I'd like to make over your website.
- Thread starter 602rwtq
- Start date
602rwtq said:
Robert, good point here... I find that most people make the mistake of focusing on appearance first and traffic second. I believe this is backwards. Traffice is more important than "flash" and conversion to sale is the most important tasks of all.
- Simple
- Good information that's organized and easy to find
- Indexed by search engines and directories
- Clear call to action that turns visitors into leads/sales
Once this is accomplish... go for the looks!
:hifive:
Okay, let's start with something that you should all do during this slow holiday week: create a Google Local Business entry.
Have you ever searched for local businesses ("Boston electrician") and wondered why certain businesses appear near a map on the first page? It's because they created a Google Local Business entry. It's free, and it's a method Google uses to recommend small businesses in your local area.
Take a look at the results for the search "Portland Car Detailing."
The business with 65 reviews is the busiest shop in Portland largely because of its Google presence. Getting a listing on Google Local and getting lots of positive reviews has created a momentum that is almost impossible to stop.
Why do certain businesses reach page one? Three reasons: age of directory entry, number of reviews, and search engine ranking. We can work on getting your entry to the first page, but the first step is to create the entry in the first place.
Okay. Here's how to create your Google Local Business entry, step by step:
1. Go to https://www.google.com/accounts/ and click on "Create an Account Now."
2. Follow the directions to create an account.
3. Once your account is created, go to https://www.google.com/accounts/ and log in with the account information you created in step 1.
4. Once logged in, go to Google.com/LocalBusinessCenter
5. Click Add New Business.
6. Complete your contact information. If you are a mobile business, do not put your home address under Address. Instead, put an address at the center of the city you service most. So, if you live 20 min. outside of Chicago and put your home address you will not appear for the search "Chicago car detailing." Mobile businesses should mark the center of their service area as their address.
7. Under "Category" be sure to type in Car Detailing Service (exactly as I typed it there, with capitals). I also like to type in Car Wash, as car wash shoppers are often detail buyers.
8. Enter your hours of business, payment methods, and photos of your business if you have them. A photo of a car you finished is a good thing to upload, as Google prefers businesses that provide photos.
9. Google will call the phone number you list and give you a verification number. Once the code is entered, the listing will go live within 24 hours.
If I were opening a new shop or moving to a new town, the first thing I would do is create a Google Local Business entry. It's a free way to get on the first page of Google in the city you service. That's a lot of people you've just presented yourself to, because as you know, this Google thing has quite a following.
Have you ever searched for local businesses ("Boston electrician") and wondered why certain businesses appear near a map on the first page? It's because they created a Google Local Business entry. It's free, and it's a method Google uses to recommend small businesses in your local area.
Take a look at the results for the search "Portland Car Detailing."
The business with 65 reviews is the busiest shop in Portland largely because of its Google presence. Getting a listing on Google Local and getting lots of positive reviews has created a momentum that is almost impossible to stop.
Why do certain businesses reach page one? Three reasons: age of directory entry, number of reviews, and search engine ranking. We can work on getting your entry to the first page, but the first step is to create the entry in the first place.
Okay. Here's how to create your Google Local Business entry, step by step:
1. Go to https://www.google.com/accounts/ and click on "Create an Account Now."
2. Follow the directions to create an account.
3. Once your account is created, go to https://www.google.com/accounts/ and log in with the account information you created in step 1.
4. Once logged in, go to Google.com/LocalBusinessCenter
5. Click Add New Business.
6. Complete your contact information. If you are a mobile business, do not put your home address under Address. Instead, put an address at the center of the city you service most. So, if you live 20 min. outside of Chicago and put your home address you will not appear for the search "Chicago car detailing." Mobile businesses should mark the center of their service area as their address.
7. Under "Category" be sure to type in Car Detailing Service (exactly as I typed it there, with capitals). I also like to type in Car Wash, as car wash shoppers are often detail buyers.
8. Enter your hours of business, payment methods, and photos of your business if you have them. A photo of a car you finished is a good thing to upload, as Google prefers businesses that provide photos.
