Any small business owners here?

Pls help

>>1854964
Do you know SEO?

It's going to be difficult to get a website driving organic traffic for an appliance repair.

Google Adwords is your best route. Also, create social media pages for your business.

>>1855425
I've done a lot of research on SEO, and from everything I've seen, it's very easy to get yourself blacklisted by Google if you force SEO. Those bastards have some crazy algorithms that actually work.

Appliance repair? As in people bring their washer for you to repair, then cart it back to their place? idknow, isnt it more convenient to call the repairman to do the work where the appliance is?

Also, how many of your customers look like internet users? Perhaps internet is not the place for you to advertise.

>>1854964

Tile guy.

You and I are basically the same.

My company is 2 years old and I am almost the top result when someone Googles tile in the northern region of my state. So here's what I will tell you:

- Gotta get the reviews going, either make them up or give the customer a discount to write them. Google, Facebook, Nextdoor, Angieslist, Yelp. All good, the more these go up the higher your ranking.

- Have a website, a Facebook page, and possibly even a YT or Twitter account, occasionally update them

- Gotta get the referall game going!!!!! Talk to other people, give them your card, take their card, go to lunch, etc... Help them, they help you.

- Sales presentations. For me it was at real estate offices. I called the biggest RE offices in my state, provided lunch for the office, and then they allowed me to do a lunch presenation with a powerpoint. Before and afters, my skills, smiling pitch, etc...

AMA, and I'll try to help. Biggest thing for me is NextDoor, that's where I get 60% of my business.

>>1856515
Wow this is exactly what I was looking for, thank you. I'm actually listed on NextDoor but I'm getting almost no traffic from there. How did you grow yourself on NextDoor? I've been debating posting some fake recommendations but it's very difficult to get past their systems because they verify phone numbers. Any tips on getting more visibility on there?

>>1855690
Our repair technicians go out to the customer's house to inspect their broken appliance for a $40 fee. If they chose to proceed with a repair after receiving a quote, we include the service call fee in the cost of the repair. 70% of traffic has been internet based, 30% has been returning customers.

>>1854964
Some steps for organic traffic and beginner SEO.

Create a Google My business listing and add what it asks to add (i.e. website, pictures, etc)
Create Socials, Twitter, FB, Yelp, YOUTUBE(Big one) and within those socials, link to each of the other ones. This creates a small network to get some authority going. You should fully flesh these out as well, more chances to add you keyword which SHOULD BE (City Name + appliance repair, Zip Code you want to work in + appliance repair, City Name + washing machine repair, etc)

Do not stuff in keywords, google hates this, you wont get penalized, but it wont help.

If you have a website, which you should and I am guessing you do considering you want to rank, you NEED on page SEO.

Are you using wordpress for your site? It is the easiest and most SEO friendly platform. Get Yoast SEO free plugin as it is very beginner friendly.

Have a page for each of the keywords you want to rank for, your site should be set up like this

Homepage.com
Homepage.com/City-Name-Appliance-repair/
Homepage.com/City-name-fridge-repair/

With this, you'll have a very solid base and put you in competition with your peers as most companies dont do ANY seo at all.

The next step would be to do link building, but since you dont really know any seo, that is gonna be tricky for you and you could waste money. But if you want to go this route, stay away from Fiverr for cheap link building, its a bunch of outsourcers who will rip you off and get you penalized. An anchor text ratio for your site should end up looking like 25% branded links, 25% naked url, 15% keyword 1, 10% keyword 2. the rest Misc related keywords.

(1/2)

>>1856580
=============================

Using google adwords is probably your best bet for getting customers right now. Googles keyword planner is your best tool for this of course as you probably already know. You can use that to research keywords and see the monthly search volumes, but the keyword planner is often wonky and doesnt have a lot of data, it really sucks that googles own tool is not that great considering they want your money from it.

=============================

Secret FUCK YOU COMPETITION trick.

This can get you on google first page tomorrow or even today really.

