[A Colorful World]

With all the guys out there with web sites, I guess the number one quest, is to get your site to rank on Google and Yahoo for your keywords and get traffic and calls. I talking about natural rankings not payed rankings. Have you all considered posting links on your sites to others on this forum? Inbound links to your site from other sites in your industry (or relevant links) help your site rank in the search engines. Now I know what some of you are thinking why would I put up a link to a competitors site but, do you consider a contractor in another state really a competitor? I know for myself working in NJ if I were to put up a link to a guy in Texas it would not affect my business at all. I don't do much work more than 75 miles out of my area (like none). I would however benefit from the inbound link and so would he. The more you get the better and the more relevant the link the better. Any thoughts?

 

[A Colorful World]

I guess I should follow this up with if you are not sure what I'm talking about don't be affrad to ask. There are no stupid questions, just jump right in and ask.

 

[PressurePros]

Its a good idea. The guys in my industry all exchange links.

 

[A Colorful World]

Ken, I just looked at your site it's awesome!

Where are your links to the other sites? I don't see a link from your home page to outbound links, to other businesses in your industry. I am talking about a links page. Google is picking up 239 links to your site right now. Only 11 are relevant the others are omitted. You and me both need to move that number up to get our sites to move up in the rankings. That's the whole reason for my post. Getting more links to show up in Google and getting more rankings with the help of those links.

 

[PressurePros]

Thanks, I appreciate the compliment. The site is undergoing a bit of an overhaul with a links page being added. For the time being all of my reciprocal links come from my products company website.

Google's link listing is never accurate. Often times they will show you as having three inlinks. If you use a program called Google analytics you will see you true inlinks. You can see your real links by going on yahoo and, in the search bar type, link:www.yoursite.com. I show 2400 inlinks to the PP site, and over 5000 inlinks to Restore-A-Deck.

Do a search for:

pressure washing pa
pressure washing companies pa
house washing pa
deck cleaning pa
deck staining pa
concrete cleaning pa

Actually anything you can think of that has to do with my service from PA on down to every local county and township, I should rank #1 through #3.

I am fairly serious about ranking and use blogs, articles, link exhcnages, message board signatures, diectory submission programs etc to gain ranking.

 

[A Colorful World]

Hey Ken,
I was looking at your rankings tonight in Google and man very impressive! To rank #1 on "pressure washing companies pa" out of over 2,000,000 is great. The links in Google however will never be as much as in Yahoo. The two companies us different algorithms. Yahoo counts all back links to your site and Google only gives you credit for the ones it feels are relevant. All others will not show in Google. Then it goes deeper in the fact that they also look at the page rank of the back links and other factors that Yahoo just doesn't consider. Anyway the point is getting relevant back links. I'm a little surprised more guys haven't jumped in on this and asked some questions. It seems like a free way to get relevant back links to your site that Google should pick up, and help improve natural rankings and thus improve traffic to your site and thus lead to more phone calls for jobs!

Come on guys jump in here get some questions going!

 

[PressurePros]

The links you are looking at in Google are not all the links indexed in Google. Sign up for Google's webmaster tools if you have not already. It will allow you to customize the way the Google bots hit your site. You'll be able to see exactly what the Google bot sees. I know what you are saying about the difference between Google and Yahoo. Google is a bit more picky. For instance of the 5000 or so inlinks to my RAD site, Google shows less. By what you are looking at it may show 150 or so. here is what Google really sees as pasted from my WM tools page.

All pages (total links)1851http://www.restore-a-deck.com/ 1224
http://www.restore-a-deck.com/FAQ.html 3
http://www.restore-a-deck.com/cleaningcontractors.html 488
http://www.restore-a-deck.com/directions.html 3
http://www.restore-a-deck.com/messageboard.html 6
http://www.restore-a-deck.com/orderproduct.html 7
http://www.restore-a-deck.com/pressurewash.html 104
http://www.restore-a-deck.com/stain.html 8
http://www.restore-a-deck.com/woodzotic.html 8
All pages (total links)1851

 

[Tonyg]

I made some changes to my site so I expect it to be ready next week. This site is essentially a duplicate of another web site that I have that has a PR5 ranking. I know time has a lot to do with it as well, since the other site is 5yrs old, but I signed up for or resitered with as many directories as I could find. I will be doing the same with the new paint site.

My concern/question is about including the links on posts in these forums. I really do not want any customers tracking me or my company back to these forums. When I originally signed up in Paint Talk (as well as others) last year I had listed both my name and company and now when I do a search for either a forum pops up in the 1st or 2nd position. Currently my company is listed as an avatar and my name or email is not public fo that reason. Now Paint Talk is definitely more professional than others that I participate in but I wouldn't want much of the discussion to be public.

Does'nt posting your link in all posts bring up TOO much information, or atleast the pages that you would not want your potential customers to find along with your site? Every company that I deal with, and many customers, I always do a google search to get some history on them. It helps tremendously in sales. I have to assume that my customers may do the same thing before they sink 5k in a paint contractor.

 

[bikerboy]

I would however benefit from the inbound link and so would he. The more you get the better and the more relevant the link the better. Any thoughts?

I had thought about this before but figured people would laugh at me. If you are really interested in this let me know, I'd be willing to do it. Am getting ready to make a few changes to my site.

 

[bikerboy]

My concern/question is about including the links on posts in these forums. I really do not want any customers tracking me or my company back to these forums. When I originally signed up in Paint Talk (as well as others) last year I had listed both my name and company and now when I do a search for either a forum pops up in the 1st or 2nd position. Currently my company is listed as an avatar and my name or email is not public fo that reason. Now Paint Talk is definitely more professional than others that I participate in but I wouldn't want much of the discussion to be public.

Does'nt posting your link in all posts bring up TOO much information, or atleast the pages that you would not want your potential customers to find along with your site? Every company that I deal with, and many customers, I always do a google search to get some history on them. It helps tremendously in sales. I have to assume that my customers may do the same thing before they sink 5k in a paint contractor.

Wow I never thought about that. And since reading your post I punched in my website and Bam, first was an ad on craigslist, followed by a link to a post on Paintalk. Am going to change my signature on here right after finishing this post. Thanks for enlightening me.

:notworthy:

 

[Alex PCI]

Hey Ken,
What does it take to get your site up top like that besides money. Does one company handle that or do you work with many. I have a company that keeps me up top only for a while, enough time to get a certain amount of hits. Once my quota is reached you cant find my site till the next month

 

[PressurePros]

Alex, there is a company that does the most incredible work with SEO. They are called WebFirst Creations. It does depend on how much you are willing to spend. Local searches (smaller cities, townships) are easy to dominate. You just link everywhere you can and do exchanges with other contractors. They have been working with a few contractor buddies of mine and in a very short time these guys are ranking top five first page for words like flooring, decks, and vinyl windows.

Using a link to your website in your signature is a double edged sword.It will help rank and drive traffic direct but yes, every time you type you have to consider the consequences of off the wall comments. They can come back to bite you.

 

[A Colorful World]

Hey guys, sorry I dropped out of the thread but, I’ve been down with the flu for the last week or so. It kicked my butt. I'm getting back to the living now and want you guys to email me if you would like to do a link exchange.
You can reach me @ [email protected]

Let's get it going!!