9. Google will call the phone number you list and give you a verification number. Once the code is entered, the listing will go live within 24 hours.
If I were opening a new shop or moving to a new town, the first thing I would do is create a Google Local Business entry. It's a free way to get on the first page of Google in the city you service. That's a lot of people you've just presented yourself to, because as you know, this Google thing has quite a following.
Thanks for all the PMs.
I think I have decided on which site to make over and will begin soon with the owner's permission.
Looking over your sites, I saw some of the same problems over and over.
Some of these can be corrected quickly by you or your web designer:
1. Not including your email and phone number at the top of every page. Don't make the customer work to find this information.
2. Not including the cities you service in your titles and the content of your site. The holy grail of SEO is to appear on the first page of Google for [your city] [your service]. Thus, if you live in Austin, your goal should be to be on the first page for the search term "Austin auto detailing." Most of the sites I saw did not mention the city or cities that the company services. It's impossible to get listed for search terms when the search terms themselves don't appear anywhere on your website. Ideally, the title of every web page (this appears at the very top of your browser next to the Internet Explorer or Firefox icon) on your site should have the terms "[Your City] auto detailing." And as a general rule, this phrase should compose about 5% of the content of your site.
3. Poor sales pitch on home page. I'm going to share with you a fact about Internet marketing that you should never, ever forget: more than half of your visitors will never click beyond your home page. That's right...more than half of all visitors to commercial websites never read beyond the main "home page." All the work you put into your gallery, and action photos of you working a buffer behind your back are a waste if you cann't convince your readers to move on. Thus, you HAVE to start selling from the very front page. Give them reasons to read on.
4. Making the visitor work too hard. Photos of your work, your prices, and your services should be easily accessible. Burying them in illogical menu and grouping your photos in complicated flash applications is going to frustrate a lot of your users and cause them to click away from your site.
I think I have decided on which site to make over and will begin soon with the owner's permission.
Looking over your sites, I saw some of the same problems over and over.
Some of these can be corrected quickly by you or your web designer:
1. Not including your email and phone number at the top of every page. Don't make the customer work to find this information.
2. Not including the cities you service in your titles and the content of your site. The holy grail of SEO is to appear on the first page of Google for [your city] [your service]. Thus, if you live in Austin, your goal should be to be on the first page for the search term "Austin auto detailing." Most of the sites I saw did not mention the city or cities that the company services. It's impossible to get listed for search terms when the search terms themselves don't appear anywhere on your website. Ideally, the title of every web page (this appears at the very top of your browser next to the Internet Explorer or Firefox icon) on your site should have the terms "[Your City] auto detailing." And as a general rule, this phrase should compose about 5% of the content of your site.
3. Poor sales pitch on home page. I'm going to share with you a fact about Internet marketing that you should never, ever forget: more than half of your visitors will never click beyond your home page. That's right...more than half of all visitors to commercial websites never read beyond the main "home page." All the work you put into your gallery, and action photos of you working a buffer behind your back are a waste if you cann't convince your readers to move on. Thus, you HAVE to start selling from the very front page. Give them reasons to read on.
4. Making the visitor work too hard. Photos of your work, your prices, and your services should be easily accessible. Burying them in illogical menu and grouping your photos in complicated flash applications is going to frustrate a lot of your users and cause them to click away from your site.
602rwtq said:
I have a fantastic book by Steve Krug called Don't Make Me Think.
If you have a website, or you're planning to create one, you need this book:
Amazon.com: Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd Edition (9780321344755): Steve Krug: Books
Jakerooni recently made a small change to his site that got him on the first page of google.
Here's what he did. His site used to have the title "Welcome to Bright Dynamics Detailing." But customers don't search for "Bright Dynamics Detailing." They search for [city name] [detailing]. Because he lives in Greenville, SC, they search for "Greenville Detailing."
He changed his title to include "Greenville" and "Detailing" in it. Now it looks like this:
Within a few days, Google ranks him on the first page for the search term "Greenville Detailing" because it sees that this term is so important to him that he placed it in the title of his website. The title of your website should contain the search terms that are most important to your business. "Welcome to..." or "Thanks for visiting..." are useless in terms of SEO and a wasted opportunity to rank high on Google.
