I mentioned in my previous post about local Google search rankings and a website that I’m currently working on.  It’s not a traditional “niche store” like many websites I built in the past, but still a niche website focusing on jobs, careers and career development.  I belong to an affiliate program with one of the major job posting websites so I can have job postings, allow employers to post jobs and have other career development and employment articles on the website.

The city that I live in, not unlike many other large cities has over 9% unemployment, so I get a healthy number of searches for my main keywords.

I wanted to update you on how far my rankings have come in the past few days and it’s encouraging to say the least.  Currently I’m sitting on page #4 of Google for my main keywords.  While I’m still not getting some great traffic yet, I’m hopeful that the coming days, weeks and months will look pretty good.

Here’s what I have done so far to get the website to where it is:

1.  It’s a WordPress based website that has some good interlinking between pages and 4 or 5 good quality posts that are on topic.

2.  I have optimized the site with All-in-One SEO plugin, making sure each page has a good title, description and keywords.

3.  I submitted it to some directories.  Whether this is still helpful or not, no one seems to really know, but I did it anyway.

4.  I have a Twitter account and Facebook page for this website which I do post on.

5.  I created a blogger.com blog with the main keywords and wrote a few posts.

6.  I created a good quality Squidoo lens.

7.  I sought out some high quality backlinks on job related websites in my area.  I did get one from a local University!

8.  A submitted a sitemap to Google Webmaster tools and made sure that I set to it to target the country I live in specifically (Canada.)

9.  Submitted the site to Stumbleupon.

That’s about all I have done so far that I can remember, but I’m always looking for more high quality backlinks that are targeted to my local community.

Quick Tip:  I just don’t believe that more backlinks are better.  Focus on GOOD Quality, targeted backlinks that make sense for your website.  For example, if you have a Diecast Car website, don’t bother trying to get a backlink on a Wedding Dress website.