Local seo strategy for local gardening business ideas?
-
Hi all,
I am just setting up a local organic garden maintenance business in my home town.
I have set up the website, got social media accounts active (FB, Twitter and G+), set up google local listing (currently 5th in the local maps thingy), I have done loads of citations (many more than my competitors, but not a ridiculous amount), I've got 4 customer reviews on google so far, checked my DA against my competitors (mine 1, my comps 8-9), checked my comps links (less than 10) and been writing a blog on my website every couple of days.
I realise the one thing I have against me is that my domain is just less than a month old. How long until google builds a bit of trust in it to see it come up in the serps?
Also, I would love some ideas of what else I can be doing in the mean time. The idea here is to get the site rocking on all cylinders before the gardening season starts again in March. Do-able?
-
Hmm. Sure looks like you're doing everything you should and correctly. You have more citations that your competitors with the exception of Irrigation. You have more reviews.
"Am I wasting my time optimizing for this? "
I'd wait a while longer to see what unfolds. I'd optimize organically. I'd add "garden center" as a local search category in addition to gardener. (I used Blumenthal's category list to find your options, last updated 2/15/14.) I'd continue to accrue as many citations and reviews as possible. I'd publish a KML and GEO sitemap. (Not sure if these are still used by Google, but they can't hurt. Miriam may have an opinion on that.)
I wish there was a clear and definitive answer I could give you but, as you undoubtedly know, it's just not the nature of this beast. Please do give us an update after more time has passed. I am and will be curious.
-
The Witney Gardener
-
What's the name of your business?
-
Thanks for this Donna. Happy New Year by the way!
I am trying to rank for 'garden services witney' and am currently coming in 5th. If you see the map, I am in the actual town and the 4 comp above me are in the next village.
Am I wasting my time optimizing for this?
It's a totally different story for 'Gardener Witney'.
Cheers Donna,
-
According to Google patents. But if I were you, I'd search for the category and town you're trying to rank for and see what Google shows. I don't think it's always as cut and dried as the patents would suggest. It's definitely a possibility though. Your statement "in a village just outside of my town" will have bearing - depending on whether you're trying to rank for the town or the village.
-
This is very interesting. So basically as 4 of my comp are in a village just on the outside of my town that this is the centre?
-
If it's only been a month, it's still early days. It can take 2-6 months for all your citations to propagate throughout the local search ecosystem.
Also bear in mind proximity to the perceived industry center for your city is very important. Your business ideally would be centered in the area where most other garden maintenance businesses are clustered. Mike Blumenthal explains this concept best in Bright Local's free "State of Local Search" recorded webinar (from 2013). Start listening at time stamp 25:30.
-
It's definitely low competition and I have more citations, links and reviews than everyone else. Still sitting in 5th place though.
Will continue with videos
-
Yep got a video up but it sits on page three for its keywords https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tPwy7oO7qs
-
Richard,
Local optimization will help you show up for your specific local search category and town, but often the real value comes in ranking well for long-tail search queries on a well-optimized website. The fact that you're blogging will certainly help that, but don't forget to go to the effort of making sure that content (and the whole site) is organically optimized. You should be optimizing it for your local business category as well as other terms, and making sure your business name, address and phone number is listed on every page of the site. Local schema tagging would definitely help too.
-
Hi Richard,
It sounds like you are doing the right things, but how quickly you see results is going to be largely dependent on how stiff the local competition is. If it's low, you should see results quite quickly from the type of work you're doing (blogging, building citations, earning reviews) but if it's tough, it could be a matter of many, many months before you can edge out your competitors.
I like Andi's suggestion, in that it's hinting at is doing something your competitors might not be doing. A video or social campaign that puts great stuff out there about your business (in a way your competitors aren't latching onto) could give you a speedy competitive advantage.
-
How about posting some youtube videos and cross posting it on your site and the social media sites? Then you have a chance to rank above the local map search results. Same thing with images, but not as powerful. I think video would kick you into high gear.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Lazy Loading & Image SEO
I wanted to implement lazy loading on my whole domain, but was unsure about the effect on the organic image search. Therefore I implemented it some months ago on 3 selected URLs with medium organic image traffic. Unfortunately all 3 pages dropped significantly (roughly 80%) of image impressions and clicks (seach console data). It seems that just images within the fold, that are not loaded via lazy load are still ranking. Does anybody have here more positive experiences?
Image & Video Optimization | | _Heiko_0 -
What do you do for U-NAP distribution for two business within the same building?
