I want to show you an example of what I would do if I was promoting a plumbing business in or near Parramatta. This example works for pretty much any business small or large.
First I’d do a Google Search on the most competitive phrase in your industry for your product or service.
For example “Plumber Parramatta”
(I suggest, while you read this post, that you follow along with me by opening a new page and search Google yourself)
Competing Pages: 7,440 – This is good news, this phrase will be easy to rank a new page on page one
I would add your business to Local Search which is the map you can see in the Google search results (See my post ‘Google Maps Local Business Listing‘)
Let’s look at the rest of the listings that are showing up naturally
1. www.plumberparramatta.com
This Plumber has set up a well keyword targeted URL and keyword phrases and has been rewarded by Google for it. There is not much you can do with this, so let’s move on.
2. www.drdrip.com.au/plumbing-sydney/parramatta.php
Here is another company with a well keyword targeted page, actually, what they’ve done looks like keyword staffing (repeating the same phrase too many times on a page), sometimes Google punishes sites for this kind of thing, but not so for Dr. Drip. There is not much you can do with this other than join their team, so let’s move on once more.
3. www.plumber-parramatta.street-directory.com.au
Another really badly keyword stuffed page, but it’s worked for them.
This listing is from a website called www.street-directory.com.au which offers a paid listing and pretty good search results as you can see, with it showing up for ‘plumbers paramatta’. The cost is $1 per day, which over a year costs $365.
I would consider listing with them for a month and see how it goes and I’d list for suburbs surround Parramatta too.
4. plumbersparramatta.com.au/tag/plumber-paramatta
This is a very new site showing copyright 2011 at the bottom of the page and it’s already ranked 4th position on Google. I’m starting to get the impression that to rank for this keyword is very easy, as our initial competing pages results showed us.
5. plumbersparramatta.com.au/plumbers-parramatta-need-a-plumber-in-parramatta-fast.html
This is the same website as 4. Two pages on page 1 is great. This is because of the blog nature of their site, it’s well structured so Google loves that kind of thing.
6. www.hotfrog.com.au/Products/Plumber-Parramatta
Hot Frog is a business services directory that is free to add your business listing to – you need to be in this no question.
7. www.mrh2o.com.au/index.php/plumber-services/plumber-parramatta
A Sydney-wide company with a large website and relevant keywords, again, not much we can do here.
8. www.homebuildersaustralia.com.au/plumbers-parramatta.html
For $330 for 12 months you can be on this website. This is a great website to be listed on for the volume of visitors you’d get for different search terms even though the keyword stuffing is crazy.
9. plumbersparramatta.net.au
Another private company with a great URL and the right with the keywords.
10. http://www.bensplumbing.com.au/tag/plumber-parramatta
Another private URL.
OK, so these results didn’t return many places to list your website for free, only one, hotfrog.
Page 2 of this search will show you many free places to list which you can look through for yourself to see what I mean.
It’s interesting that I did this search 2 years ago and it returned about 5 directories and 2 broken links for the search term “Plumbers Parramatta”. How quickly things change! To see that article from 2009 Click Here
But, if you’re a plumber in Parramatta I could have your website ranked on page one in 1 – 2 months no worries.
