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SEO for contractors is more important than ever before. When a toilet leaks, a roof needs replacing or a basement foundation wall develops cracks, where do customers turn to find a contractor? They go online to search engines like Google or Bing.
Research shows 93% of all searches start online, but online searches often stop at the first page. More than 70% of users click on a search result on the first page of Google. Only 6% click on a second-page result.
If your website doesn’t even show up until page 3 or lower in search results, your chance of capturing a lead is minuscule.
So how do you get your business website to rank on that all-important first page? The answer is search engine optimization (SEO).
Learn more about contractor SEO marketing below. For more information about SEO management services offered by Team WTI, call our experts at (309) 489-0026.
Nearly 97% of Americans now own smartphones. The ability to search for an electrician, tree repair professional, HVAC specialist, or other home contractor is at their fingertips.
Customers rely on search engines to find service providers. In order to keep your business profitable and your work crews busy, your website must be a hard-working member of your team.
Search engine optimization is a series of steps, techniques, and content enhancement designed to make a website rank as high as possible in organic search results.
Search results can be divided into two categories: non-organic (or paid) and organic.
Non-organic or paid ads, such as those generated by Google Ads or Microsoft Advertising, operate on a pay-per-click basis and have the word “ad” accompanying the search result.
Organic search results are the non-paid results that naturally appear ranked according to their relevance to search terms.
Why does one contractor’s website rank higher than another? How can your site appear before your competition in search results?
Search engines take a number of factors into consideration when determining what websites and web pages to list in search results. Each page gets rated based on the search engine’s opinion of a site’s usefulness and authority.
Factors include:
How closely does the information on your site or page match what a customer is searching for? The goal of an online search is to find exactly what you’re looking for. Google and other search engines want to be able to show the right results at the right time. Optimizing pages for specific valuable keywords will help capture searches that bring revenue to your business. (Read: Why Keyword Research Is An Important Part of SEO Services)
It’s not enough to just tell customers what services you offer. They want more information. If you’re an HVAC contractor and a customer is having trouble with their furnace, do you list possible problems? Do you offer explanations on how a furnace works? Do you detail your hourly rates? The more robust your content, the better your business website will rank. (Read: Keeping Your Website Visitors Through Compelling Website Content)
The last thing you want to do is irritate a potential customer. However, your website might do just that. Are there broken links that lead to error pages? Is your site hard to read or navigate on a mobile device? Does it take a long time for content to load? Search engines take all of these factors into consideration when ranking sites.
Technical SEO optimizes the infrastructure of your website and goes hand-in-hand with search engine optimization. It’s not enough for your site to just be helpful to potential customers, you also have to be helpful to the search engine web crawlers. Behind-the-scene components including schema data, sitemaps, page speed, title tags, alt image descriptions, and URL structure all matter and help your site rank higher.
How do contractors capture leads in their, town, state, or service area, especially for those valuable “near me” or “nearby” searches, such as “electrician near me” “local plumber,” “tree trimming service nearby?”
Local SEO helps businesses stand out and attract more customers in their immediate community and the surrounding region. Local SEO focuses on optimizing a business’ website and directory listings, including Google Business Profile (previously Google My Business) and Bing Places For Business, to help win the valuable “near me” searches and rank in the Google 3-Pack. (Read: Google My Business Listing: Why It Is Important For Your Business)
The goal for search engine optimization is to rank higher in search results and generate leads. However, SEO offers additional benefits including:
Customers looking to hire a contractor to repair concrete, waterproof a basement, install landscaping, dig a foundation, or any other service often expect to pay hundreds to thousands of dollars. Unless it’s an emergency – like calling a plumber to fix a broken pipe – customers prefer to shop around and have a longer consideration window before making a decision to hire a contractor.
As a result, the more your company shows up in search results and the greater name recognition your small business has, the more likely potential leads are to become paying clients.
If you’re taking active steps to make your business rank highly in online searches, you already have a leg up on any competition not investing in digital marketing or SEO. The more clicks your site attracts, the more relevant search engines place on your website. Which means your organic traffic continues to grow.
Search engine optimization isn’t free, but efforts made on your site continue to build over time and will continue to be of value as long as you maintain your business website. SEO is a long-term strategy designed to naturally increase your search engine result rankings.
In comparison, other marketing efforts – both online and offline – lose value as soon as they stop. For instance, you no longer receive marketing value from a newspaper ad or billboard once it stops running. Pay-per-click advertising online can vault your ad to the top of search results, but only as long as you have an ad budget to pay for it.
The ultimate goal is to make your phone ring and bring in jobs and paying customers. The easier it is for customers to find you, the more likely they are to hire you.
Yes, SEO is something you can do for yourself. However, like most things in life, you’ll get better results if you leave it to the professionals. We know contractors are often called to fix do-it-yourself problems gone array and home “projects” that would have been better left to the experts.
We understand you’re an expert in your field, and to make money, you have to be on the job. If you’re at a job site, in your vehicle, or preparing bid documents, it’s hard to devote time to improving your website rankings. Relying on an SEO agency like Team WTI is the perfect solution. (Read: How A Marketing Agency Can Impact Businesses’ Marketing Journey)
There’s a natural growth progression to search engine optimization. While that’s extremely valuable for the long-term goal of increasing your business’ ranking in search results, there are other digital marketing tactics contractors can use to increase their company visibility and bring in leads in shorter time frames.
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising (such as Google Ads or Microsoft Advertising) is used to increase sales, generate leads, and promote brand awareness. Using keywords, advertisers can show a targeted ad at the exact moment a potential customer is searching for a specific product or service. Utilizing multiple ad formats as well as the audience, location, and time targeting, ad accounts can be designed to ensure the client is paying for valuable clicks with a high probability of turning into leads or sales.
Social Media Engagement is designed for companies wanting to see growth and engagement on their social media platforms. In addition to posting regularly and ensuring profiles are robust, up-to-date, and accurately reflect the business’ goals, social media managers engage with followers and actively work to increase a company’s social media visibility within their community and industry. (Read: Your Social Media Presence: Building Trust and Connecting With Potential Customers)
Contractors and small business owners know word-of-mouth recommendations are worth their weight in gold. The online equivalent of those word-of-mouth recommendations is online reviews. Actively requesting and encouraging customers to leave positive reviews can help boost the likelihood of new customers contacting your business. (Read: Online Reputation: Building A Positive Brand)
If you’ve opened a new business, started a new service, celebrated a milestone, or otherwise have a newsworthy item, a press release is a great way to highlight your business while increasing brand visibility. At Team WTI, we work with businesses to craft and write a press release message and then distribute it on press wires to traditional media channels, including newspapers, magazines, niche publications, television, and radio. The release will reach both traditional, non-internet forms of communication as well as digital channels to ensure company news is seen by a wide array of potential customers.
Team WTI started in 2003 and has been on a mission to provide high-quality web design and strategic digital marketing services to all of our clients. We have assembled a talented team of web designers, search marketing specialists, social media marketers, pay-per-click experts, and project managers to work in collaboration to bring our clients results.
Read our client testimonials and you will understand how we go the extra mile to understand what makes your business special and ensure it resonates across your online presence.
Get started today with a contractor SEO strategy to help ensure your website is generating leads and ranking highly in search results.
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Andy Snyder | Mississippi Valley Fair
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