How do you change your title?
Go into your HTML files, and open index.html.
At the top of the page will be your title:
<title>Welcome to Bright Dynamics Detailing!</title>
Change your title, save your index.html, and upload the file to the server. Or simply contact your web designer and have him change this asap.
Here's what he did. His site used to have the title "Welcome to Bright Dynamics Detailing." But customers don't search for "Bright Dynamics Detailing." They search for [city name] [detailing]. Because he lives in Greenville, SC, they search for "Greenville Detailing."
He changed his title to include "Greenville" and "Detailing" in it. Now it looks like this:
Within a few days, Google ranks him on the first page for the search term "Greenville Detailing" because it sees that this term is so important to him that he placed it in the title of his website. The title of your website should contain the search terms that are most important to your business. "Welcome to..." or "Thanks for visiting..." are useless in terms of SEO and a wasted opportunity to rank high on Google.
How do you change your title?
Go into your HTML files, and open index.html.
At the top of the page will be your title:
<title>Welcome to Bright Dynamics Detailing!</title>
Change your title, save your index.html, and upload the file to the server. Or simply contact your web designer and have him change this asap.
imported_Jakerooni
New member
LOL yea thanks a lot for that tip. Funny thing is if you do "Greenville Detailing" now... This Autopia page about how to do this is above mine 
Being ranked #1 in the local results is based on a few items:
1) Proximity of business to the search. So how far away from the city are you?
2) What locally relevant links to your site do search engines see (SEO). The search engines see this as local votes to your service. For example, having links from local directories like Business listing from city hall website.
Also, what helps is to have keyword rich links to your website. So lets say for example you have a link on Autopia.org for JetEast Detailing for better local ranking you would look to having a link on Autopia.org to JetEast Orlando Detailing. This helps the search engine understand your site more intelligently. Most places that have links to your site are willing to change the links to help you out. It might take some time because some are slow, but dont be afraid to ask. This linking strategy goes for the links to internal pages that you have on your site as well.
From what I have seen reviews does not determine ranks as much as these two items. However, they are still extremely important.
If you would like to look at links to your site you can use Yahoo's Site Explorer Tool.
Hope that helps and let me know if I need to clarify.
To quantify, I do website optimization, usability, and testing for a living. However, with full time work, part time detailing, and full time school, I just simply do not have the time to help you guys out more hands on that I wish I could.
1) Proximity of business to the search. So how far away from the city are you?
2) What locally relevant links to your site do search engines see (SEO). The search engines see this as local votes to your service. For example, having links from local directories like Business listing from city hall website.
Also, what helps is to have keyword rich links to your website. So lets say for example you have a link on Autopia.org for JetEast Detailing for better local ranking you would look to having a link on Autopia.org to JetEast Orlando Detailing. This helps the search engine understand your site more intelligently. Most places that have links to your site are willing to change the links to help you out. It might take some time because some are slow, but dont be afraid to ask. This linking strategy goes for the links to internal pages that you have on your site as well.
From what I have seen reviews does not determine ranks as much as these two items. However, they are still extremely important.
If you would like to look at links to your site you can use Yahoo's Site Explorer Tool.
Hope that helps and let me know if I need to clarify.
To quantify, I do website optimization, usability, and testing for a living. However, with full time work, part time detailing, and full time school, I just simply do not have the time to help you guys out more hands on that I wish I could.
Jakerooni said:LOL yea thanks a lot for that tip. Funny thing is if you do "Greenville Detailing" now... This Autopia page about how to do this is above mine
That is because Search Engines see Autopia.org as a greater site in the way of credibility and ranking. <- No offense
Many factors contribute to this such as, traffic metrics the search engines calculate with traffic is sends to you vs. autopia, age of site, links to each respective site, domain name, and the list goes on.
