Hi,

I've found the forums and am after a bit of help please.

I built a website for my dad who is a handyman. I registered a domain with our town which is rochdale and the word handyman so the domain is rochdalehandyman.

When I search for rochdale handyman the site comes up first in google.

When I search for handyman rochdale it comes up fourth but a map appears in the google results which puts the link just past the fold of the page.

Now, the results are using the same words so how do I get it to rank higher for the same words?

Is it a case of using the exact phrase more in the body or is it a case of link-building with handyman rochdale as the anchor text?

All advice is much appreciated

Hello!

SFD wrote:so the domain is rochdalehandyman.

I think rochdale-handyman would have been better because rochdalehandyman is considered as one word.

SFD wrote:Is it a case of using the exact phrase more in the body

It does not need to be the (very) exact phrase but you should have the words handyman and the name of the town in your (not too long) <title>
<h1>, <h2>, ... are also important for search engines.

SFD wrote:or is it a case of link-building with handyman rochdale as the anchor text?

Good links with the appropriate link text / anchor text are the most important thing in SEO. But maybe you should vary the link texts a bit. (When you only have links with "keyword1 keyword2" as anchor texts it might look a bit strange.)

Regards
Wolfgang

If your site is already first on rochdale handyman and fourth on handyman rochdale, it's already pretty good.

Doing better on these two precisely will not necessary be easy or good time spent, of course, it's important that you stay in good position for these, but it should be rather natural now, since you already got there and your site should propose more and more content about rochdale and handymans.

The idea at this stage would be to try to work on other possible queries which could end up, as they could be many, bringing your even more visitors than the previous two.

Generally speaking, IPB_Refugee's advises are good to follow, but in your case I'd focus on offering good content to read in your field, that would make more pages, more possible search queries and would as well be a way to consolidate your site position on the main two keywords since you would of course mainly be writing about rochdale and handymans.

You can as well create a new location in google sitemaps for your site if it's linked to a physical place where people can go.

Ultimately, backlinks are important too, try to obtain as many as possible from site related to rochdale and handymans.

++

that's what I want to know ,hope someone can give a advice.