Are you a plumber, electrician, or other contractor who needs to know good contractor SEO marketing practices so you can generate more leads and sales online? SEO marketing for contractors involves a few special considerations that you should be aware of.
1. Contractor SEO Marketing Should Focus on Long Tail Keywords
A long-tail keyword is a keyword that’s three words long (or longer). They right keywords won’t get millions of searches, but they will get hundreds of searches.
Targeted keywords will bring in people who are thinking of taking action right now. That means you’ll get more people who are ready to pick up the phone when they’re sure they’ve reached a contractor they can trust.
Keyword research is one of the most challenging parts of contractor SEO. Sometimes it’s a good idea to get help from an expert who specializes in picking the right keywords for a business like yours.
2. Create Amazing Content that Appeals to Customers
Of course, you should never choose a keyword without first having some unique, useful content to hang around that keyword. We recommend writing great articles first, and then researching keywords which might work seamlessly inside of the article.
This isn’t just about impressing Google’s robots. Your website has to effectively pre-sell your services to the people who care most about them. It has to build trust.
This is an on-going project, because a good contractor website is more than an online brochure. It’s a living, breathing entity that needs regular attention.
Regular blogging makes your expertise clear to your customers. Sometimes, you can even get business by teaching customers to do some of the things you do!
For example, one of our biggest customers is a gutter contractor. We do a lot of posts on cleaning and repairing gutters, even though this is a major source of income for our clients.
Why? Because most people read the “how to,” appreciate that we’re willing to teach them what to do, and promptly conclude that they don’t have the time, energy, or desire to do any of those things. They call my client to do it for them.
Sure, you’re giving away free information. You could charge for it if you wished. By choosing not to charge for it, however, you build up positive feelings in the minds of your customers. That translates into business for you!
Remember, the goal of contractor SEO is not just to get a bunch of traffic. It’s also to get a lot of business.
3. Keep it Local
It doesn’t get you any good to get a lot of traffic from Russia or Singapore if you’re doing business in Minneapolis. You need homeowners in Minneapolis to find your website and blog.
Local SEO is a three-pronged process. First, you need to claim and optimize your Google+ Local site. Then you need to build citations, which are web-wide directory listings containing your business information. Finally you need to use local optimization strategies on your own website.
When we do this for our contractors we work on two strategies. First, we include city names in each blog post. Second, we have a proprietary strategy that helps Google understand the extent of our client’s service area.
These strategies can put you on page one of Google for your city, state, and contractor type. Ranking locally is very doable and very lucrative. Local, organic search traffic is generally searching for someone to hire now.
4. Keep it Consistent
Your blog or website needs to be updated on a regular basis if you want it to be an effective marketing tool. We recommend updating your site at least twice a week.
If you don’t have time then you need to consider hiring a local SEO contractor who will take care of these details for you. TVS Internet Marketing serves contractors nationwide. We help businesses like yours get front-page results, and we can help you too. If you don’t have time to update your website regularly then call (800) 679-6005 today!
