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Hi there, It looks like the website is pretty new and even with rankings as specific as someone's name, it can take a bit of time for rankings to get onto page one and then position one. I took a quick look at the site and it looks to be indexed fine, so I don't think you've done anything wrong in that regard. It looks like current search results for Tim's name have lots of relevant results for him which is good - Google understand that he is a person and there are plenty of non-competing results. I'd advise trying to build some links to the domain from the websites where he has profiles/mentions etc. This shouldn't be too hard given that this is his official website and therefore there is a legitimate reason for people to link. The only other thing I'd recommend aside from general SEO is to keep an eye on Google Search Console because this is where any errors or big issues will appear. I hope that helps! Paddy

Hi Bob, Have you looked into 99 Designs? I find the graphic designers on this platform are at a higher caliber than Fiverr. My favourite feature is that you can start a contest. So you'll brief the community on your concept and designers will submit their designs so you can pick your favourite. Hope this helps, good luck. https://99designs.ca

Does anyone else think Fiverr with experience. I'm thinking Fiverr is good for 1X but not 10X, but if you think there are some geniuses on there and more people agree, I will give it a try, it's cheap. The community college is a great idea. I'll work on that. Bob

So many good responses, thank you! I knew there was better stuff out there than the same old same old.

Hi Bob, This is one of the woolier aspects of SEO ("quality" or trust). One thing I'd recommend is getting familiar with Google's Quality Rater/Evaluator Guidelines: https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en//insidesearch/howsearchworks/assets/searchqualityevaluatorguidelines.pdf These are the guidelines they provide to their ~10k human search quality raters - this is the group they use to review potential changes to their search results to gather qualitative data on those results. You'll see that there's not much "hard" data to go on here, but one way we've measured this and made it actionable at Distilled is by running surveys that we can deploy via SurveyMonkey+Amazon Mechanical Turk to get some sense of how the "average user" would rate a site across some of these points. Here's a blog post that walks through the process: https://www.distilled.net/blog/seo/replicate-googles-panda-questionnaire-processing/ There are no universally-applicable tips here, but trust elements like badges, aggregate user reviews, testimonials, etc are good places to start. Depending on the niche, if you're dealing with "YMYL" (Your Money Or Your Life) topics, basically any advice that could have a serious impact on a person's quality of life, Google has made big shifts recently (see: "Medic" update) to prefer sites where the "experts" running them or publishing content have clean, established reputations in the space (not just accolades displayed on the site itself but elsewhere on the web). This seems to have been particularly important for sites that are offering both advice and selling "solutions" related to that advice (for example, a medical advice blog that's connected to an ecommerce site that sells dietary supplements). Hope this helps! Best, Mike

Hi BobGW, I can point you in the direction of a great content writer, who has experience with technical writing as well. He's always done a great job for me! Let me know if you're interested (FYI I would not get a cut of his services -- I'm just happy to make the connection).

It obviously depends on budget and needs. When you're a customer, you want options so you can make an informed decision.

Moz's Keyword Explorer is much nicer. I couldn't find any additional benefit to your tool, unless you can explain.

Andy, I think this is spot on. I will focus on the value I can add. Thank you.

In addition to OSE, ahrefs or SEMrush are awesome tools that can be used to reverse engineer a competitors link profile. If you haven't already done so, you may also want to review Rand's whiteboard Friday about getting your first 50 links to make sure you're got all the low hanging fruit before diving into other kinds of link building.

