100% TransparencyWe Specialize in Water Damage SEO & Here’s Exactly How We Do It.

We pride ourselves on being the best at what we do, Water Damage Restoration SEO. We’ve worked extremely hard over the years to build processes and systems to give you the very best for your money — delivering a service that rivals even the best agencies in the country, while outperforming the majority of them.

With that in mind, we show you exactly how we do things with the aim that our transparency will overcome any objections you have to becoming one of our exclusive clients.

TL;DR.

We Get Sh*t Done.

Let’s dive right in.

Here’s the break down of our process:

1. Onboarding
   • Google Accounts
   • Tracking & Reporting
   • Analytics
   • Website Audit & Analysis
   • Links Audit & Anchor Text Ratio
   • Content Audit
   • Project Management Plan
2. Google My Business (GMB) Listing & Local Pack SEO
   • Setup & Audit
   • Optimizing Local Website
   • GMB Listing Optimization
   • Brand Building
   • Brand Prominence Amplified
   • Adding Local Relevancy
3. On-Site SEO/On-Page SEO
   • What Is It?
   • Keywords, Content, & Additional Elements
   • How We Do It
4. Off-Site SEO/Off-Page SEO
   • What Is It?
   • Why It Matters
   • Links & Off-Site SEO
   • Here’s How We Do It

1. Onboarding

This is where we build the foundation for our SEO campaign and obtain all the info we need to get started.

Create Google/Gmail Account

This is the first step of all campaigns. We’ll create a Google & Gmail account that uses the persona of the business and business owner.

This is where our tracking documents will live, it’s also the email we’ll use to contact link targets during our link building and outreach phase. The benefits of this are that it’s much easier to get links when people think you’re the business owner, rather than if you’re some guy who they hired to build links.

So yes, we’ll be impersonating you and your business in order to contact these people (we promise not to do anything naughty).

Create Tracking & Reporting Document

We do all of our reporting in two sheets.

Tracking Sheet – this is a live spreadsheet containing various tabs and it’ll show you:

• The project plan;
• Link opportunities;
• Link targets;
• Status of outreach;
• Live links;
• Content we’re using for outreach;
• Credentials of any accounts we’ve set up for the campaign;
• And plenty of other useful information.

This sheet can be accessed by you at any time (you’ll have a link to the Google sheet) and it’s also updated in real time so you can check up on the work as often as you’d like.

EXAMPLE OF OUR TRACKING SHEET

End of Month Report – This is a short informal document that I send at the end of each month to give an overview of the campaign, I will suggest any improvement, show increases in traffic and any other relevant information.

Access to Google Analytics & Google Search Console

This is an essential step. Access to your Google Analytics account allows for valuable insight into your website, it’s current content, and the actions visitors take when they come to your site. Access to Google Search Console will allow us to discover which keywords your website is already showing up for, how effective that result is at driving traffic and any quick wins we can take advantage of.

We’ll analyze both accounts and look for opportunities, what they’re almost ranking for, and what’s getting impressions but not clicks.

By analyzing both of these accounts, we’ll use them to uncover:

• Which pieces of content are your most popular
• Which keywords rank fairly well but could use a boost – these are your quick wins, usually ranked between positions 7-35 for their keywords
• Whether you have some “sleeping giants”, these are keywords that are receiving impressions in search results but aren’t being clicked on

Website Audit & Analysis

This is where we see what we’re working with, and based on this data we can create a game plan to get you where you need to be.

Here’s a breakdown of our 16 Step SEO audit process:

• Steps 1–4: Check for BIG issues (that may be holding your site back);
• Steps 5–9: Uncover “quick wins” for on-site problems;
• Steps 10–12: Analyze organic search traffic (and find low-hanging opportunities);
• Steps 13–14: Backlink Audit & Analysis;
• Steps 15–16: Content Audit & Content Gap Analysis.

A website audit helps us understand the current health of your website, it’ll show us any key issues we need to focus on, and opportunities to improve and grow your search presence.

Links Audit & Anchor Text Ratio

We’ll use tools such as Ahrefs, SEM Rush, Moz, and Majestic SEO to analyze your incoming links and the ratio of their anchor text.

