Recently, a client asked me an important question. A question that you should ask every SEO company before you hire them.
“Where do you rank on Google?“
Chances are you arrived at this post because you typed in a search term like ‘Rio Rancho SEO’, ‘SEO consultant in Rio Rancho’, ‘Rio Rancho SEO expert’, or something similar.
That’s important, see. Because an SEO company’s main responsibility is to get their clients better visibility on Google (better rankings). Better rankings and a higher position up on the first page of Google means more phone calls, more appointments booked, and more foot traffic for your local business.
It then makes sense that if an SEO agency in Rio Rancho can rank on Google for keywords like ‘Rio Rancho SEO services’ versus their competitors (other SEO companies), they have at least demonstrated that they have the capability to do what they’re constantly promising other companies:
“We’ll Rank You #1 on Google in Rio Rancho”
In this blog post, I’m going to show you exactly what I did to get my site ranked #3 in Rio Rancho in under 3 months for SEO related keyword terms, and what I’m going to do next to push it up to position #1 in the next few months.
The idea here is that if you model after what I’m doing with Rio Rancho SEO, you can rank well for your Rio Rancho business.
How to Rank #1 on Google for Your Business in Rio Rancho
I’m going to show you what I did. If you’re in a business that’s less competitive this will absolutely work. For example, a dog walker, bookkeeper, or used book store will achieve great results by following this short guide.
For businesses that are more competitive like the trades (pest control, roofing, plumbing) or health & medical (chiropractors, dentists, doctors) you will notice major improvements in your search rankings, but you will likely need the help of a professional to reach the top of page 1 due to their competitiveness.
We recommend watching the video below if you’re a more visual learner:
We’ll break this blog post into two sections, the first section will outline what I did to get started and reach the 3rd position on Google for ‘Rio Rancho SEO’.
The second section will go into detail on the handful of activities I’m going to do next to increase my search rankings and reach position #1 on Google for ‘Rio Rancho SEO’.
Section 1: What I Did to Reach Position #3 for the Search Term Rio Rancho SEO
While this list of items may not be 100% exhaustive, it includes all of the major elements that I needed to rank my site which you can use to rank yours.
On-Page Optimization
This has to do with all of the elements that you can control on the page of your website. Thus, ‘On-page’ optimization. These include things such as the Title, URL, Headings, Images, and Content of your website.
Let’s get into it.
Updating Your Page Title
The title is what the search engines display for users in the search results. It’s important to put the main keyword that you’re targeting at the beginning of your page title. Usually, this is the city name + service. Then, you can use the rest of the roughly 70 characters that Google will display to put in secondary keywords (if there’s room) and then your company name.
So we changed the title of our website to ‘Rio Rancho SEO & Web Design Services | Digital Harvest.
The main keyword is: Rio Rancho SEO
The secondary keyword is: Web Design
A modifier we used is: Services
The company name is: Digital Harvest
You can see the picture here:
Follow the same structure for your company. If you were a seamstress you might do something like: ‘Rio Rancho Alterations | Local Seamstress | Company Name’
Updating the URL
Some companies use the home page as the main page they want to rank. There’s nothing wrong with this, however, it can pigeon hole you from an SEO perspective if the company adds locations or expands its service area in the future.
Using our website as an example, we have a /location page and then we have the individual city pages linked out from there. This gives us greater control over the URL structure and how we choose to power up the site.
Because we don’t have the main keyword ‘SEO’ in our domain name https://digitalharvest.io it’s okay for us to put it in the URL for the page we’re trying to rank.
In our case, the URL ends up looking like this: https://digitalharvest.io/rio-rancho-seo/
We kept it super simple and short. Just the city name + the main keyword which is SEO. In many cases, you will use the same main keyword you used for the Title of your page as the URL.
Adding and Updating Headings
You’ll notice this page has only one H1 Heading near the very top, and the rest of the page is organized by smaller headings including H2, H3, and even some H4s. This helps to organize your content for the reader.
It’s also an important element of your on-page SEO.
If you take a look at our Rio Rancho SEO city page you’ll notice that there’s a lot of variation in the headings for the word ‘SEO’ such as ‘SEO services’, ‘digital marketing’, or ‘SEO in Rio Rancho’.
