internet searches w/ and wo/ a city after it.

[steve g]

I know this can vary widely probably depending on the area and the search term. I was wondering if there is a general rule of thumb as to what % of people type in just say "carpet cleaning" or "carpet cleaning aptos" or "carpet cleaning boston" it seems like nearly all the map listings have gone away for my keywords and now this area must be slugged out with organic searches and organic SEO. and if you don't attach a keyword you get big national companies that do nothing but have a room full of geeks doing SEO all day everyday. is there a way to say this % of people generally don't attach a place with the keywords and this many do??

 

[FredC]

most folks will narrow the search....simply out of habit....or a selection from google instant

still to cover all the bases you target just "carpet cleaning", "water damage" etc in addition to the long tails (varying the anchor text in the backlinking campaign)

this will likely get you displayed on the map when the keywords are searched.....breaking into organics for those words however requires a relatively large backlinking campaign.................

for instance a certain San Diego company whose owner also does seo will show in the organics on the first page for "carpet cleaning"............he has around 50k backlinks......

getting higher than he is now would take far more work though................to compete with the backlinks, indexed content, etc of the "big boys"



and there are "tricks" to getting the map to display....your seo guy could probably do it for you.....but at this point there is no reason to


the main reason the map is not displaying now.....is the low search volume for your keywords.......put "water damage salt lake" into the google adwords tool and see how many searches there are

 

[ACE]

Google places pisses me off.

Allot of smaller operations are outside of city limits because many cities have ordinances prohibiting doing business out of the home.

 

[FredC]

Google places pisses me off.

Allot of smaller operations are outside of city limits because many cities have ordinances prohibiting doing business out of the home.

edit: I take that back (wrong Lawrence CC)

 

[boazcan]

Speaking of backlinks again. I found a few from a competitor who has owned the top ranks for several years around here. They are not what I was expecting. I am trying to learn this stuff, but I may be starting to show my age on this.

http://www.urlchief.com/
http://www.zingery.com/submit.php?c=504
http://www.samsdirectory.com/societ.../education/http:/home/cleaning_services_home/
http://www.insomnia-lublin.pl/
http://cruxbookmarks.com/story.php?id=5395
http://www.power-backlink.com.ar/House___Garden/Home_Improvement/?p=5

 

[FredC]

no comment..............

!gotcha!



but you did remind me that I may be showing my age also....forgetting to return emails.....

 

[The Great Oz]

80%.

That's why Google built the map search and Google local.

 

[boazcan]

Fred - how long do you think it would take a novice to obtain 2000 backlinks?

 

[FredC]

Fred - how long do you think it would take a novice to obtain 2000 backlinks?

a novice? Well...you have obviously been investigating your competitors backlinks to some extent.....once it "clicks" if you start replicating it (techniques...not necessarily the links themselves)at a steady pace it shouldn't take too long


it was easier for novices when yahoo site explorer was still around......thing could just be copied....now the men are being separated from the boys...

still....like everything else.....there is "more to it than that".......and their are "traps" that novices are more likely to fall into


and then the are $hortcuts

 

[steve g]

the adwords tool is quite useful, once again fred seems to be the guru about all this stuff.