• Is your domain clean? No links that are spammy or unnatural
• Is anchor text ratio clean? Not over-optimized
• Run majestic on target pages to make sure that everything is in order from a linking perspective
• Check your metrics, TF (trust flow), CF (citation flow), DA (domain authority), PA (page authority), link history for any blips, links from relevant websites, this allows me to see if there are any pages that aren’t being utilised to their full potential, or whether there are some that are already earning links

It’ll look very unnatural if all of the links to your site are coming in using anchor text that you want to rank for. If required, we’ll build some “easy” links to dilute this with some standard and natural looking anchors such as “here”, your company name, your URL and other natural things people would use as anchors if they were linking to your site without being “nudged.”

The key here is keeping it natural.

Content Audit

We’ll then take a look at your current content:

• What do I have to work with?
• Are you actively creating content?
• Do you have a content creator?
• How many social shares does each piece of content get?
• Do you have distribution channels built out (email list, social following etc)
• Are you willing to invest in content creation?

We then make a list of all good content URL’s so that we have easy access to them during our outreach process.

If there aren’t any no good content pieces that we can use, don’t worry this happens a lot. Between us, we simply need to come up with a plan to create content that will be interesting to our list of link targets during our outreach process.

If you have a person in-house who can create content, then great. If not we’ll happily use one of my content creators, this will be an additional expense but it’s our preferred option as we know that these people can give us the type of content that we want.

In an ideal world, you’ll give us a content budget for both on-site content pieces and for content to be placed on targeted sites.

Create A Project Management Plan

At this point, everything is in place and we have all the information we need to run your SEO campaign. It’s time to draw a roadmap of how the next few months will go.

In our tracking sheet, there’s a project management tab that will show you exactly what will be done over the next 3 steps, this is very detailed and items will be updated in real time as “assigned”, “working” or “completed”.

This keeps you constantly updated on what we’ve been doing for you and what we’ll be doing for the next few months.

2. Google My Business (GMB) Listing & Local Pack Ranking

There’s a method to this madness. Promise.

NOTE — Not all of these strategies are used for every client and many variables such as competition level within your metro area determine the strategies we use.

Setup & Audit

Access to GMB Account

This is pretty straightforward. We’ll need to gain access to the GMB account to optimize and make any required changes. It also allows us to see analytics and any available insights.

Keyword Tracking & Reporting

We like to track 5 main local keywords and up to 20 additional local variations that pull up a map pack per campaign. In addition, we also like to use call tracking and dynamic number insertion.

Doing this will give us three different sources:

• Local Keyword Rankings
• Call Stats
• GMB Insights

Local SEO Audit

We audit your GMB listing and online presence using Whitespark and BrightLocal giving us information on existing We compare this to the competitor audit, giving us a benchmark for our GMB campaign.

The important goal here is to identify any significant problem areas that your client’s listing or site has as compared to the top competitor and make note of this.

Competitor Audit

We always check the top competitors for the main keywords in your geographic area. We’ll look at their GMB listings, reviews, their website, and anything else that might give us a leg up in our campaign.

A quick citation analysis of your top competitors is also an excellent way to see where your business currently stands in comparison to them — sizing up the competition also lets us know what we’re up against.

Create Review Strategy

You probably know that reviews matter for Click Through Rate (CTR) and Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO). They also matter for local rankings, too. You should try for a minimum of 10 reviews to start your Local SEO campaign.

And while 10 solid reviews are good in most cases, there are always going to be more competitive geographic areas that require you to have more reviews to stand out. In most cases, you’ll be pretty well set with 10-20 Google reviews.

The key here is to create and implement your review strategy and consistently plug away at it until you meet your goal (and continue after — skies the limit).

Google My Business (GMB) Listing Optimization

This is probably one of the most important things when optimizing for local. All business information should be accurate, complete, and within Google’s business guidelines.

Page Verification

You simply can’t start Local SEO unless your GMB listing has been verified.

If your listing hasn’t been claimed at all, we’ll make sure it get’s done. While in some cases verification can be done via an automated phone call, however, most businesses will require a postcard with a verification code that can take about a week or two.

Verify There Aren’t Any Duplicates

For one reason or another, many businesses have duplicate listings that have been created over the years. We’ll seek and destroy any and all duplicate listings to ensure that we’re not undermining our own efforts.

We’ll also take note of the “official” GMB listing URL for our Local SEO efforts moving forward.

Attach My Business Page to Domain Email Address

This makes your business look that much more legitimate in Google’s eyes. So instead of attaching an email like “WaterDamageCompany@gmail.com” to your GMB account, we’ll want something that uses your domain name, “like info@WaterDamageCompany.com.”

List/Verify Accurate Business Information

Your GMB listing is the foundation of a local SEO campaign and having accurate information is key to ranking locally. We’ll reference this information to do just about everything.

