What do I do now? Obviously I want to rank for: Cityname What else should I be aiming to rank for? Cityname web design Cityname web hosting Cityname property ? Cityname hotels ? Cityname carhire ? Cityname jobs ? With the help of Google I found these: Cityname estate agents Jobs in Cityname rent Cityname restaurant Cityname Cityname boilers Cityname hotels hotels in Cityname Cityname college Cityname city Cityname news Cityname nightlife I've never really thought about it before.. does anyone have any advice on what I should do to totally dominate my city names search engine terms? I'll probably build the site on Wordpress, but really want it to look professional.
How do you plan to monetize the site? Adsense? Or are you selling something? Why not build out a site with multiple pages that encompass all the suggestions you had? Make a city directory!
PS is right. Make your own directory with all of those things. Maybe make it something like Yelp or MetroMix but specific to your city.
Dont get greedy to start with Try and dominate for 'cityname' and then you can add sub pages like /hotels in at a later date for other areas once you have built up the brand and some PR. it will be much easier then as well to dominate for the subpages or you could possibly use subdomains like hotels.cityname.co.uk
seo_daddy, that's excellent advice. what i'm going to do is create wordpress site for the front page, then rank for cityname, after that i will install wordpress sites for hotels, pubs, restaurants etc...
I would use Joomla for a site like that, it's easy to setup, can be SEO'd with a few extensions and is completely free!
I'd be all for that as well, and it may even be tax deductible, or could garner some other perk. Whatever you do with the page, do it as a community service. Place an option for local advertising, but do not be an in-your-face spammer when it comes to monetizing the site. Advertise locally as well. Black & White half fliers are cheap to make and distrubute. Hire a few skate punks to drop off leaflets under windshields get pens made and then start writing paper checks again...you can accidentally leave your pen every place you visit. Though, whatever you do, please do it for the community. You may not make the cash at first, but it will get staying power and local support if you immerse yourself in the goodness that is your city (lol). Seriously, do it in the long term, and do it for the good of you neighbors.
Definately go with Joomla or some other full blown CMS. Get good exposure, especially local exposure and sell advertising offline to local businesses. This could easily turn into a full time/ full income business.
I'm using Wordpress and it is looking like it could be fine. I use seperate installations for each section i.e. hotels, pubs etc
How big is your city? If its under 20,000, it probably would not be in your best interest/time to pursue a dedicated website.
100,000. The option I've gone for is create a site about the city, then have seperate directories for/hotels/, /pubs/, /restaurants/ and then finally /business/ which will contain a business directory. I think thats the right way... I think.....
Cityname dot com is a concept that you can so easily become an authority on, yet duplicate it based on numerous other sites..look into what newyork.com, london.com, etc offer. See what all they offer. You shall then be able to decide on what all you can offer.
As someone mentioned, don't get greedy to start. Focus on making the website professional and offering the basics. As it becomes more popular, start selling advertising to the local shops, etc. This is where you could make your money and you could justify it as the cost of maintaining the site and for your skills involved. I'd also get some of those high paying lawyers to advertise too. You could add Google Maps too. To improve your position, get realestate sites to backlink to your realestate listings, etc. Try to get local bloggers or websites mention your site. Offer advertising discounts if the various businesses (with great SERP position) to backlink to you. <edit> If your site becomes really, really popular and user-friendly, you may even get backlinks from the city's own government website. You may even get them to mention your site in literature or other places. Who knows, they may even be willing to give you some money as the "official website" or "semi-official" site for the city?!
I would say create a informational site about the city. Also list local businesses. Once you get good traffic, money will follow from the business advertisements.