We don’t necessarily want the same keyword to be placed too frequently or it becomes overdone. At this point, we just want to weave in some variation.
This is where a dentist might use ‘Rio Rancho dentist’ as the main keyword in their H1 heading, but would use ‘Root Canal’ or ‘Teeth Whitening’ for H2s or H3s depending on how the information is broken down on their website. Google understands that root canals and other dental services are related to dentistry, so it helps to mention them so the algorithm may suggest your page for more than just your main keywords.
Image Optimization
There’s a lot you can do with image optimization, but we’re going to focus on the most important elements, namely how you name your image, the image description, and the image alt text.
Below is an example of one of the images optimized for the Rio Rancho SEO services page on our site.
Naming Your Image
I recommend using a secondary keyword as the name of your image. In our case instead of using just Rio Rancho SEO we went more specific with (INSERT REAL INFO HERE)
Also, note that when you rename your image you want to put a dash between each word so it’s easier for the search engines to read when you upload it.
Image Description
This is how you would caption your image more or less. It’s the contextual data you add to a photo so that Google can better understand what it’s about. It’s also a great place to slip in some extra keywords along with the location info of the city you’re targeting with your page.
It’s usually going to be a sentence or two and that’s about it.
Image Alt Text
This is specifically for website visitors that are blind and are using page readers to help navigate the web. The reader will read the alt text on your image as a literal description of what the photo is about.
On our page we used a photo of the Rio Rancho welcome sign and the alt text was ‘welcome to rio rancho sign on unser blvd’
Adding Keyword Rich Content
We used an FAQ to get more written content onto the page. More written content generally makes it easier to rank a page on Google versus having less content. Web designers typically go for simplicity and less text, but if they know anything about SEO they also need to recognize that we need places to put text to rank faster and more efficiently.
You’ll notice we use different variations of the main keyword along with the city name.
You’ll also notice that we use different variations of the main keyword without the city name.
Our objective is to weave a lot of keyword variations and supporting keywords into the text as possible in a natural way for the reader. These variations help us cast a wider net in the search results to acquire visitors from more searches than just the main keyword.
LOCATION SECTION
We found that Google really loves it when you link to other local companies through your website. So we wrote a little paragraph about Rio Rancho and linked to several local businesses and even the mayor’s page on Facebook. This also helps Google further correlate your business in the search results to the city you’re targeting.
NAP SECTION
If your business has a physical location it’s a best practice to put the name, address, and phone number at the bottom of your website in the footer. If you are a service area business or a home-based business you might just put the city name plus the zip code instead of including a street name.
Off-Page SEO
Most of what we’ve done to help our page rank on Google has been related to the on-page factors we just finished updating. Off-page SEO is what separates the newbies from the veterans. Off-page SEO is anything that has to do with acquiring links from other sites that point to yours.
Off-Page SEO is what’s required to power up your website. The more powerful your website, the better it will rank on Google.
Thankfully Rio Rancho isn’t that large of a city and competition among SEO agencies is pretty light compared to Albuquerque SEO. We’ll need very little powering up in order to rank well.
CITATIONS
One of the most important local search engine optimization factors for your business is your online directory listings, also known as citations. You want them to be 100% consistent with your Google My Business listing in their name, address, and phone number. Inconsistencies can often be the difference between your business showing up in the maps section of Google search versus a competitor.
We went ahead and started off with roughly 50 local citations to list our business on. I’ve listed and linked them all below:
BBB.org
Hoovers.com
ChamberOfCommerce.com
CitySquares.com
MerchantCircle.com
Manta.com
Tupalo.com
AmericanTowns.com
LocalPages.com
Pr.Business
iGlobal.co
Opendi.us
Cylex-USA.com
GoLocal247.com
VoteForTheBest.com
ExpressUpdate.com
CitySearch.com
InsiderPages.com
SWNewsMedia.com
CommunityWalk.com
YellowBook.com
GlobalCatalog.com
CityBase.com
LocalProject.net
CityFOS.com
TomTom.com
InfoBel.com
Yandex.com
Local.BOTW.org
YellChoice.com
Trueen.com
411.com
US.JustDial.com
TradeFord.com
Wand.com
DataSphere.com
Buzzfile.com
LifeInUSA.com
Thomasnet.com
WeGoPlaces.com
ZipCode2Business.com
BizDays.com
OneStopB2B.com
USAYPage.com
FSLocal.com
Where2Go.com
CitiServi.com
YellowOne.com
EveryMerchant.com
MyHuckleberry.com
mfrbee.com
ListNow.co
Servzip.com
Evensi.com
This is a good list to start with. I’d recommend you take our free site scan here to determine which other directories you should list your business on. It will also reveal inconsistencies that you may need to fix.