Hi Bob, I've gone through the process of building and optimizing quite a few different websites and I've found that the best backlinks come from good content. I've also done paid (supposed to be a no-no) and outreach link building, so I think I've got a good perspective across all the different approaches. My personal opinion is that at the very launch of a website, beyond just indexing and on-site optimization, it's a 100% must to have the site linked to on a few good directories or other sites that are connected. For every single site I've built, I've seen fantastic results with this initial push. I believe that all SEOs have a little cache of backlinks stashed away and we all use them sparingly whenever we need to give a new site that first push. With this little bit of a push, I usually see my sites begin to rank within 4 to 5 days on less competitive keywords. To be honest, I don't think that this initial paying for backlinks is an ethical issue or one that can be classified as 'black hat SEO'. I've found it practiced at the top level agencies and it's also something that's recommended in Rand Fishkin's book 'Art of SEO'. After the initial launch, then comes the real work. How do we get quality backlinks consistently? Reaching out to other webmasters in the same verticals has had some fantastic results for me as well. I typically do an outreach program that is personal and not a template-based spam fest. Oddly enough, I've had these outreach attempts even grow into marketing partnerships, and even business partnerships. I find that if you reach out authentically to other webmasters or business owners, they tend to respond much better. I've competed in large markets and also small ones, and I've found that it can actually be a problem for smaller market segments or industries, that you run out of other sites to reach out to. In my previous startup, I found that the source of quality backlink partners ran out after 3 or 4 months of research. At that point, I set up google alerts for specific keywords, and stopped my outreach program and decided to focus on content creation instead. This was where it really began to pay off in buckets. For that business and as a startup, I was able to create backlinks from not relevant sites, but even government organizations looking to highlight a particular type of business (educational startups in this case). Creating content like infographics and how-to articles was an extremely good investment as well. We publicized what we deemed to be good content out across our social media, and I found that these continued to generate backlinks even years later. The main reason why anyone would want to link to your site, is that you have something interesting or useful for them to share. I even used myself as 'content', giving interviews to online news portals and blogs, always asking if they would kindly do me a favor and link to my site as part of the article. We also got lucky with one of our seasonal articles. This particular article was shared on our social media and a reporter at the local newspaper came across it. That eventually led to an offline article published about the company, and since offline content eventually gets republished on their site, it also led to a backlink from an incredibly reputable source. I think that the reason why most SEOs tend to focus on paid or outreach programs is simply because of the amount of time it takes. Writing an email takes at most 10 minutes, while research, writing and creating the graphics for a good piece of content (video, written or otherwise), would take days and not have an immediate payoff. All said and done, I feel that a solid linkbuilding program should be multi-faceted and not be overly dependent on just one aspect. If you depend solely on outreach as your main source of backlinks, then what happens when you no longer have time to write emails? Eventually, you will still need to focus on content creation.

If you launch a duplicate site, Google will sniff it out and neither site will rank because they will treat them as one site with duplicate content. I had an issue like this for 2 legitimate sites with the same content and different brands. When we went with cross domain canonicals, we started ranking in a big way. Without improving Backlinks, Content Quality and UX, your site will not achieve it's old rankings. The site was getting ranked because of link spam, and when those links spammy links go bye-bye your rankings go with them. With the new "kinder & gentler" penguin, stick to 1 site and focus on making the current site awesome and acquiring high quality backlinks.

Hi Bob, Good luck with your presentation! I think you have an interesting opportunity residing and working in a small town. Like you, I live in a rural area beyond a larger, good-sized city. I find it interesting to study local SERPs in areas like this - they sometimes provide unique insights into Google's 'thinking' when there are fewer options/less data. In the coming months, who knows what you might learn from closely studying your local SERPs?

Bob, It sounds like you are doing a good job so far. How about link building? I don't have much experience with ecommerce, so i am not sure how that would go. Besides SEO, a balanced approach involving social, advertising, and email marketing should help bring the traffic and let people know about your new site...And if the content is really great, you should start climbing the ranks. I know...i make it sound easier than it actually is. Good luck, Matt

You are right about the additional accounting task.  We mainly didn't like the delays between the transaction occurring and approvals.  And, some transactions were approved and then, the next day, after the package was 1/2 way to the customer, we were told not to ship. You are also right about customers wanting PayPal.  The ones using a mobile device especially like it because they don't have to type in credit card and address details.