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SEO/Building Backlinks to get my RW site noticed?
Tapdance42
Posts: 187Members
in Questions
Hi all,
I've spent the past six months building a site for my business with Rapidweaver 5. I'm really pleased with how the site turned out, but my problem now (which is a BIG problem for a new business!) is that nobody can find it.
I read a lot of the threads on this forum about SEO and have done my best to implement the things that were suggested, but when I search by important keywords in Google, my site doesn't come up at all. (Well, I clicked through the first 25 pages of results--I guess I come up eventually, but if I'm not on the first few pages I'll never be found! Even things that have nothing to do with the keywords seem to come up, but not my site.) I know that Google is crawling my site because when I put in the exact name of the business I come up second. That's okay, but new customers aren't going to KNOW the name of my business--I need to come up in a keyword search.
I understand that some of this just takes time, but are there any additional things I can do to my RW site to help speed things along? I already have the Sitemap plugin, which I heard is supposed to help. Are there any others?
From what I understand "backlinks" are an important part of Google ranking, too, although I'm not sure exactly how this works. I thought it just meant links to my site from other places, but I have quite a few of those--friends' pages, social networking sites, sites like Yelp and Merchant Circle, etc.--and yet when I try a backlink checker it says zero backlinks found.
If it's helpful, the url for my site is: www.seeknewyorkllc.com.
Any advice?
I've spent the past six months building a site for my business with Rapidweaver 5. I'm really pleased with how the site turned out, but my problem now (which is a BIG problem for a new business!) is that nobody can find it.
I read a lot of the threads on this forum about SEO and have done my best to implement the things that were suggested, but when I search by important keywords in Google, my site doesn't come up at all. (Well, I clicked through the first 25 pages of results--I guess I come up eventually, but if I'm not on the first few pages I'll never be found! Even things that have nothing to do with the keywords seem to come up, but not my site.) I know that Google is crawling my site because when I put in the exact name of the business I come up second. That's okay, but new customers aren't going to KNOW the name of my business--I need to come up in a keyword search.
I understand that some of this just takes time, but are there any additional things I can do to my RW site to help speed things along? I already have the Sitemap plugin, which I heard is supposed to help. Are there any others?
From what I understand "backlinks" are an important part of Google ranking, too, although I'm not sure exactly how this works. I thought it just meant links to my site from other places, but I have quite a few of those--friends' pages, social networking sites, sites like Yelp and Merchant Circle, etc.--and yet when I try a backlink checker it says zero backlinks found.
If it's helpful, the url for my site is: www.seeknewyorkllc.com.
Any advice?
Comments
SEO is a huge topic but I will throw out a few ideas.
Starting with your last comment, don't trust backlink checkers implicitly. Google is notoriously secretive about the backlinks it has found, for example. But you should be able to see in the stats at your webhost (I use webalizer for this) where your viewers are coming from.
Now a bit about your site itself. It is nice.... but I gotta say that your entry page with the definition of seek on it is probably not doing you a bit of good. You have only a few seconds to catch the attention of anyone who does find your site and in those few seconds they need to know what your site is about. That page doesn't give that. Now I am VERY new to RW, like a couple of weeks, but have been building sites since the late 90s, and pages with Enter were popular in that more leisurely time. Clicking through recently to quite a few RW sites as I get up to speed on what it can do, I have seen more Enter pages than probably in the past year otherwise!
Because you have a local business, even though a lot of your customers would be from out of town, there is a lot you can do. Is your business in Google maps... uhh, that's not the name... the thing that gets your business listed in gg maps, maybe you know what I mean or someone else can help out...
Also, there have got to be a ton of NYC links, neighborhood directories, etc., that you could submit to.
Youtube is a great way to drive traffic. The very first video I put up there several years ago took off and has had over 200,000 views. Regularly someone complains in the comments that my voice is too soft, and I just reply yes, I know better NOW. But none of my other videos have ever done so well again! Still, they are excellent for driving traffic. You can make Keynote slideshows, that's how I do a lot of mine.
There's a lot to seo but those are a few ideas. You never know what is going to be the most effective, so try some of this and some of that!
http://www.hartworks.com
http://www.ragesw.com/videos/rapidweaver-seo.html
You could try some articles at ezinearticles -- they are not as effective as they once were but are still worth the time. You could link to your site in your link area there, with a less competitive keyword.
Have you tried Youtube?
http://www.hartworks.com
So if you work in say Devon ,,,,, the you could say ..... fire eater devon, devon fire eater, the best fire eater in Devon, so if you work in Devon you will get a much better chance if someone wants a local fire eater plus ive found the browser page title great for seo , locally you should be able to crack it quite well, the bigger the are you ant to cover the more work you will have to put in.
Ive spoken to several seo experts recently and some swear by back links, someone else says he can do without.
Regional searching is king if your are a smaller business.
Please just mail me if i can help.
Obviously u are not a fire eater!! or are you ?
It's important for me to come up when someone Googles "new york shopping tours," so that's what I'm concentrating on. Right now I'm at the bottom of page 19