• Business Name
• Address
• Phone Number
• Website URL
• Business Categories
• Hours of Operation

Optimized GMB Description

Using relevant keywords and your geographic location, we’ll optimize a GMB description.

Verify Profile is 100% Complete

This is literally one of the easiest steps in the book and yet it’s something that gets overlooked a lot. We’ll make sure that your GMB listing is completely filled out for the best optimization starting point.

Upload Identity Photos

The most crucial photos for your GMB listing are your “Identity” photos. This consists of your Profile Photo, Logo Photo, and Cover Photo and will determine how your business will appear in search results.

Add Even More Photos

We like to add a minimum of 20 photos to the GMB listing and spread them across the available photo tabs. We’ll sprinkle in a few unique photos within the “By Owner,” “Interior,” “Exterior,” “At Work,” and “Team” sections of your GMB listing. Making sure these images are not only geo-tagged but that their file name and alt text are also optimized.

Create & Share GMB Posts

We’ll create short posts using this nifty little feature that ties into your website and local GMB listing helping build local relevance.

Create & Optimize GMB Website

We’ll create and optimize the available GMB website within your GMB listing, adding relevant content and links to top citations, social profiles, and location pages.

Local On-Site/On-Page Optimization

Similar to good ole’ fashioned on-site SEO, local on-site optimization just tweaks things a bit to target your geographic market.

We achieve this by:

• Using geo-relevant information within Title, H1, H2, H3, tags;
• Adding geo-relevant information within the content;
• Local outbound links;
• Internal linking;
• Reviews;
• And Local Business Schema / JSON-LD Markup.

Brand Building

Create & Optimize Social Media/Brand Accounts

Social profiles provide a foundation of any brand, whether you’re optimizing locally or for organic SERPs, these profiles add legitimacy and can become important sources of traffic for any business.

Here are some of the social brand accounts we’ll use:

• About.me
• Blogger
• Google+ Profile
• Gravatar
• Facebook
• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• Pinterest
• Twitter
• YouTube
• Bit.ly
• Flickr
• Medium
• Quora
• Reddit
• Slideshare
• StumbleUpon
• Tumblr
• WordPress
• Weebly
• Vimeo

Syndicate Press Release

We’ll deliver quality news releases that get distributed to top news outlets and include locally relevant content, map embeds, authority unstructured citations, in addition to high DA links. The power of a quality press release can propel brand prominence and local SEO rankings.

Top Business Citations with GPS Listings

The primary goal here is to establish trust for the brand and having complete, accurate, and consistent NAP (Name, Address, & Phone) citations help us achieve this. The more Google trusts your brand, the better rankings you’re likely to have.

We build these citations manually, allowing us to keep track of them for future changes. Using a service like Yext might seem easy, but it requires a yearly fee. And if you neglect to pay this fee, you run the risk of your listings being reverted back to their prior submission state.

Benefits of Manual Building:

• No Annual Fees
• Complete Control
• No Loss of Listings
• Complete Personalization of Listings

Top National Directories – These citations are high in quality and high in traffic. We don’t stop here, but definitely getting listed and personalizing them are a must.

Just a few we use:

• Yelp
• Foursquare
• Angieslist
• BrownBook
• Chamber of Commerce
• eLocal
• EZlocal
• HotFrog
• Kudzu
• YellowPages

Data Aggregators

These are the big boys:

• InfoGroup
• Neustar/Localeze
• Acxiom
• Factual

The “Big 4” provides the biggest bunch when it comes to citations. And hitting these early will allow your business listing to filter down to smaller directories.

Secondary Citation Creation

This is where citation audits and comparisons really help. We create a master list of local and niche relevant citations and completely build-out manual submissions.

Brand Prominence Amplified

Apple Maps – Claim, Verify, Setup

An Apple Maps listing is a must have for any brand trying to compete online, pulling most of their information from Yelp and the big 4 data aggregators. We’ll make sure it’s set up and verify the listing to ensure the information is accurate.

Bing Places – Claim, Verify, Setup

Right behind GMB and Apple Maps, a Bing Places listing can usually be claimed by phone verification but sometimes it may require postcard verification. We’ll ensure the information is accurate, add identity photos and keyword optimized photos.

Branded Link Building

To further amplify brand prominence we build links that include unique content and a consistent NAP and business information that your location pages and GMB website.

Adding Local Relevancy

Relevance refers to how well a local listing matches what someone is searching for.