Make a video on your youtube channel for your business with CITYNAME + Keyword and embed it on a bunch of sites OR schedule a livestream, then just upload the video at the specified time.

Most times, there will be no youtube competition for your keyword and since google loves to promote their own shit, your video will be on the first page. This is great for getting leads.

You can see an example of this if you google Dillon Auto Upholstery, the example should be the 4th result.

I'm not a very good teacher, but I hope some of this can help you.

(2/2)

>>1856580
That is an insane amount of information, thank you so much for all the time you've spent in this. I'm currently using Wix for my website (really convenient but looked down upon). I had no idea about the YouTube trick.

Do you think that interconnecting all those social media sites that you mentioned will help a business like mine, though? I don't expect to get any real visibility on a Twitter or Facebook simply due to the fact that nobody would really find interest in the tweets of an appliance repair company. Is it more to just build some sort of web presence?

>>1856585
Also, can you elaborate a bit on the livestream thing? This sounds very intriguing. Should I post a livestream on a daily basis of a video advertising my business, or is that a one-time thing that will work for a while? One more thing: when you say to embed in other sites, do you mean forums? Is there a specific type of site I should target?

Just pay for an ad on google. They will put you ahead of anyone who doesn't. I have paid for seo for 6 years and I have competitors ads coming up before my site. They have been in biz for 2 years and I know aren't spending a ton on seo.

I like the YouTube idea. You could make some valuable video content for small appliances like

>how to diagnosis problems (that your techs would solve)
>what to consider when buying a new X (that you could procure and install)
>simple troubleshooting

How about how to unthaw a fridge or freezer and check the strip that seals the doors? Or how to check if the exchange is clogged?

>>1856610
No problem!

The social media stuff is just for link building authority in google's eyes. I don't think for an appliance repair place, people will want to follow you on twitter, but for a lot of people Facebook IS the entire internet, so it would good to build some sort of real presence there.

An easy thing would be to just focus on your facebook, then post links to those facebook status updates on your twitter account. It's really all just about building presence.

If you are at a lack of things to post, just link to articles about repair. Things that you find interesting and can comment on to show your businesses' voice in the marketplace. Of course, don't link to any competitors in your area lol
===================================

The livestreaming bit is kind of technical, so you are better off doing the embedding method. Though you could do a Google hangout, record yourself talking about your business and then set the thumbnail to the example video I showed. The most important part of having a video on the first page is that thumbnail. Gives a big number to call and theres some perception of "oh a video, they must know their stuff" The google hangout should auto upload to your page, but you need to edit the title and description like the video example, though I wouldnt paste the keyword over and over like they did.

It would just be a one time thing that will sit there for awhile.

And I guarantee your competitors are not doing video. Its intimidating, but all you have to do is just talk about your business and show that you are an authority on the subject like >>1856653 says. PLUS its more content for your facebook.

>>1857241
For embedding, I mean just pasting your link in "social bookmarking" type sites. Generally the golden number for this is like 100 links, there are services out there that will do this, but I haven't used them so I can't recommend you one. I'm in the process of doing it myself so I can sell it as a service/use it to get SEO clients as proof now.

My process is: Make 10 email accounts, then make an account per email on the following sites: newsvine, delicious, instapaper, diigo, getpocket.com, pinterest, livejournal, stumbleupon, tumblr, wordpress, and storify.

Then post the video either as a link or using the embed code.

Its a really boring process, but once it's done it's done.
===================================

To really explain about backlinks, they work like votes for your site. A website with 100 votes for it will beat out a site with 1 vote. It gives authority that the website or video is what it says it is. You are going to have a hard time getting your website ranked on 1st page without good quality votes and stuff.

For now, if you came to me as a client, I would tell you to set a budget for Google adwords and I would do the video thing for you. Those would be the two priority tasks aside from getting the social stuff set up, as those will be immediate methods to get leads.

>>1857247
Oh, for the emails, I just used Yandex, really simple, but the account creation is so mind numbing, one of the biggest things I hate.