Hi all I have a website where the home page is primarily optimised for driving lessons Bury St Edmunds but is also optimised for driving lessons Thetford. Both of these terms are important to the customer but the Bury St Edmunds one is marginally more important. The site currently ranks no 1 for "driving lessons Thetford" but is only no 4 for "driving lessons Bury St Edmunds" and is currently sitting behind a couple of annoying directories. Do you have any ideas as to how to boost the serps for driving lessons Bury St Edmunds? The site is about 6/7 months old and has a mix of links from forums (one specialist driving forum and 4 general forums), driving blog comments, articles, squidoo, press release and specialist driving directories as well as general directories. I haven't bought links (and don't want to) but have not yet gone in for link exchange as I'm not sure Google approves of it.
if you are #4 only behind directories I wouldn't sweat that - most people blow right over directory serps anyway. Have you got your google and yahoo business listings done? If not, do the listing for Bury St Edmunds Driving Lessons as the business name and see if that does not boost you up over the directories comment on a bunch of high pr blogs using the name Bury St. Edmunds Driving Lessons - that will help - do that for either KW phrases. TRY THESE TAGS IN YOUR INDEX HEADER INSTEAD <title>Driving Lessons Instruction Servicing Bury St. and Thetford</title> <meta name="Description" content="Driving Lessons Instruction Servicing Bury St. and Thetford | Patient, relaxed instructor offers tailored lesson plans focussing on real driving." /> <meta name="keywords" content="driving lessons,driver education,driving instruction,bury st. edmunds,thetford,female driving instructor " /> -------- look at your code on your index page - you have 8 errors - all alt image tags missing - you should use the alt tags to your advantage here is an example of your first one as it is now (FIND IT AT LINE 62): <img src="driving-lesson-images/thumbs/confident-drivers-hover.gif" width="251px" height="42px" border="0" /><span><img src="driving-lesson-images/thumbs/confident-drivers-text.png" /></span></a> change this code to: <img src="driving-lesson-images/thumbs/confident-drivers-hover.gif" alt="I teach students from Bury St Edmunds and all outlying villages - for example, Great Barton, Thurston, Elmswell, Woolpit, Culford, Risby, Pakenham, Stanton, Ixworth, the Fornhams and Horringer." width="251px" height="42px" border="0" /><span><img src="driving-lesson-images/thumbs/confident-drivers-text.png" /></span></a> now find all the other image code lines and do the same to them entering in OTHER alt content from different parts of your site you should also get your link at geourl.org NOW, IN THIS ORDER ADD THE CODE BELOW TO YOUR INDEX CODE AT THE TOP, RIGHT UNDER <meta name="distribution" content="global" /> <meta name="ICBM" content="52.249905, 0.709320"> <meta name="DC.title" content="Driving Lessons Instruction Servicing Bury St. and Thetford"> NOW GO TO: http://geourl.org/ping/ PUT http://www.tlcdrivingschool.net/ IN THE BOX AND CLICK SUBMIT At this point you should stick the directories in the dirt in 30 days or less.
seogawd - many thanks indeed for such a helpful and detailed reply - have given a big PLUS to reputation. A couple of things: 1 Why would title tag of be better than "driving lessons bury st edmunds thetford lady driving instructor"? I thought that having your keywords in the right order and not separated "driving lessons bury st edmunds" was far more powerful than separating them (separation is in bold) "driving lessons instruction servicing bury st edmunds"??? (The lady driving instructor was one phrase the customer particularly wanted the site optimised for.) 2 The customer set up her own Google listing under the name TLC Driving School - as she lives in Thetford the Googlemaps places her at Thetford rather than Bury St Edmunds (althought she does appear at no D for driving school bury st edmunds) - can she change this so that the business is at two locations, even if she only has one business address?? Presumably, it would look spammy to now change the business name?
Hey, Sorry, I typo'd on the title: <title>Driving Lessons Instruction Servicing Bury St. and Thetford</title> should be <title>Driving Lessons and Driving Instruction | Bury St. Edmunds and Thetford</title> The customer set up her own Google listing under the name TLC Driving School - as she lives in Thetford the Googlemaps places her at Thetford rather than Bury St Edmunds (althought she does appear at no D for driving school bury st edmunds) - can she change this so that the business is at two locations, even if she only has one business address?? Presumably, it would look spammy to now change the business name? Yes Google goes by the business address. And only allows 1 listing per Phone Number and address. Your solution option. #1. You will need another phone number - she may have one that she can use, like a fax line IF NOT Get a Magic Jack or buy a cheap prepaid cell phone. #2. Get a PO Box in Bury St. Edmunds (optional) #3. Create New business listing called: "Bury St. Edmunds Driving Lessons and Instruction" and use the PO box or a fictitious address as the business address. When you submit Google will call the phone number with a code to activate the listing. If you don't activate by phone they will send a post card to the address for verification.
Many thanks again seogawd - in your experience, how much weight does google place with the business address on the Google business map? Is adding a Bury St Edmunds business address to the Google Maps likely to tip the balance and push the site up? (I don't want the put the customer to trouble if it doesn't work) - or will a few extra links tip the scales in spite of business address? I've added to geourl as you suggested and added alt text to four of the images (adding alt text to the other four was distracting attention away from the hover image). I still however don't understand your logic in changing title tag to: as I've always thought that having the EXACT string int he title tag (driving lessons bury st edmunds) was more powerful than having a broken up string "Driving Lessons and Driving Instruction | Bury St. Edmunds "??????
The | is a indexing splitter, you have two independent key phrases - what and where as far a the business listings, I thought you had said that she was getting hits for thetford and not bury edmunds so that's why I said to do another one with just st edmunds