Local relevance is one of the 3 most important ranking factors for GMB. We use a variety of methods to create local relevance for brands and to firmly establish the idea that the brand is the most relevant option out of all the competing local business listings.

They include:

• Authority Google My Maps
• Google Places Map Embeds
• My Map Citations & Brand Mentions
• Pinterest Pins & Brand Mentions
• Geo-Network Articles & Driving Direction Maps

3. On-Site SEO/On-Page SEO

Let’s get down to the nitty gritty.

What is on-site SEO?

On-site SEO (a.k.a. on-page SEO) is the practice of optimizing content, code, and additional elements on a website in order to rank higher in search engines while earning more relevant traffic from them.

Aside from helping search engine spiders crawl and interpret page content on your website, proper on-site SEO also helps users quickly navigate and clearly understand what your page is about and if it addresses their search query. Essentially, good on-site SEO helps search engines understand what a human would see.

The ultimate goal of on-site SEO can be thought of as attempting to make it as easy as possible for both search engines and users to:

• Understand what a webpage is about;
• Identify that page as relevant to a search query or queries (i.e. a particular keyword or set of keywords);
• Find that page useful and worthy of ranking well on a search engine results page (SERP).

Keywords, Content, &  Additional Elements

In the past, on-site SEO was about spamming high-value keywords in several locations on a website. That’s no longer the case.

Today’s search engines have grown exponentially more sophisticated. While keyword use still plays an important role, relevance is what’s important. For each of your pages, you should ask yourself how relevant the content is to the user’s search queries.

This makes on-site SEO less about keyword repetition and placement and more about understanding who your users are, what they’re looking for, and about what topics (keywords) you can create that best satisfies that need.

Pages that meet these criteria have content that is:

• In-depth.“Thin” content was one of Google Panda’s specific targets; today it’s more or less assumed that content must be sufficiently thorough in order to stand a good chance at ranking.
• User-friendly. Is the content readable? Is it organized on your site in such a way that it’s easily navigable?
• Unique. If not properly addressed, content duplicated from elsewhere on your site (or elsewhere on the Internet) may impact a site’s ability to rank on SERPs.
• Authoritative & Trustworthy. Does your content stand on its own as a reliable resource for information on a particular topic?
• Aligned With User Search Intent. Part of creating and optimizing for quality content is also delivering on searcher expectations. Content topics should align with the search queries for which they rank.

So, How Do We Do It?

We used both technical and non-technical elements to make this happen.

All of these elements tie back to the same basic idea — creating a good user experience. Simply put, the more usable a page is, both from a technical and non-technical perspective, the better that page’s on-site optimization will be.

Use SEO-Friendly URLs

We recommend making your URLs short and sweet. And always include your target keyword within the URL.

Optimize Title, H1, H2, & H3 Tags & Meta Descriptions

Title tags, heading tags, and meta descriptions are one of the most important on-page SEO factors. We’ll make sure all of these tags are unique and optimized throughout the entire website.

Optimize Images & Alt Text

We’ll make sure target keywords are included in the file name and image alt text, while also optimizing image size for faster page speed.

Use Synonyms & LSI Keywords

Sprinkling synonyms and LSI keywords will help create and determine relevancy and possibly increase the quality of content.

Use of External Links & Internal Links

We’ll properly setup the content on your website with both internal and external link structure.

Identify Crawl Errors

A “Crawl Error” means that Google is having trouble viewing a page on your website. And if they can’t see it, it won’t rank. We’ll identify and fix any crawl errors – easy peasy.

Fix Broken Links

Broken links can really hurt your SEO. We’ll find them and fix them. Pronto.

Use Social Sharing Buttons

Although social signals may not play a direct role in ranking your site, it does generate more eyeballs on your content. And more eyeballs increases the likelihood of links.

Use Schema Markup

Schema markup helps search engines understand your content better. We’ll use JSON-LD markup to make it happen.

Secure Your Site With HTTPS

HTTPS protocol is a confirmed Google ranking signal. If it’s not already implemented, we’ll implement it.

Make Sure Your Site is Mobile-Friendly / Use A Responsive Design

Mobile friendliness and responsive design is a must. It allows users to view your website on a mobile device without having to pinch and zoom.

Check & Boost Site Speed

Your website’s speed also plays an important role. No one’s going to wait 10+ seconds for your website to load, we no longer live in an age with dial-up. We’ll work on make your website lightning fast.

4. Off-Site SEO/Off-Page SEO

This is where the magic happens.

What Is Off-Site SEO?

