Questions on SEO, new to the game

[scottlmcj]

I became the manager for my dealerships Internet department. We have upgraded our website, but as anyone in business knows it doesn't matter how good it looks unless it gets traffic.

We are trying to increase our presene/ranking on search engines to where someone could for instance type in "(town name) jeep dealer" and have us pop up in the top 3 of the search engines (quite a task I know).

I know that putting a webpage with "austin jeep dealer, dallas jeep dealer" and stuff like that all over the place can get us banned from some major search engines.

Anyone have any tips out there for a newbie to start working on getting our ranking up there? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[hugoguzman]

Welcome aboard Scott!
Here are a few suggestions.

Familiarize yourself if with metatags (if you haven't done so already). The ones that you need to focus on (in order) are:
Title metatag
Alt. Image metatags
Description metatag
Keyword metatag

If nothing else, make sure that the title tag of your site(s) says something along the lines of "Town" Jeep Dealer....like if you have a dealership in my hometown (Miami) it would say: "Miami Jeep Dealer"

Also figure out what other "secondary" terms might drive solid traffic to your site(s). Terms like "dealership" etc...may also bring good traffic. Use this tool to get estimates on how much traffic specific terms might bring:
http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/

When you are doing all of this, it's time to learn about backlinks and building content. One step at a time though...Feel free to ask any and all follow up questions that you might have.

I hope this helps.

Hugo

[scottlmcj]

Our website hosting company (Cobalt) uses an ezeditor to work on our websites, so it isn't true HTML as far as what we edit. I have done title metatag in the format you have suggested and have tried to edit our description meta tags to be pretty concise.

I didn't know abou the alt image tags, thanks alot for the tip!

From what i have read it seems that one of the best ways to increase our ranking is adding relevant content to your website that includes the key words you believe folks may be searching for.

Would something such as this help our ranking (for folks typing in (blank town) Jeep dealership).

Our goal is to be the biggest Dodge Chrysler and Jeep dealer in Texas. In order for us to get folks from Dallas, Austin, Lubbock, Houston, etc to make us their Doge Chrysler Jeep dealer we have to..........

I heard that doing random words bunched together can hurt you, but somethign such as the above seems to make sense as far as the structure and includes some of the keywords that people may be searching for.

[hugoguzman]

That is correct. Including keywords or keyphrases in your text is a good idea. You can include your target phrases (like "town jeep dealer") anywhere from 1 to 5 times within a given page. Just be "natural". Don't overstuff your text with keywords and you'll be fine.

Now, in order to start ranking in the major search engines (google, yahoo, msn) you need to start acquiring incoming links (backlinks) from relevant sites. By incoming link I mean I hyperlink that point from someone's site to your site.

These "backlinks" should be from sites that are somewhat relevant to cars, automotive products, etc... if possible. They should be static in nature (no redirects) and the anchor text (the text that is actually hyperlinked) should include your target keyphrases.

For example:

Miami Jeep Dealer (http://www.yoursite.com)

There are many different ways of acquiring backlinks. The two most popular ways are reciprocal links and text link ads.

Visit these sites to learn more:
http://www.linkadage.com
http://www.linksmile.com
http://www.textlinkbrokers.com
http://www.linksmanager.com

I also have entire categories in this forum devoted to "Text Link Advertising" and "Linking Strategies" in general.

Hugo

[yellowsubmarine]

Don't forget to validate your html:
www.w3.org

Just my two cents...

[joker]

But validation is not very important for SEO - but sometimes helpful as concerns coding errors.

[fruit-engine]

Try building links by adding submitting articles adn press releases to article submission sites. You can also submit your business info to online directories.