It goes without saying that getting traffic from customers who are looking for solutions that your company can provide – i.e. Google users searching on the search engine – is a no-brainer strategy that every contractor should be using. But Search Engine Optimization isn’t strategy that a contractor can reap rewards from overnight. It takes a lot of strategy and patience to get right.
However, once you build a search engine optimization strategy, it is something that will generate revenue and traffic for many months to come. That’s why in this article, we’re going to discuss some simple things any contractor can do to increase visibility in Google and other search engines, so you can finally be where your customers and clients are quite literally looking for you.
Step 1: Select The Right Your Keywords
The first thing you need to do is figure out what sorts of words your ideal customer is typing into the search engines in order to find the types of products and services you can provide to them. Keyword research is the foundation of any SEO campaign, and a vital step to get right in order to appear in searches and queries made by your target audience.
Because ranking for highly competitive search terms is incredibly difficult and getting harder to do by the day, one approach is to look for look for the low-hanging fruit. These are longer keywords – known to SEO’s as “longtail keywords” that may not have a lot of searches per month, but they also don’t have a lot of competition for that particular keyword.
Let’s use a real-life example. A really hard keyword to rank for would be “plastic surgeon,” because that would give you every plastic surgeon in the United States and possible beyond. However, “best rhinoplasty surgeon in Houston” would be much easier to rank for, because it’s targeted down to just nose jobs, and just one state.
Step 2: Implement the Keywords into the Content you Create
The next step is to include these keywords in all of your content that you are creating. (You ARE creating content, right?!)
These keywords should be on your website. If they’re longer keywords like the example above, the best way to do this is to create blog articles. Explain to your audience that the best rhinoplasty surgeon in Houston is the one who specializes in rhinoplasty. One who’s done more of these types of surgeries, for example.
The key here is to do be very natural in how you implement these key words. If you wouldn’t ordinarily use a keyword in a piece of content, then don’t try to force it awkwardly into the article. Due to increasing competition, it’s imperative that you create really high-quality content, and that means content that appears natural to a reader. Don’t try to force a keyword into every paragraph on your website. It will just look… weird.
Places to think about including these keywords would be:
- Website URLs
Blog categories - Page titles
- Article titles
- In the content itself
- In anchor text and links
- Meta descriptions
Step 3: Network With Other Websites – And Get Them Talking About You.
When you have other websites that talk about you, and link to your website, Google sees this as a vote of confidence. Think of it like a ballot. Every time website links to you, it is a vote for you to rank higher. The thing is, they must really, genuinely, be talking about you. Another thing is, the higher quality that site is, the more influence the vote has to rank your site higher. A big-wig website that talks about you, like Forbes, is going to carry far more influence and weight, than a nobody-knows-who-they-are website.
I must warn you ahead of time not to ever engage in exchanging money for links from random sites on the internet. This can actually you’re your ranking, rather than help it. Instead, focus on quality. You can collect links naturally by creating amazing content that other people naturally WANT to talk about. As a busy contractor, you obviously don’t have time to do this yourself, so consider hiring a marketing agency to create your marketing content for you, so this can be achieved. That said, press releases are a great way to get people talking about your company.
Step 4: Stay Constantly Up To Date on Algorithm Changes
Search Engine Optimization is constantly changing, because search engines are constantly changing, as is buyer behavior. If you plan on being competitive in search, you’ll have no choice but to stay on top of these changes.
Again I want to reiterate to stay away from cheap tactics or anything that tries to “trick” search engines. Always focus on creating high-quality, content that genuinely addresses the thoughts, questions, or concerns or your ideal customer. If you create this content on a fast, easy to navigate, mobile-responsive, and user-friendly website, search engines will definitely notice it, and at the very least you will be indexed.
Conclusion
There’s obviously a lot more that goes into search engine optimization for the same reason that you couldn’t cover every aspect of being a contractor in one article on the internet. It’s something that takes years of experience, learning how to understand subtle nuances, keeping abreast of all algorithm changes religiously, and a ton of patience and dedication to the craft and project at hand in order to get right. But as is so often the case, when it is done right, the results are truly glorious.
We know, because we’ve never had a client who didn’t make the first page, ever. And that takes a lot of time and effort.
If you don’t have the time to create your own highly-engaging content, design the blog banner graphics, and implement SEO tactics to rank your own contractor website in Google, but know that the results of ranking would be instrumental in your company growth, feel free to use the calendar below to book a call with our team. At the very least, we’d love to get to know you and your business, and put you on the right track toward a strategy that can help you.
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