is 'decent', far above competitor sites and updated much more regularly
-considering yahoo directory
-site possibly 'too' optimized with local searching (i.e. links formatted with 'cityname-computer-repair', images labeled the same), but competitor sites contain much more 'city' keywords, and I am still ranking #6 for my 'choice' keyword (cityname computer repair, and computer repair cityname)
-robots.txt in order, google analytics setup properly
-just moved my site to wordpress (from raw html)
What am I missing? I have been researching SEO for a long time, and although I am not opposed to increasing my sites rank via typical means, I don't want to spam or use blackhat tactics (nor do I even know how) if possible, I'm just an honest local businessman who wants more business.
[edited by: engine at 8:58 am (utc) on July 1, 2009]
[edit reason] See WebmasterWorld TOS [/edit]
Firstly, the industry you want to rank in is going to be quite competitive. You need to have the keywords in the content of the site (which I think you have done) plus keywords in the anchor text of links pointing to your site. I would take a look at the Link Development forum here for some ideas.
Good luck!
The local search area is critical to your niche. When you do a search for "apple computer repair" or "mac computer repair" do you see ten companies showing up in the local search results? Or is it less? If it's less then the search/seo competition isn't tight and you have an opportunity to exploit.
Good luck to you,
mb
just moved my site to wordpress (from raw html)
If you're a Supporter on WebmasterWorld, you might want to take a look at this current discussion about SEO for Wordpress, which includes some good SEO basics as well...
WordPress SEO Basics
[webmasterworld.com...]
Definitely do some reading in the Local Search forum. Also, here's a discussion in our Google Search froum that gets into some specifics about Google Maps....
How to Show Up as a Map in the Local Search One Box
[webmasterworld.com...]
Since you're on Wordpress and can add articles easily, I suggest you add some really good material on common Apple and PC issues, fixes, accessories, software utilities, etc... whatever will appeal to your customers as you know them... with well chosen titles. Then do your best to promote these articles, perhaps using social media (can be time consuming), to attract inbound links.
