SEO for freelancers - This works!!!! Seriously happy haha...

smadamij

Member
100 Google+ 'Likes' and I rocket to page 1.

Coincidence? I think not. Still, its a result and the phones now ringing endlessly. As an experiment I have been actively sourcing Google+ likes, and on reaching 100, my site has launched 6 pages into the upper reaches of page 1 for my keywords.

Now that just proves G+ is THE big fish in SEO. Take a look at the bottom of my site, it works people...

http://www.adamsgraphicdesign.co.uk/

I'm not looking for work, i'm not fishing for jobs, I just wanted to share this with all of us 'small businesses' and freelancers who are desperately trying to gain more work fighting the bigger agencies. I urge you to do this and find out for yourself.

Has anyone else had any success stories like this?

If you want to follow me, go to https://plus.google.com/b/1019416884...36251390/posts and I will follow back with the promise of +1's to follow.

Hope it works for you to guys.

Cheers

Jim
 
Not graphic design Cheshire, you appear on page 2, that's not high ranking!

Page 5 for web design Cheshire.

I think you are logged into google services and your site is appearing higher than you think
 
Not after Cheshire to be honest as the search queries are way under what Manchester gets as people search for their nearest town, not the county as a whole. So therefore been aiming more Manchester way and more niche markets I aim at for property marketing, travel brochure design, illustration etc - the ones that pay well as opposed to the bread and butter jobs - or in other words, long tail keywords.

There may be some variation in individual placings depending on where you are in the country, but its been verified through proxyservers, SEO software and me ringing pals across the country just to double check cos I didnt believe it either. All I can do is vouch that page 1 makes the phone ring 10 times more and it all happened after a big search for proper +1s after building realtionships through G+, not through <<removed>> or some cr*p like that. Now just gotta aim for the top slots through a mixture of press releases and some high PR page links from friends etc.

I can understand the doubt fella, but the amount of enquiries I now get proves it right. All I wanted to do was let freelancers with small sites and presence know that there is a way to boost your rankings without paying for it.

logo design manchester - page 1
graphic design manchester - page 1
graphic design altrincham - page 1
manchester illustrator - page 1
property brochure design - page 1
estate agent advert design - page 1
brochure design manchester - page 1
travel brochure design manchester - page 1
 
Last edited by a moderator:
and forgot....

freelance graphic designer manchester - page 1
property advert design - page 1

Traffic has increasesd through my site from 30-40 per day to average 100+ per day and hit an all time high of 500 once and occasional spikes of 300. The positions will vary over time, now I'm up there its going to be a battle to stay there but one fight per day I reckon and today, Im happy and the phone is ringing far more than previously. Its a positive and in this climate Id rather read a positive than a negative as we all need to know it is possible. Maybe the Panda update was a blessing after all for the smaller guys huh...
 
Nice one mate, glad it has worked out well for you. It all sounds a bit more credible now that you've given some extra info too. I will have to do something similar to this once I finally get my site sorted out.. any tips for building G+1's for anyone else that might want to share in your success? This would make a good blog post for you too if you haven't done so already and want to build up some content.
 
It's like the facebook "like" but for websites, from what I understand. I don't think you need to have a physical link or to link it your G+ account or anything.
 
Cheers gents, I know it may have seemed a bit dubious as an original post, and in hindsight maybe I shouldnt have written it when I was so excited :) However, the bottom line is it works for us guys with small sites that need all the help, with no budget.

https://developers.google.com/+/plugins/+1button/

This is the best resource for adding it to your site, but the real advantage comes if you have a G+ Business page that you link it to. You can add rel="author" tags to it so that eventually any posts you make will include your photo (a good way of standing out in eventual serps)

http://www.google.com/+/business/promote.html

If anyone wants to join me on G+ then Im more than happy to +1 any posts with the hope that it will be reciprocated. Nothing untoward in that, we just help each other out to promote our sites. (i know its not strictly allowed to say that in forums, been ticked off a few times, but boy was it worth it). I just find it so much more beneficial than Facebook which is full of mates, but noone wanting to promote their work and businesses.

AS for writing it on a blog Squiddy, I was going to mate, but decided to add it to Squidoo so that I could get another valued backlink or two to my site. Who knows if this is part of the impproved rankings too but hey, its so difficult for me to get decent backlinks that I thought better there, where readers populate rather than hope they find my site more by luck. You can read it here if interested.... http://www.squidoo.com/is-google-plus-worth-it

For building up +1s I just chatted. Lots. And Linkedin helped too. I talked lots about it and people joined me, we ran side by side experiments and it seems to have worked for many of us. Now we just compare results, promote each others posts and hope we stay up in the rankings. Sure I will have to keep working at it, and maybe embrace other ways such as stumbleupon, pinterest etc but for today, well its good and I wanted everyone to know about it so they can hopefully enjoy the same success.
 
Blogger Danny Sullivan recently shared his experience with Ford’s Google+ page. Danny added Ford Motor Company as a “friend” on Google+. Shortly after, he searched for “cars” on Google and found Ford.com on the first page. Prior to that, Ford.com did not show up in the first 10 pages. The simple act of adding a friend on Google+ improved Ford’s ranking for Danny by at least 9 pages.

Keep in mind, this increase in rankings only appeared for Danny because on of his “friends” shared or +1′ed a link to Ford.com. If you’re not logged in, don’t use Google+, or don’t have many friends, the impact on your search results will be minimal

The results you see won't be the same for everyone, google + 1's only affect the people and friends of people that use it, which in UK is still quite mimimal, most people on here will use and are in the same business as you so you site will be placed higher for people here than the general public who don't use + or post things about logo design etc on +
 
I know where you are coming from, and I did check all this out as it was such a jump for me I had to be very sure it was reading right - but its been verified by clean browsers, proxyservers, people with no connection to me, no google+ relationship at all, from varying parts of the country and is also showing in my webmaster tools and analytics info in a variety of ways. Plus, all I can reiterate is that the phones is ringing alot more. At the end of the day if you do not want to initiate it, then don't, but if you want to try and increase your SERPs then its free, youve nothing to lose, its not blackhat and its worked for me. The choice after that is entirely your own.
 
Interesting results, I'd added Google+ a couple of months back on the advise of my SEO people, and as you say it's not blackhat and I'm sure Google will give it some prominence as they'll want +1'ing to take off as much as possible. Unfortunately I don't know many people who actually use it at present so I'm up for spreading some +1 love! Need to increase my circle anyway so will gladly +1 and follow if anyone else has it set up on their site, every little helps.
 
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