Lawn Care Marketing – Creating and submitting a Sitemap (Episode 3)

Posted on 15. Feb, 2010 by Dave.

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In this episode we start with the Sitemap. We go over all the basic topics such as – What is a Sitemap? How do I create a Sitemap for my lawn care website and where do I submit my Sitemap? I also posted some links to sites such as Google’s Webmaster Central and a number of other online tools that I think you’ll find very valuable in helping you attract more lawn care customers after you build your own lawn care website…

Links

Creating and submitting Sitemaps
Creating and submitting a Sitemap helps make sure that Google knows about all the pages on your site, including URLs that may not be discoverable by Google’s normal crawling process…

XML Sitemaps
Create an XML sitemap that can be submitted to Google, Yahoo and other search engines to help them crawl your website better…

Pingates
Pingates is a free service that pings or notifies a number of services that keep track of weblogs and publish them (also works on regular website) . By pinging, you let the services know that your website has been updated and hence, they crawl and index your site, publishing your site contents, thus increasing your websites popularity…

Foamers is committed to helping our lawn care clients achieve the highest return on their investment. Should you wish to acquire more information on how you can launch your own landscaping website with one of our landscaping templates, and have it work for you 24/7. services simply get in touch and tell us what you think.

In the next episode we will be continuing this discussion – I’ll be talking about how to Create a Google Maps business listing

If there’s anything you wish to add on the subject of lawn care marketing, questions, comments, please feel free to share your thoughts and comments and keep checking back for more updates.

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Lawn Care Marketing On-Page SEO – Episode 2

Posted on 08. Jan, 2010 by Dave.

In this week’s episode we introduce you to the META description tag, how Google indexes this tag, and how having it improves clickthrough and helps get more lawn care customers to your website – one fine point that we did NOT get a chance to mention in the episode was that you should always have a unique title and description for each page on the Website. That will help not only let you target different keywords, or each of your lawn care services individually, each page relevant to each of your services, this also helps Google minimize the click-and-backtrack behavior that frustrates visitors and inflates web traffic metrics.

Foamers is committed to helping our lawn care clients achieve the highest return on their investment. Should you wish to acquire more information on how you can launch your own landscaping website with one of our landscaping templates, and have it work for you 24/7. services simply get in touch and tell us what you think.

In the next episode we will be continuing this discussion, specifically we’ll show you how to make a heading, and show you how to create an XML site map for Google.

If there’s anything you wish to add on the subject of lawn care marketing, questions, comments, please feel free to share your thoughts and comments and keep checking back for more updates.

See you real soon!

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Lawn Care Marketing and Google 101

Posted on 29. Dec, 2009 by Dave.

Last time I spoke to you about the importance of having a website for your lawn care business and also the importance having good and useful content, that is relevant to your niche, and useful to your visitors. We’ll talk more about that in a moment but now I would like to introduce you to a new video segment on the website called Lawn Care Marketing… Each week this new feature will feature a video screen cast with hands on tips to help you get more lawn care customers to your website.

In our first screen cast right here (Lawn Care Marketing On Page SEO Starting With the Title tag ) I go over a number of basic guidelines and best practices that will help you get more lawn customers by making your website more search engine and user friendly.

When you sit down at your computer and do a Google search, you’re almost instantly presented with a list of results from all over the web. How does Google find web pages matching your query, determine the order of search results, and most importantly, what can you do to ensure your page appears “above the fold” (the portion of the computer screen that you can see without scrolling down) or number one for their target keywords?

Do a quick search online and you’ll find no shortish of websites with all sorts of very long and drawn out discussions on search engine optimization, as that is such a broad term, but essentially what I want you to focus on first, and what I tell all my lawn care clients to focus on primarily is what’s called “on page” SEO. On page SEO consists of 3 basic elements.

Title tag, Description tag, and Header tag…

Of course there are a number of other SEO tactics one might employ to get more lawn care customers, such as web analytics, content creation, viral marketing etc, but none of these work better or, in my opinion, are more affective faster than on page SEO for local search engine marketing.

So, whether you’re running a small landscaping business, a handyman service or if you’re self employed contractor, these three very simple steps, when done properly, are essential to getting top listing on Google…

Watch the screen cast above to learn more about these basic guidelines , starting with the so, so, so important title tag…

Foamers is committed to helping our lawn care clients achieve the highest return on their investment. Should you wish to acquire more information about our landscaping template customization services simply get in touch and tell us what you think.

So there you have it, you now know one of the most important steps you need to take to start making your online business thrive. In the upcoming weeks we will be continuing this discussion, under the heading, lawn care marketing, and show you how you can launch your very own landscaping website and have it work for you 24/7.

If there’s anything you wish to add on the subject of lawn care marketing, questions, comments, please feel free to share your thoughts and comments and keep checking back for more updates. See you real soon!

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Make Your Landscaping Website Thrive – How?

Posted on 14. Dec, 2009 by Dave.

By now, hopefully, most landscaping business owners know that its important for their business to have a real website, they know, or at the very least, they have a pretty good idea, of just how many people use the Internet in search for landscapers and local businesses in general. And I like to think that for the most part you’re probably already online, or your actively working towards getting that website.

Right?

However, for many the whole idea of doing a website, I suppose one could say, seems a bit simplistic – to think that all you need to do is build it and they will come, is really not the case – if you really want your new landscaping website to thrive, your going to have to try a little harder than that.

Maybe you’ve heard it said before, if you’ve read The 5 Pillars of Creating a Successful Website, you’ve read me talk about the importance of having good content, fresh content, regularly updated content etc, etc, etc…

And I frequently tell my clients that and the most popular response that I get is “But that sound like a lot of work…”, then there’s that small awkward pause, where I just want say, “You know what hard work is?”, instead I say, “Yes, it does require some effort”, and that’s true, that does equal work – “But!”

Its just as if you went and did a job, maybe you planted some trees, but your never showed the customer how to look after those trees – you never once return to see how the tree were doing, soon the trees began to rot, needless to say, that customer never calls you back again…

Similarly, your website visitors want to do business with someone they know and trust, they want to be informed, they want expert and authoritative advice from a reliable source – so if you want your landscaping website to thrive, you need to strive to be that voice.

Idle hands make a man poor…
Doesn’t matter whether your landscaper, or a broker, with just little bit of thought you can find stuff to write about – maybe it’s winter, why not give your customers some tips and ideas for the winter months – do a special promo or a giveaway, keep those doors of communication open, and fresh – remember, most website visitors don’t become customers on the first visit, but if you can keep reminding then, keep them interested and engaged, you have a better chance of winning their business in the future.

Everything you just read me say is very simple very easy to implement yet, for most landscaping company owners who have been in business for decades, venturing into the web may be an intimidating experience, or it may be that you are, as one client put it, not very computer orientated – that’s where we come in!

Foamers is committed to helping our clients achieve the highest return on their investment. Should you wish to acquire more information about our landscaping template customization services simply get in touch and tell us what you think.

So there you have it, you now know one of the most important steps you need to take to start making your online business thrive. In the upcoming weeks we will be continuing this discussion, under the heading, lawn care marketing, and show you how you can launch your very own landscaping website and have it work for you 24/7.

If there’s anything you wish to add on the subject of lawn care marketing, questions, comments, please feel free to share your thoughts and comments and keep checking back for more updates. See you real soon!

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