Thankfully, we’re starting from scratch and we won’t accidentally create duplicate listings or have inconsistencies.
One thing to note is that at the time of publishing this post, none of the directory listings have been optimized. Meaning, there are no photos on them, and very little in terms of their descriptions.
CHAMBER LINK
A worthy investment from an SEO standpoint is a link from the local chamber of commerce. We proudly support the Rio Rancho Regional Chamber of Commerce as a member and frequently attend their networking and other events.
SECTION 2: How to Reach Position #1 in Google Search for ‘Rio Rancho SEO’
Everything up until this point helped us reach a #3 ranking for ‘Rio Rancho SEO’ and so logically what follows is that we must do MORE in order to reach #1.
Below are a few of the things we’re going to do to help further power up the website so that we can overtake the last two positions in the search results.
Creating a Social Fortress
Having a Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or YouTube page is important not only from a branding perspective (you should set up accounts in your business’ name even if you aren’t going to manage them yet), it’s also important for SEO.
When a customer searches your name on Google, you want them to find only search results for their brand name, not some other company on the other side of the country. Adding new social media accounts that all link back to your website helps Google see how they’re all digital assets owned by you.
We’re going to build a bunch of new social media accounts for the Rio Rancho page which we’ll come back here and list later once they’re built.
Optimizing Page One Directories
Doing a quick Google search for our primary keyword reveals a handful of directories on the first page, along with the other agencies that rank along with us.
We are listed on some, but not all of them, so we’ll add them to the list of directories for Rio Rancho. We want to be part of these directories because people could be searching for us directly from there, but also because Google is already telling us that the directory is a trusted resource. If Google didn’t value that directory page, it wouldn’t be ranking on page 1.
I also noticed that the Rio Rancho Chamber of Commerce website is showing up with a category page for search engine optimization. My business listing is not showing up in that category, so I’m going to update my category so that it does. This will help my site for the same reasons listed above.
OPTIMIZED CITATIONS
We’re going to add SEO optimized photos and descriptions to the 50+ directory listings and citations that I shared above. This will help increase the quality of those listings and their relevance. When we get links to our website from more relevant sources, their effectiveness is greater in how they power up our website.
GOOGLE LISTING
If we can get a Google listing in Rio Rancho, perhaps at a virtual office we would then be able to compete in the local ‘map-pack’ listings which receive the lion’s share of telephone calls. It would also provide certain advantages in how well our Rio Rancho SEO page will rank.
Rio Rancho Search Engine Optimization Conclusion
If you go through each section of this guide without skipping any steps, you’ll have a proper foundation for achieving positive rankings in Google search.
Completing all of the on-page SEO tasks from Section 1 of this guide should take you at most 2 hours otherwise you’re overthinking it.
Completing all of the off-page SEO tasks from Section 2 and the ‘Citations’ portion from this guide will likely take 20+ hours for someone who has never done it before. This is where our SEO services might come in handy saving you valuable time.
I look forward to coming back and updating this page with a link to our next episode which will share more about what we did to move us from position #3 in search today, back up to #1 where we once were.
About Digital Harvest
Officially founded the day before Halloween in 2018, Digital Harvest was born in the desert of New Mexico. Led by long-time SEO Expert Avram Gonzales, Digital Harvest provides world-class SEO services to home service companies that are eager to grow their business in a predictable, scalable way. Curious to see if Digital Harvest can help you grow your business? Give us a call during business hours (505) 365-1545 or visit us online: https://digitalharvest.io/