Help with local Seo?

[totaldriveways]

Hi,

I am really struggling with current predicament i find myself in. I am a small to medium sized business based in Newcastle in the UK and am trying to rank well locally for the keywords that i feel my customers will be searching for locally.

I have got to the stage where i am on page 1 of google uk or nearly there but cannot compete against the national companies who have the search terms then just add pages for virtually every city in the country.

For example my main product is "Artificial Grass" and my city/town is Newcastle

This is where my office is and where my customers are. This is also where my google places page states.

Now theres a company that sells Artificial Grass called  www.asgoodasgrass.co.uk

that are based no where near but use the power of there site to come up in every local search by adding a page "Artificial Grass Newcastle" as well as  hundreds of others.

They rank 3rd and im 8th.

There actual Newcastle page is poor, where as i put everything into my page including pics, video etc.

Still no joy.

I feel i am always going to rank behind these big boys even though i am the actual local company and have no intention of working others area that are not local to me.

By the time i rank behind the above type companies and the likes of yell.com i feel i am never going to be seen and fall back on expensive adwords to help me along.

I am a complete newbie at this and would love any help or tips you could give to give me a fighting chance in my area.

My site is www.totaldrivewaysne.co.uk incase you want to look

as you will have gathered my other primary product is driveways for which also i feel like i have a million competitors!

many many thanks for any responses

John

[CMC-SD]

It looks like basically all of your inbound links are from low-quality directories and article marketing. If you want to move up, you're going to have to do some real linkbuilding.

[JakubMovic]

Hi!

You need links, especially high quality links. Start from preparing your SEO strategy, in your case you don't need huge amount of links for your local keywords. If you'll plan everything wisely you will see progress.

You can start from directories that you can find at http://www.seomoz.org/directories this is good start for you.  Think about intresting informations about your niche or about product you sell. Write short press release for local news websites maybe a few actual trends about that kind of business. Search for local journalists which are interested in local business or economy, if you give them interesting info about your business you have chance that they will use it and write something about it. And you will earn link!

You can also write an article to post on site like ArticleBase, remember that it must be unique and good content. Remember about social bookmarking sites, facebook page (i noticed that you already have it), Google+ page and many more.

Hope it will help you.

Good luck!

[gcdtechnologies]

Hi John, that's a really frustrating situation, especially when you feel that the national companies have thin content.

Unfortunately there's no quick way to leap frog those national companies - being big and reputable, their sites are considered to be authoritative and they have a good range of links. You'll have to build up authority and high quality links over time to overtake them. JakubMovic's advice about contacting local journalists is a good way to gain links from authoritative sources.

I also don't see a Google Local Business listing for your site - is this something that you have implemented yet? This can be a really great way for local companies to compete with national ones (with the listings often appearing first in the search results), and it's free. http://www.google.com/local/add/ If you do have a  local listing it might be a good idea to review which keywords you're targeting so that you appear for the highest value keyword combinations.

Good luck - it sounds like you've made a great start and with a bit more time hopefully you'll reap the rewards.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi John,

Searching for 'artificial grass newcastle' from my location in the US, I actually see your company ranking #1...not that this is of much help to you. I have some questions:

• If your core phrase is 'artificial grass newcastle' is google showing true, pinned local results for this term when you search for it from your location in Newcastle? Or, is everything organic (no pins)?

• If this is not your core term, what is?

• Is there a term related to your business that does bring up pinned local results? If so, what is it?

I'm asking these questions because it's important to determine whether you need to pursue a local SEO strategy or a traditional organic one in order to gain high rankings. Can you provide further details, possibly screenshots of what you are experiencing? I'll check back.

[GregoryTK]

Hi John,

I can tell you have actually already done quite a lot in order to make sure your site ranks well.

I won't repeat what others have stated before me, but just wanted to mention a couple of things that might help a little... and as we know, every little helps

• Use a structured format for your address Schema.org, or other microformat.
• Structure your URLs in such a way that the location is mentioned within the URL (make it easy for Google to crawl and for your customers to navigate). You might have to rethink the site architecture a little.
• Create content that is optimised both for keyword and location (separate pages for every combination) > Local Landing Pages!
• The above will also allow you to have optimised Title and Description tags.
• Try to obtain Reviews that actually mention the keyword of the service your are trying to rank higher for.

Hope any of the above helps?

Cheers

Greg