Decided to try a new angle....

[The Cleaning Doctor]

I just finished the page for Link Building Packages and the tweak or spin is on item 6. Co-Op link building. Basically if you have 3-5 buddies that want to split the cost with you then I add $40 to the package because of the split billing. So for the 1000 link package you get 250 link submissions per month for $35 per month and 2 out of the 4 people will end up with 2 .edu or .gov links. All of the .edu or .gov links are placed manually and verified active.

__________________
Pat

Deck Staining Tips
Search Engine Tweaks
Organic Lawn Tips

[Steve]

Lawn care business tips

WOW there is certainly a lot of stuff going on at your site! The amount of things a business owner should be doing to promote their site is mind boggling!.

__________________
- Subscribe to my Lawn Care Marketing Blog Feed and get daily tips sent to you. Free!
Download your Free trial of Gopher Lawn Care Software.

[The Cleaning Doctor]

You ever wonder why service magic, merchant circle and angies list are at the top of the heap? It is because they do all of these things to keep their sites at the top.

I was involved in an industry and on a board with what can be called one of the industry leaders. He kept telling people to link to his site as it will help out their SEO rankings by linking to him.

What actually happened was that with all the same niche sites linking to his site, he became the authority in the eyes of Google. It helped theirs some but not as much as all their links helped him. Kind of a sneaky way to get links if you ask me.

Everything that I do, you can do yourself if you have the time. There are even going to be a few products listed that can help with the process but it still takes time of which most people don't have any to spare.

[950thomas]

I use servicemajic it is a good tool to use

[Steve]

What actually happened was that with all the same niche sites linking to his site, he became the authority in the eyes of Google. It helped theirs some but not as much as all their links helped him. Kind of a sneaky way to get links if you ask me.

Is there anyway lawn care business owners can do this too? If so, where would they have to be linked from in order to become an authority like that?

[nnyparts]

Just so you are aware....Google and yahoo will ban your site from their searches if they find you with X number of links back that have little bearing on your site. BTW....you can buy 25,000 links back for $3.00 but is it worth not being listed with the main two search engines that most use everyday?

Using good content and the correct tags will gain you the ranking. If you really want to get up there, both Google and Yahoo have paid placement ad programs.

[The Cleaning Doctor]

You are right, done incorrectly can punish you but with that have also seen sites that people have blasted with tens of thousands of links only to be punished and then after a period of time they were back and stronger than ever. If you got banned for x number of links then facebook and twitter would be banned because of all the links to them along with thousands of other sites with hundreds of thousands of links to them. Your information is a little off.

It all starts with your domain age, not when you bought it but when Google first became aware of it. It is a matter of how the links are built and where they are built.

The sites that sell so many backlinks for so cheap tend to be the owners of those sites and most of them tend to be spam sites that the search engines recognize and discount. The key is diversity of link sources and the correct use of keywords as anchor tags.

Steve it would be like you telling everyone to link to you because it will help their seo. So everyone does and in the end you get more help than they do.

You can never have too many links but you can gain too many too fast so that it is not natural.

I have a site I am working for a customer right now and I am building the links at a fairly fast rate because of the site age and because they were sitting back at 200 and above so they did not show up until page 21. If they got hurt a little in the beginning, big deal they were not being found anyhow. Now some dropped from 787 to 0 and now they are coming back strong. I will post the entire process results after we are done.

[nnyparts]

Ok...go ahead and give the advice and see where it gets peoples sites. Twitter and Facebook are a breed of their own and follow different rules altogether. Google and Yahoo are paying them big bucks to advertise on their sites and tweets and making millions a month doing it.

Now for the rest of us....those rules don't apply unless you are making Google and yahoo millions of dollars a month. Personally I don't fall into that category but I do have over 4 thousand unique visitors a day coming to one of our sites and this was done using the correct content, well placed tags, ad-words campaigns and much much more....hard work, not some scheme to try and cheat the system.

Do whatever you want and if it pans out...ok? But I equate it to me telling a customer they are going to receive a high quality part made in the USA that is OEM only to send them a Aftermarket from China. Selling the aftermarket is fine as lone as it is stated as such.

[Steve]

I appreciate all of your views here.

What are some of the big no-no's lawn care business owners need to be watching out for? I think some members are going to be reading this and saying OH GOSH I don't want to get banned and then they won't try any of these ideas.

So are there any things that members need to be looking out for?

[The Cleaning Doctor]

Well all I can say is that these tactics are used by thousands of companies around the world and on millions of web sites. If you are going to make you need to determine how fast you need that to be. If you want to grow slowly then that is your choice. I personally choose to get in and get it built.

Is there a risk... sure there is but you took a bigger risk going into business. I personally want the site to grow quickly and stay there. With Deck Staining Tips, people are already starting to take notice.... others that are competing for the web space.

I have software available that will look at your competitors and see what they are doing that has them ranked so high. I can tell you if they have a link somewhere and if that link is still active.

Some may think that it is dirty tactics and cheating but is it any worse than keeping an eye on your competition locally? People only consider it cheating when they don't think of it.

How may times have you thought of a competitor cheating to get work? I'll bet some of you have and then thought about it and realized that it was a really keen idea.

Everything that I do is within the rules but I will admit that it sometimes is pushing the envelope. How you approach each and every site is different. You have to look at where they stand and their competition to set a plan in place.

Every one thinks that Google is smarter than everyone else. Well for every Google employee there are 4 people finding the flaws.

Just like in sports, you find the weakness and exploit that as long as you can.

You all can read on the web what the experts are doing. Link building is the backbone to the web, the more links you get the more votes for being a good site. As simple as that.

You don't think so, Google "brick sealing tips" and tell me what is at #3. Last time I looked it was BrickSealingTips.com and that site is empty. It's mine and I have done nothing with it yet except load the wordpress software and put out a couple of links. How is this an incorrect way to promote a site?

Someone will come back with well if everyone does it that still does not make it right. Well you would be correct but what it does not consider is that now you are on a level playing field. These big companies that dominate the web do not do it because they have better content than you do but rather a better seo strategy and the funds to implement.

Gotta get back to work now have fun.