google question

[huggytree]

so when you type in my home town and Plumber I come right up on google maps

when I type in my home town and the word WATER HEATER im no where...instead there are tons of other plumbers and NONE are even in my hometown....how do they get listed under those keywords when their google maps location is 20 miles away and im 0 miles away.....just trying to understand how they did it?

[Brian Altenhofel]

Did your previous site have any mention of water heaters?

[huggytree]

yes it did

and it also had my hometown in it too

[Wozcreative]

If you have your site optimized for SEO, then it can take some time.. mine used to be on page 7 when googling "mississauga graphic designer" the week i updated the website. I am now on page 2 after some time.

[painperdu]

Your new site looks to be well SEO'd for "water heater"; it'll just take a little time for google to index it.

You just need to keep up the regular SEO stuff and it'll eventually get picked up.

[Brian Altenhofel]

Something that needs to be done, by the way, is setting up 301 redirects from any old URLs to their new URL if it's changed.

For example, when I do the following search - https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Awaukeshaplumbing.com - I find a link to a services.php page that no longer exists. That should be redirected to /services/. Without redirecting it, it eventually expires as Google sees that it's no longer exists and it loses all of it's link juice. If the old URL is 301 redirected to the new URL, the link juice passes to the new page and Google de-indexes the old page.

[Iconiplex]

There is now Google+ Local SEO, though I doubt all of your competitors are doing so, so your G+ listing will likely rank naturally over time. However, you may want to take a look at your G+ listing and see if there is anything you can do to improve the water heater optimization through use of photos, videos, and keyword placement where applicable.

[chrismarklee]

I use that logic too. If I was a local plumber, my key anchor words with be "Plumber City" and "City Plumber". My SEO strategy is based on this. I have used other anchor words to add variety and I do link not just to my main page.

[marrick]

I think you should build up citations to that product or keyword if you haven't done it yet. I just don't really know if water heaters are correlated with plumbers. But most of the time building up your local presence for that specific product will give you a good chance of making it to the first page.

[huggytree]

I have a separate website for my hometown MukwonagoPlumbing.com ...its been live now for 10-14 days....it isn't anywhere on google...my normal website comes up before im able to find it.....it makes no sense, so I can only assume google hasn't done something yet and its sitting there doing nothing

I have tried to get it listed under google maps as a separate business and that went no where....any tips to get it listed under maps even though its really not a different business, just a different website? im considering using a friends address

[tallen]

If there are no links from any other known sites to your new site, Google is not going to know about it (unless you submit it via webmaster tools).

[Freelancier]

Google also can detect web sites that are mirrors of other web sites and might ignore it because of that. And, yes, unless you've set up the google webmaster tools to tell it where your site is, it's unlikely Google will easily find it.

[billbenson]

Not sure what you are doing huggy. If you have a site that is a mirror of another site, Google probably won't index it well. Beyond that, sites with good information take time to 'mature' and thus rank with google. You should be using your old URL for you new site if you want to rank quickly. You shouldn't use duplicate information on two different URL's. G doesn't really like that.

[chrismarklee]

Anchor key words can solve this, but it takes tons of hours to leave links. I just focus on a few key anchor words. If you want more than the basic anchor words, it will take more time doing back links I do income taxes part time for locals and I spend 4 hours a day doing SEO and social media now

[huggytree]

my 2nd website is just a mini site ....there's another plumber out there that has a website for every city....he's ranking #1-2 in most searches....im copying him for my hometown...

it works VERY well for him....so far its a 0 for me

[billbenson]

my 2nd website is just a mini site ....there's another plumber out there that has a website for every city....he's ranking #1-2 in most searches....im copying him for my hometown...

it works VERY well for him....so far its a 0 for me

That's not necessarily a bad strategy. You just don't want dup content. There are others here that are more knowledgeable on this subject than I am however. I'd defer to them.

[Brian Altenhofel]

Google also can detect web sites that are mirrors of other web sites and might ignore it because of that. And, yes, unless you've set up the google webmaster tools to tell it where your site is, it's unlikely Google will easily find it.

This.

There are two things you want to avoid if you're doing multiple sites for a single business: duplicate content, and linking to the same C-block.

First priority is duplicate content. What you're actually looking for is a landing page with content specifically tailored to a certain target audience (in this case, a certain city). You don't want to mirror your site here. You want the content of the landing page to be absolutely unique.

Second is link building. If two sites are located on the same C-block, Google likely will discount any link between them and possibly penalize them. A C-block is an IP address where the fourth octet is the only difference. There are plenty of studies out there that show a very, very strong correlation between C-block diversity and strength of rankings. In your case, both of your sites are even on the same server.

However, this bigger problem is your main site doesn't have anything really coming into it. I highly recommend taking a look at this tool. Open Site Explorer (http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=www.waukeshaplumbing.com)

Compare to your competitor's website to see what they are doing to try to get links coming in from the same places as them, and also consider similar sites that they've missed. For what I've needed (I don't do a lot of off-site SEO - I leave that to others) the free information is good enough.

[VeritasCustom]

Patience isn't something I was blessed with, but it sure does pay off. After a while I rank #1 on Google for "Menifee Screen Printing". All I did was optimize my site for seo and add my business to all the business directories. Within a few months I was at the top. I'm sure you could do the same!