Mike_Phillips
Administrator
Great thread... :bigups
I've written a lot of detailing how-to articles but I've also written a lot of how-to articles not really related to the craft of detailing and anything web related like site design is a topic I'm a fan of so thank you for starting this thread.
One thing I've been doing lately and if you start writing a lot of "how-to" articles on this topic on this forum or any forum and that's to add a copyright notice.
I don't know and actually don't think it will stop anyone from stealing your words and re-typing them as their own but it's the last you can do. I've seen my articles stolen word-for-word and paraphrased for years now and it's always kind of disheartening.
I've also see websites like Superior Shine's website copied almost word for word by other detailers to lazy to build their own website.
Maybe a copyright lawyer/expert can chime in with better information on protecting yourself?
If I were in your shoes, the first thing I wold do is take your post where you recommend to create a Google Local Business entry, (Post #23 in this thread), and turn it into a copyrighted article like this,
How to create a Google Local Business entry.
And then start your own thread with that as the title and your content in your post as the article. All too often a good post like that can get lost because it's inside a thread instead of being it's own dedicated thread.
I've written a lot of detailing how-to articles but I've also written a lot of how-to articles not really related to the craft of detailing and anything web related like site design is a topic I'm a fan of so thank you for starting this thread.
One thing I've been doing lately and if you start writing a lot of "how-to" articles on this topic on this forum or any forum and that's to add a copyright notice.
I don't know and actually don't think it will stop anyone from stealing your words and re-typing them as their own but it's the last you can do. I've seen my articles stolen word-for-word and paraphrased for years now and it's always kind of disheartening.
I've also see websites like Superior Shine's website copied almost word for word by other detailers to lazy to build their own website.
Maybe a copyright lawyer/expert can chime in with better information on protecting yourself?
If I were in your shoes, the first thing I wold do is take your post where you recommend to create a Google Local Business entry, (Post #23 in this thread), and turn it into a copyrighted article like this,
How to create a Google Local Business entry.
And then start your own thread with that as the title and your content in your post as the article. All too often a good post like that can get lost because it's inside a thread instead of being it's own dedicated thread.
Copyrighting on the net is still something that is getting sorted, and from judge to judge you will get different judgments. There are a few items that you can do though to protect your information:
1) Is as Mike has suggested adding a copyright notice on the information or website content in general under a usage policy etc.
2) If you find the person using your content word for word I would first contact them directly. If that doesnt get the item resolved in a timely manner, you can then issue a cease and desist order to the owner of the site and the hosting company. THis will be issues from a lawyers office. That usually gets the issue resolved and in quick order.
3) If those steps do not work you can initiate a lawsuit for infringing on your content.
4) You can also submit a complaint to Search Engines (Google, Yahho, MSN, etc) for duplicate content, and how your information was stolen. This can lead to them being banned from search results and advertising channels the website owner uses to drive traffic through search engines like PPC. This happens most frequently when companies start more than one PPC account to bid on terms and stack the results in their favor.
1) Is as Mike has suggested adding a copyright notice on the information or website content in general under a usage policy etc.
2) If you find the person using your content word for word I would first contact them directly. If that doesnt get the item resolved in a timely manner, you can then issue a cease and desist order to the owner of the site and the hosting company. THis will be issues from a lawyers office. That usually gets the issue resolved and in quick order.
3) If those steps do not work you can initiate a lawsuit for infringing on your content.
4) You can also submit a complaint to Search Engines (Google, Yahho, MSN, etc) for duplicate content, and how your information was stolen. This can lead to them being banned from search results and advertising channels the website owner uses to drive traffic through search engines like PPC. This happens most frequently when companies start more than one PPC account to bid on terms and stack the results in their favor.
imported_Jakerooni
New member
I know I'm in the minority on this one.. But as long as the info gets out there I really don't care if people copy my stuff. It's not like I get monatary gains out of posting up a how too or any sort of detailing advice.. If someone thinks something I wrote is good enough to copy so be it... The ctl/c button is right there. Have at it.
a.k.a. Patrick
New member
Im always flattered when something I stated, or recommended is heard elswewhere....