Fighting the Brave Battle

[kdaly100]

Hi All

I have been working busily on my Google Places to try and improve my listings and here are some updates (with no visible progress unfortunately).

• I added reviews - only one of my competitors has more reviews than me and these reviews are genuine.
• Based on other posts in this forum I looked closely at how my address was formatted as Google Maps does not recognize my street so my address format wise is identical to the top 3 <street ,="" street="" name,="" city="" county=""> this is in Ireland so that is a typical address.</street>

I am still below the fold and I have analysed the links of the competition and to be honest I see that they are in business longer and their links from the many websites that they have created over the years.  They have more links than me by a factor of 3x and 4x.

Am I screwed?  As you all appreciate being over the fold is so important and I am currently below the fold and it is not an ultra competitive keyword combination  (1600-2000 searches) website design Cork on google.ie.

As a websie person even getting 2-3 extra contacts for me per month can mean a HUGE difference.  I have read long and hard on this topic for the past 12-18 months.

I have not put any serious attention to link building myself - should I get emailing people to try and get those quality links to raise my profile.  The problem is getting the time to do this.  Does the forum think that if I sent (for example) 20-30 emails per day to a range of related businesses asking rfor links for 'say' 30 days I would get some links without actually having to pay for them  Is link building the critical item that I should focus on considering the problems above?

All help appreciated and bottle of Jameson for the person with idea that works - (really!)

[mattbeswick]

Yeah, it's been generally positive. I'd always used elance in the past, although that was primarily for development tasks, so moving to oDesk was a bit of a worry at first. If you do a time-based project you're at relatively low risk as you get screenshots every few minutes of what your staff are working on. (ie. If they're looking at YouTube videos you'll be able to see and refuse to pay them).

A lot of people will offer services for very little outlay so it's worth spending time investigating their feedback and interviewing candidates properly. I generally keep it quite informal and just try to work out if the person I'm talking to is able to string a sentence together and have a bit of banter. If they are I'll give them a week's trial limited to 10 hours or so and see what the results are like.

Virtual assistants are really low risk as the outlay is so low... at worst you lose $30 and at best you find someone that will work with you for the next year or two doing all the tasks that you don't have the time or inclination to do yourself.

In the past I've always done the outreach part of a link building task myself, although there are those that take the view that it's possible to outsource this effecively so I'm giving it a try at the moment. Will most likely YouMoz how I get on at some point

• Matt

[kdaly100]

No problem I am a compulsive bad speller (its why I use Autohotkey all the time now for so many things).

Two very interesting ways to proceed here the guest blogging and the getting someone else to do  the work

Have you positive expereince with using Odesk.  I had a glance and it seems like there are thousands of options so need to wade throught he mrie a b it.

[mattbeswick]

I always get that URL wrong - sorry! Curse of the bookmark - it's like speed dial... 3 years later and I still don't know my other half's phone number. She's consistently disappointed when I have to ask for it.

With regards to the research, use oDesk and hire a virtual assistant. You can get someone who's proficient enough to create you a list of sites that accept guest blog posts / niche directories (and do the submission) for $2-$3 per hour.

• Matt

[kdaly100]

Thanks for the tips - what I am seeing with the competition is hat nearly all their links are footer text from their original sites.  I have done some research for directories but will up the ante.

Guest Blogging - hmm - havent tried that but will..

the URL above is incorrect it is actually http://myblogguest.com

WIll try out these for a bit and see wht happens then the bottle of Jameson

[mattbeswick]

Hi Kieran,

I'll do anything for free alcohol, so here goes (for ease, everything below is based on the term "web design cork")...

Looking at your competitors, there's definitely potential there to take them down with some time, effort, patience, and link building:

• Link profile your competitors and see where they're getting their links from (other than their clients), what percentage of exact match anchor text they have, etc.
• Find some niche directories for web design companies (there are loads of these but be careful - only go for the non-spammy ones)
• Do a load of guest blogging.

The last of those points is by far the most important as it will get you good links, not just those from rubbish pages and directories with low authority and 743 outpointing links.

There are loads of opportunities like this in the web design and SEO arena - a good place to start would be MyGuestBlog.com which is run by Anne Smarty who is extremely helpful and happy to offer great advice and help if needed.

Also, searches on google for things like inpostauthor:guest +seo are likely to return a load of results that show potential opportunities. I tend to amalgomate all of these results into a spreadsheet with URL, Domain Authority, Guest Blogging Submission Process, Owner Name, Owner Email, etc. and create a hit list.

I know this is more time consuming but will almost certainly get you better results in your link building efforts.

I'm happy to go into more detail if you have specific questions

• Matt