I have a hotel that has a restaurant within its building. Both the hotel and restaurant are owned and managed by the same group. There was a proposal to create a U-NAP distribution for the restaurant itself. Should there be any concerns regarding a U-NAP issue with the hotel given that they share the same physical address and the same URL? The Restaurant has it own landing page within the domain. It does not have building specific identifier like a suite number. Please advise if a U-NAP distribution for the restaurant will cause a material impact on the Hotel's U-NAP purity.
Image & Video Optimization | | JohnJimenez0 -
What are you most concerned about or interested in for Local Search?
Hi All, I'm speaking to a local SEO meetup at the end of this month. If you were attending (hypothetically), what would you be most interested in hearing about for local search? The audience is a mix of SEO professionals, web developers, internet marketers, and business owners. I suspect that there will be a number of people who understand the foundations of SEO, though not all of them will be practiced at implementing it. I believe the number of people who get really indepth with Local is quite small. At the moment, I'm thinking about covering things such as: The local search universe in general--which data sources are doing what these days, where it's heading. Google Local+ recent changes Migration to Local+, data cleanup, merging (or not merging!), and other Local+ nuances Current ranking factors, and where I think they're going. I'd love to hear, and greatly appreciate, any ideas you might have. Cheers, Bede
Image & Video Optimization | | BedeFahey0 -
Google Local Page Not Showing in Search Results
Hi! I am having an issue with our business's Google+/Local/Places/whatever-the-heck-you-call-it-these-days page not showing up in search results. I work for a company called Nexxtep Technology Services. We are located in Valdosta, GA. We have a Google+ page that's filled out nicely and I would love it if it would show up next to the search results when you search "nexxtep technology services" or "nexxtep valdosta" in Google. For some reason, it does not. I have a feeling what might be a source of the issue...we have developed and hosted websites for clients, and we used to put a link to our site in the footer. Now, I know that's not a good thing to do. We don't do that anymore, and I have since removed those links from existing sites. I removed them almost 6 weeks ago now. Should I give Google a little more time to crawl these sites again? Any guidance would be tremendously appreciated. Thank you for your help!
Image & Video Optimization | | nexxtep0 -
Video hosting - SEO
Hi, We host all of our videos on You Tube and use embedded links to display on our site. When people search keywords related to our videos they are linking back to You Tube through SERPs. Is there a way link SERPs to websites instead of You Tube? Any advice would be appreciated. Sean
Image & Video Optimization | | DonaldRussell0 -
Does adding the city to your business name in a Places page help or harm Local SEO?
Hi, All! Another local SEO question... For one of our clients, the title on their Place page is <official business="" name=""><city>. Example: John's Sporting Goods Detroit. Now, most citations will say "John's Sporting Goods." Is having "Detroit" as part of the business name in Places problematic (NAP inconsistency) and we should remove it, or is it helpful for ranking for "sporting goods detroit" or is it neither?</city></official> Thanks! Aviva
Image & Video Optimization | | debi_zyx0 -
Does position in local directories effect google detecting citations?
There are a lot of local directories that i have seen google pull citations from. Quite often i see people putting listings in these directories prefixed by several "A"s, so that they will appear on the first page of the list. Just how deep does google crawl through the pages of these lists? will google actually crawl through all the pages? Some of these directories offer paid listings that appear at the top of the directory. We have been considering purchasing some of these paid positions, so that google would be more likely to pickup our citations. In one case i have noticed a directory: shopincities.com do something that spiked my interest. Basically, if you start clicking through the different pages of a category, the site will block you after 3 or 4 pages in. It serves you an error saying that you are not human. In my mind this is to prevent google from fully crawling their whole list, so that the people who pay for the top positions are picked up, and the people who don't pay, even though their profiles are listed there, never get crawled by google. So would you pay for position on these directories? here are some examples: http://www.shopincities.com
Image & Video Optimization | | adriandg
http://www.411.ca
http://www.goldbook.com
http://www.n49.ca
http://torontodirect.com
http://www.yellowpages.com Or would you just throw a whole bunch of A's infront of your business name so you appear on the first page of listings? Or do you belive it doesn't matter how deep you are in the listings, and with enough time google will find it regardless and credit it as a citation?0 -
Multi-site listings in Google Local/Place pages
I've had problems with a client that is a local medical center with multiple sites/addresses. We've created a Place Page for each location and linked it to the location page on the client's website that matches the address on the Place page. But that means we're not linking to the medical center's home page -- and Google Places doesn't like that. I know this because after we'd owner-verified each Place Page, Google went in and just changed the website link that was a deep link to a location page and replaced it with a link to the home page. But now there's not an address match. How should we handle this? Related question: Does it make sense to claim a separate listing in Yelp and other local directories for each of the separate locations since they each have a unique address? Will Yelp & other local directories allow for links to non-home pages on the client's website?
Image & Video Optimization | | DenisL0