Forum

Website Traffic
 

Hey everyone, Well I am currently building a website for my Mechanic. I need advice on the best methods to getting web traffic to his site after it's done.

Thanks!
MM78

well i just started reading the webmaster blueprint and there is a ton of stuff on there to help. im no expert though

That's how I'm feeling!

SEO will always get you the best free traffic.
Your mechanic will need traffic from your city, because he makes his money from walk in customers, so you have to optimize your website with local SEO.
You want people who search for a mechanics in the Los Angeles area to find your website on the top of the google search results.

You live in LA, right?
I don't know how much SEO you know, but start with some keyword research on the google keyword tool, shoot for some long tail keywords like "mechanic in los angeles" or "car repair los angeles".
You have to find high search volume and low competition keywords and build your website and content around those.
Include these keywords in your domain, category names on the webpage, urls, H1 tags etc. Eventually when google will see that your website is all about a mechanic in LA, it will rank it high for these terms.

Also very important, create a google places account and create a listing with your buddy's shop, optimize it with all those keywords, pictures, phone number, address etc.

If you don't know SEO, I suggest to look for some tutorials online, browse some forums.

Other than that classifieds, niche-specific forums, business directories etc.

And don't forget to optimize your website for mobile devices, because if my car brakes down, I only have my smartphone on me ;)

Good luck!

Agreed.. local search is something you want to focus on.. build your Google local places feedback, optimize the page for the keywords your friend is wanting to rank for.. push links to this page to help it rank higher.

Then some highly targed Adwords campaigns would be helpful.

Also make sure you're capturing visitors.. offer something to them like a discount of some sort for their email address. Create a email sequence and get people to his shop.

Social media can be helpful too.. there is lots you can do.

Thanks for the advice, Wait how did you know I was in Los Angeles! :shocked:. What I need is a super crash course in SEO, I don't have a lot of time to learn it all so i need is some quick tips.

Is there a SEO for Dummies? :noidea:

Thanks Boss, but he aint paying that much! lol. I will take all that to heart.

In your profile, under About me says "as of right now I am a full time student at CSULA", so it took me only a google search to find out which city you live in ;)

If you are just starting out with SEO, then I would recommend the lynda dot com video tutorials. They are the best ones on every topic you can think of. Check it out!

STALKER!!!! haha, jk..

Too bad Piratebay got their Servers taken away by the man, will look into it...thanks a lot.

Check this out, this tutorial called "SEO Fundamentals" is completely free right on their website.

If you are new to SEO, this is exactly what you need, this is where you start!

craigslist

I know this isnt a quick fix answer, but I took a general web page class during the summer to build my own, and then I took an advanced web page class as well. It was done at a general tech school, and well worth the $600 bucks or so.

It was once a week for around 4 hours for 2.5 months. I would say every other day was very useful information, and not only helped with the appearance of a webpage, but everything behind the scenes on how to drive traffic.

I went from about 300 sales a month on average, to anywhere from 600-1,000 a month. I first build the site for fun to save a little money from sales on ebay and amazon.

Amazing! Respect!

:thumb:

Yay for all the forum can do for everyone.

Always look out for chances to make money

:juggle:

SEO is the best solution for any site but its not quick. My opinion is first try few Microsoft adcenter campaigns along with your seo campaigns.

^^^^^ you want quick way to get traffic to your site? Use T&A. Number 1 rule of marketing 101.... sex sells. How you think godaddy.com grew so fast. ;)

Lololol use T&A ... That does always work... Unless your selling Children's books haha

Yelp is great.

I have several clients on Yelp and they are top ranked. I took one company from $20,000 a month in sales to $80,000 in less than 90 days.

I took a mechanic from somewhat busy to swamped with so much work he asked me to Delete his Yelp listing.

You also want a Google Places listing.

Merchant Circle and a ton of other free sites that allow for directory type listings.

I have to create traffic slooooooooooooooowly, it can overwhelm a business if they do not have the internal structure to handle the business.

Bad reviews will happen, employees quit, etc...

I charge BIG money to local businesses to get them leads/customers. It can be a very, very lucrative business.

The real success for GoDaddy is because they know how to UPsell better than any Registrar in the world, period.

understand local SEO or whatever you wanna call it is lots diff then doing general web wide work.

buying anything from that site is like walking a fking mine field, then just logging in and trying to get something done....ad...ad..ad..ad..

I will never use godaddy and I tell everyone else to avoid them.