It is critical that you set up your local domain for SEO success from the get go. The last thing you want to do is start off on a bad footing within the search engines. In order to accomplish this, you need to optimize how your content is "presented" to the search engines.

If you do not get rankings, then your domain is going to carry very little value to any local business, thus not making this a profitable venture.

I actually bought a domain for the purpose of this tutorial and based off of my research, so I will walk you through the domain set-up process using the following domain:

SeattleCarInsuranceAgent.com

Install and Activate the Appropriate Plugins

All in One Wordpress Plug-in

This is a plug-in that is native to website installations using the Wealthy Affiliate website builder. The All in One Wordpress plugin simplifies the naming convention of your pages, how the links look, and basically optimizes your site so that it "makes sense" to the search engines.

There is step by step training on how to install this plugin that I do recommend you follow through when setting up all of your websites here at Wealthy Affiliate.

Wordpress: Installing the All in One SEO Plugin

Boosting Your Rankings (Get it indexed)

In order to get rankings, you need to first get "seen" by Google, in other words, indexed. There are some very simple ways of accomplishing this and I am going to explain a few of them briefly. I am not going to elaborate on them, rather give you some suggestions as to how you can improve indexing times and achieve higher rankings in Google.

(1) Write an relevant article and Submit it to a high rankign directory(recommended site: www.StreetArticles.com)
(2) Share your site on social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Google +, MySpace)
(3) Social Bookmark your site (recommended sites: Reddit, Tumblr, Digg)
(4) Add a Google Sitemap (there is a Google sitemap plugin in Wordpress)
(5) Pin your site images on Pinterest.com
(6) Create a video on Youtube, linking to your site within a description
(7) Create profiles within forums/networks related to the niche you are in

These are a few quick methods that you should implement to get your site ranking higher in the search engines. I recommend that you do at least 3 of these items.

Create Your Initial Content

You should add some initial content to your website. There is a particular "minimum" that you should have in terms of content for attain SEO rankings. You cannot just leave your website empty or search engines will not see it as being valuable and will not rank it.

Here are some core pages that you should have:

(1) Home Page (relevant to local keyword). This is the root page of your website.
(2) Contact us Page
(3) Information Page about the type of business (ex. car insurance)
(4) One Relevant Blog Post

Don't COPY content either. Make sure you either write unique content yourself or that you outsource your writing to someone who is capable of writing local content.

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mcman187 Premium
hey Kyle I bought a geographic targeted domain last week and I had someone on fiverr.com write the home page but I don't think I like it. Do you think you could have a look at it and see what you think. I will send the article to you through PM if that's OK

Tell me your thoughts on it.
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Kyle Premium Plus
Sure, I can have a look. I think that if you are not happy with it, you should send it back to get rewritten or be more careful with the writer you choose next time. Outsourcing does not necessarily mean quality work, you still have to do your due diligence in order to get quality, in particular when it comes to writing.
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Mike Morales Premium
Kyle, I like the advertising inquiry section idea on the contact page, do you have any examples you might share with us or some kind of a format that you might use to set this page up?
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Kyle Premium Plus
I will create one this week on my sample site so that you can see an example. Basically it is as straightforward as it says, you create a contact page with your information (or a form) where people can get in touch with you if they are interested in advertising. You could also show a screenshot of where on your site the advertising will be located and which spots are currently available.

This allows advertisers to come to you (takes a lot of the work out of it).
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mcman187 Premium
This is exactly what i was looking for. Thanks so much for creating this training, I now have a much better understanding of the local domain business. The next thing i would like to know more about is how to find hot selling domain names. (Keyword rich domains)

I was on NameBio.com last night doing some research and i found that the 2 most popular domains i found so far was anything with the word social in it or the word cloud. Some of these domains have sold for as much as 228,000 dollars, I was wondering what makes them so hot.

Then i went to godaddy.com and every domain with those 2 words in it was taken or they was on the marketplace selling for thousands of dollars. That is crazy dude.

Also what exactly is a wiki ? I see a lot of that lately, like when jay did the halo4wiki case study but I'm not sure what it is.
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Kyle Premium Plus
Yeah, there are a lot of domains out there that are getting bought up for what I think is too much money in a lot of cases. A great opportunity that will exist for some time as they will never MAKE more .com domains, it is real estate that is running out. 2 word domains are almost gone, three word domains are getting there. 5 years from now most 4 word domain names (.com's) will be gone.

Focusing on the local marketplace with your domain purchases is really no different than buying a piece of real estate that is going to go up in value. :)
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jpnetco Premium
Great training Kyle. Not into local yet, still developing my own sites, however I'm able to cement some these training ideas that you've provided here. Thanks.
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Kyle Premium Plus
These ideas can also be applied (the finding, buying and ranking domains) to any niche as well...not just local businesses, but any niche website that you want to create. The great part about local businesses though is that they TRULY need your help and most of them have money to spend regularly on advertising. :)
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muskyblood Premium
Great local training Kyle! I sort of gave up on local a while back, but just might try to get back in. I know the possibilities are there, I just never found a good way to get the attention of business owners.

I tried e mails, regular mail, phone calls, and everyone was always to busy, and treated me like another one of the annoying calls from salesmen they probably get all of the time. I even did try the methods of ranking my sites before ever contacting them, and it just never got rolling for me. All that rejection got me discouraged.
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Kyle Premium Plus
I think more and more these days people are realizing the potential of getting local rankings. Being able to show them something before they even have to talk to you can definitely help.

In saying this, many business owners believe it or not check their Facebook pages more these days than their business email, so you may want to try this as an additional medium of contact. You could also show them a screenshot of where their ad would be and show them some traffic stats.

The more real you make it to them, the more likely they will be to bite.
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