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Can put up a site but know no SEO


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I'm new to web development, but I do presently run my own lawn service business with my wife.  Getting customers is the hardest part, of probably most businesses. 

From what I have heard and tried myself, creating content is the best way to get customers. First off you need a site, then you need to optimize it for SEO, meta tags, keywords, relevant terms in the text of the site.  You'll need to set up Google My Business to recognize it.  Including a blog on the site for you to publish short articles and images would help.  You'll also want to set up a Facebook page for the business, and accounts through Twitter, Instagram, Google+.  Videos on Youtube would also help.  All of this stuff will point back to your site and should slowly increase your ranking on Google. 

These are just some of the basics.  You'll have to do some other things to get the flow of customers started. Try getting on Upwork, maybe try Craigslist, Youtube videos giving advise to non-techies about websites, with a little helpful self-promotion, would probably be a good way to start funneling people to your site. Stef has some courses on this stuff.  I haven't tried them yet, still learning the basics of web dev.  John Morris on also has a TON of videos about getting customers through Upwork, you might check those out.

I have a close friend who works for a SEO service firm.  I plan to eventually give them a shot once I start the ball rolling.  He says they are very good.

This is kinda my general game plan anyways. 

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Good SEO is simple these days:

  1. Build websites using modern techniques. I teach that in my web design and development courses, so you are covered there. 
  2. The content in the sites, should contain a real distribution of keywords for the terms that people use to search.
  3. How a social presence that is topical and points back to your site. 
  4. Use multi media with metadata that is tagged with keywords appropriate to the subject. 

Stef

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8 hours ago, KeithHunt said:

From what I have heard and tried myself, creating content is the best way to get customers. First off you need a site, then you need to optimize it for SEO, meta tags, keywords, relevant terms in the text of the site.  You'll need to set up Google My Business to recognize it.  Including a blog on the site for you to publish short articles and images would help.  You'll also want to set up a Facebook page for the business, and accounts through Twitter, Instagram, Google+.  Videos on Youtube would also help.  All of this stuff will point back to your site and should slowly increase your ranking on Google.

Good stuff. 

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Thanks for your replies. But when you have a customer who says ok build this 10 page site and "I want it to rank well in Google", how should you deal with that. Sure I can build the site add meta tags along with the correct semantic markup, make use of embedded span tags within headlines, alt tags for images / media, maybe even recommend some social media accounts or an XML sitemap.  Avoid key stuffing or poor quality / paid for backlinks  but there's got to more to ranking well in Google than that. 

@Stef Just checked out the link to. your web dev course, does the CSS portion utilise SCSS and or mixins? Couldn't see either in the table of contents?

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Doing On-Page SEO is not that difficult. But Off-Page SEO is little difficult. Getting quality backlinks to your site is difficult sometimes. Moreover backlinks is the most important factor for ranking. No matter how good is your On-page optimization you need backlink to rank.  Focus on your content if you have great content it will help you in getting backlinks.

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On 1/28/2019 at 10:59 AM, DangerousDave said:

Thanks for your replies. But when you have a customer who says ok build this 10 page site and "I want it to rank well in Google", how should you deal with that. Sure I can build the site add meta tags along with the correct semantic markup, make use of embedded span tags within headlines, alt tags for images / media, maybe even recommend some social media accounts or an XML sitemap.  Avoid key stuffing or poor quality / paid for backlinks  but there's got to more to ranking well in Google than that. 

@Stef Just checked out the link to. your web dev course, does the CSS portion utilise SCSS and or mixins? Couldn't see either in the table of contents?

You tell them that you are a web developer, not an SEO consultant. Go hire an SEO consultant. If they want you to do it, there's an extra charge - get them to pay you a monthly retainer to manage their SEO needs. If they don't like the results they can cancel anytime.

This falls into the bracket of managing customer expectations. Also putting people off getting you do silly work. If you don't want to do it, put your price up so they don't ask you to do it... or you're happy to do it because you're getting paid well.

 

 

Edited by DavidCampbell
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  • 6 months later...

If you are a freelancer, then you should not make a site that ranks well in search results. You just create a site and define meta tags and semantics, but in order for the site to rank well, you need to replenish it with content (high-quality and unique). You need to explain this to your customers.

There are many sites, and search results are one for each keyword.

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If you want to rank your website your onsite should be good because if your on-page is good and according to Google guidelines you can rank your website but for that, your have to select low competition and medium competition. Always use longtail keywords like if you provide website development then you can use "website development services provider". Always use your target keywords in URL, title, and meta description. Maintain your keywords density which is 1% to 2% which is according to google guidelines and always uses unique content don't post copied content because google always values the unique content. Whenever you post content on your website your title is unique and attractive so you can attract more people towards your website.

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