Google Rank

My goal: To appear on the first page of Google and Google Local results for “tutoring new orleans”.

Because I am a local business without a storefront, my ranking in Google and other search engines matters a lot in terms of prospective clients being able to find me. I started a website and signed up for Google Local early on, but my rankings have been pretty bad.

On Google Local, I found that as soon as I changed my listing name to “Harrington Writing and Tutoring Professionals,” I started to appear first on searches for “Writing Tutoring New Orleans.” However, I am still on the second page of results for “Tutoring New Orleans,” which doesn’t help me a lot. Who browses to the second page of those things? Some people have said that review counts and distance from city center matters, but there are pages ranked ahead of my business that have no reviews and are further from downtown New Orleans than I am. Any advice on how to move up in that ranking would be welcomed.

Page 1 and Page 2 (where I am item J on Page 2 as of 11/21/09)

On regular Google, I assumed that I could jump up in the rankings by getting linked from as many top rankings as possible. A couple of weeks into my efforts there, and that isn’t quite turning out to be true. A lot of the top results for “tutor New Orleans” tend to be listings like Craigslist, Yelp, Yellowpages, etc. I am listed in all of those pages. In fact, my business is often the top business embedded within those search results. Yet, my business itself is not at the top. The reason is that most of those services mark their links “no follow”, which effectively blocks Google from counting them as a vote in your favor. The web, after all, is just a popularity contest.

So what do I do about that? My next tactic is to comment on as many relevant blogs as I can using links back to www.harringtonwritingpros.com where appropriate. Those blog links may not count as much as a real link from a reputable site, but they will be permanent links, and they won’t be marked “no follow.”

Current “follow” links www.harringtonwritingpros.com:

• StayLocal.com – A project of the Urban Conservancy, this site seems to be a good web citizen in allowing fully-followable (search engine friendly) links. Great news for small and local businesses! Good for your Google ranking too.
• Brownbook

Current “no follow” links to www.harringtonwritingpros.com:

• Nola.com
• Craigslist.com
• Yellowpages.com
• OLX.com
• Yelp.com
• Topix.com

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Oh well. I understand that “no follow” links discourage spam and keep traffic focused on the sites providing the links.

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