“Off-site SEO” (also called “off-page SEO”) refers to actions taken outside of your own website to impact your rankings within search engine results pages (SERPs).

Optimizing for off-site ranking factors involves improving search engine and user perception of a site’s popularity, relevance, trustworthiness, and authority. This is accomplished by other reputable places on the Internet (pages, sites, people, etc.) linking to or promoting your website, and effectively “vouching” for the quality of your content.

Why Does Off-Site SEO Matter?

While ranking factors and search algorithms are at a constant flux, the general consensus within the SEO community is that the relevance, trustworthiness, and authority that proper off-site SEO provides a website still plays a major role in a page’s ability to rank.

Links & Off-Site SEO

Building backlinks are at the heart of off-site SEO. Search engines use these backlinks as indications of the linked-to content’s quality, so a site with many high-value backlinks will usually rank better than an otherwise equal site with fewer backlinks.

There are many signals that positively contribute to the equity passed, such as:

• The linking site’s popularity
• How related the linking site’s topic is to the site being linked to
• The “freshness” of the link
• The anchor text used on the linking site
• The trustworthiness of the linking site
• The number of other links on the linking page
• Authority of the linking domain and page

At the end of the day, it’s all about relevancy.

While earning links from external websites (link building) is the most commonly practiced off-site SEO strategy, almost any activity that a) occurs outside of your own website and b) helps to improve your search ranking position could be thought of as “off-site SEO.”

These include things like:

• Social Media Marketing
• Guest Blogging
• Linked & Unlinked Brand Mentions
• Influencer Marketing

Basically, the ultimate goal of these activities is to somehow create a reference to your website from elsewhere on the web.

Here’s How We Do It

• We find link opportunities (prospecting);
• We reach out to those opportunities (outreach);
• We follow up;
• We get awesome results;
• And we use these types of links.

Find Link Opportunities

We use four things to create our list of targets:

• Which keywords are best to rank for;
• The content we can use to rank;
• The types of links we to get;
• And the search operators we’ll use to generate targets for these links.

We call this prospecting. This is a constantly ongoing process, so if you ever look into your tracking sheet, you’ll see a list of targets and their status. This will change on a daily basis as updates are done in real time.

We try as hard as possible to get a personal contact email as well as the name of the person that we’re contacting, this makes our outreach much more effective.

Outreach To Opportunities

For each of the target’s we’ve found we’ll send out a personal email, using their name if possible and the most appropriate type of email based on the type of link we’ll be asking for.

For instance, an approach for a content placement is very different to the approach for a resource link.

These types of interactions often result in a relationship being built with the target, meaning we have something that can be mutually beneficial and utilized in the future. In addition to a link, it’s common practice for a target to share your site on social networks, which is an added bonus.

Follow Up

The art of follow up is probably one of the most important parts of this entire process and is quite often overlooked by other people.

People get hundreds of emails every day (just look at your own email inbox), and it’s extremely easy to ignore them. For this reason, we send a follow-up email (or 3) to all the targets who don’t get back to us.

We also track email opens, so we know who has opened an email and not replied, and who just hasn’t seen it yet. Respectively, they’ll receive completely different follow-up messages.

Results

The benefits of this methodology are essentially based on two performance indicators.

1. Referral Traffic Growth
2. Organic Traffic Growth

People click on these links. They’ll click on them because they’re interested in it and what’s being presented to them. This normally results in extremely targeted traffic that converts exceptionally well into customers/clients who need your services.

Secondly, all of these links will be on relevant and authoritative sites, this is essentially the “food” of search engines, your “upvotes.” We’re giving them exactly what they want and return they reward your site with higher organic rankings which result in more traffic for your website.

The type of traffic that needs your service, too. These are people actively searching for what you offer and then choosing to click on your result. So long as your website does its job and converts these visitors to calls/jobs, then it’s the very best kind of traffic you can have.

Types Of Links

• Link Roundups
• Resource Pages
• Broken Link Building
• Content PLacements (Guest Posting)
• Sponsored Posts
• Link Reclamation
• Bridge Method (Location Based)
• Bridge Method (Niche Based)
• Online PR
• Local Blogger
• EDU Student Blogs
• Manufacturer Links
• Video Links
• Directory Links
• Professions Organizations
• Conference & Event Links
• Blog & Forum Commenting
• Wikipedia Links
• Reverse Engineering Competitor Links
• Infographics
• Skyscraper Method

Still Here? Awesome.

So, How Much Do We Charge?