When it comes to search engine optimization, the home services business is in a very unique position. (SEO). It depends almost entirely on Google because most home services, like plumbers, HVAC technicians, roofers, landscapers, etc., are local. Most people don’t want to find a plumber in a state next door. BrightLocal’s 2019 study says that 90% of people use Google to find local businesses, and a third of them say they do this every day. Most of these people also read reviews of area businesses online.
Home service companies definitely fall under “local SEO.” This means that if you run a home service business and aren’t online, you might not get much business at all. Not only that, but being high on the list is also important. Forbes says that 71% of clicks go to the first page of Google search results, while only 6% of hits go to the feared second page of search results.
See Also : SEO Services For Home Service Companies
That’s 119 million hits for this search term. Google gives about 10 results per page, but it can be changed to show up to 50 results per page. In general, the top five or so hits get all the attention, while the other 118,999,995 might as well not exist. So, just being on the web isn’t enough; you also need to rank high.
Now, we won’t have as much competition because most of those hits weren’t what the person was looking for. Because of how keywords work, those back pages are full of websites that are only vaguely connected, random forum comments, personal blog stories about furnaces, etc. When you focus on one place, you make your market much smaller. In Laughlin, Nevada, how many HVACs are there?
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How wonderful! Just 68 visits! If you do that search yourself, you’ll get results that are less and less useful as you go down, like homemade local business directories and places in California and Arizona because Laughlin is close to the corner where three states meet.
Depending on where you are and what kind of business you’re in, there may be little or a lot of competition for the keywords your target customers use.
See Also : Seo for home service businesses
Google is trying to figure out what its users want by the way it groups the results. Its computer programmes figure out that most people who search for “home furnace repair” are looking to do business. We have a more in-depth look at keywords and how they are used over here, but let’s move on and learn how to make your site fit what Google wants.
How to Get Google to Know Where You Are
Here’s a fun trick: if you look for any service on your phone right now with the phrase “near me,” Google will show you local results no matter where you are! How does that work?
On your end, Google reads your phone to find out where you are. Even when you’re not using it, it can figure out where you are. This is how it knows to ask you about a business after you’ve been there. In just a minute, we’ll find out what the other part of this research review magic is.
See Also : SEO FOR HOME SERVICE COMPANIES
Google uses a number of signals, signs, and records on a website to figure out where a business is. This happens because:
Using your name, home, and phone number (NAP)
Your site’s text
A page on Google My Business
How to Use It
The first one is very simple: you just go to any business directory and put your NAP on an ad. Add your NAP to any search directory you find. Sign up for a social media account in the name of your business and include your NAP. You can choose to do all of the following, creating a business profile at each one:
Bing
Yahoo!
Maps by Apple
Foursquare
Yelp
Better Business Bureau
Yellow Pages on the Internet
Here are some specialised directories that home service companies should try to get listed in:
Find a city
Angie’s List
Houzz
If your city or town’s website has a list of local businesses, be sure to add yours to it. No matter how small, every city loves it when people buy from local businesses because the money stays in the city. A local business guide is in those free tabloid-style newspapers like “CityBeat” that you can get at supermarkets. Find the one closest to you and go to their website to get another reference that lets Google know where you are.
See Also : Smarter SEO for Home Service Contractors
How to Use Keywords for Your Area
Think about your site next. Your NAP should be mentioned somewhere near the header or footer, as well as on a “contact us” page. You should also make a place page if you can. We have different index pages for each of our sites at Atlantic Digital Marketing because we work in more than one state.
Your location page should do the following:
a minimum of 500 words long
Contain unique copy – do not use the exact same copy for different places!
Use city, county, and regional terms to talk about the place
Add a map and instructions.
Services offered at that place
Photographs
Have a URL that tells what your site is about, like “BobsUpholsteryAtlantaGA.com.”
If you look at local businesses in your area, you will surely come across a family-owned business with a website that looks like it was made in the 1800s. But it will have a “about us” page where they tell the story of how grandpappy moved here a hundred years ago with the dream of bringing great interior design to the wild west… etc. It gets a lot of hits on Google. Just write 500 words this way and make a few references to the local area, and you’ll be good to go.
Using Google My Business
Immediately claim your Google My Business (GMB) page if you don’t already have one. It’s one of the best ways for people to find businesses near them. When they use their phone to look for “electricians near me,” the search results page shows the Google Map Pack and the top three businesses in the area. Or, if they use Google Maps, they can find GMB entries all over the map.
Once Google knows where your My Business is or has heard a rumour from all of those NAP sources, it puts a red pin on Google Maps with your business name. Your star scores and reviews are part of that list! They will be shown on your My Business page along with your photos, videos, hours, message to customers, link to your website, and everything else.
See Also : Essential Internet Marketing Services for Home Service Companies:
GMB entries are one of the most important things Google looks at to figure out where a business is and where it should rank on the search engine results page. (SERP). To make sure your GMB listing is high on the list, you need to:
Putting in a detailed description
Using target keywords
Using the FAQ area to answer questions from users
Including the correct NAP and hours of work
Putting pictures in
Read our post to learn more about how to optimise your Google My Business listing. We go into all the details that you need to do.
Google uses a lot of different signals for local SEO, not just GMB listings and reviews. Find out which signals mean the most and how to optimise them.
Make content and let everyone know what you do.
Now that you have that red pin nailed into the map, your real voyage starts. You need text on your page. Obviously, you’ll need to tell potential customers what services you offer and why you’re the best choice for them.
The magic of content marketing is what you need after you’ve built your website’s main pages for services or products. Content marketing is the idea of producing compelling text which is either useful or entertaining, preferably both. This content has a lot of SEO keywords that Google will crawl and link to your site when people look for those keywords. One way to make and share this kind of material is with a blog where you regularly post strong, high-quality blog posts.
Write for people.
We’re going to stop here because a lot of you are saying, “Look, I can’t write. I’m also a bad bird when it comes to tweeting, and I can’t be on video because I look too normal.” We get it. You got into plumbing to fix pipes, not to be a rock star. Be aware that no one thinks Edgar Allan Poe will run a plumbing and heating business. You don’t have to be a scholar; all you have to do is write natural, correct material. Here’s the final Zen wisdom that all SEO is based on:
Google wants to work with the way people talk naturally.
This is what Google wants to do in the end. Google works best when you talk about a subject in a normal, natural, human way.
If the idea of doing this still scares you, you can hire a freelancer to do it for you. UpWork is the best place to do this. You can hire a blogger, a social media manager, a multimedia artist, or a virtual helper who can do everything, depending on what you need. For the sake of argument, there are other online freelance markets like Guru.com and Fiverr, but the Internet tends to want one freelance marketplace, just like it wants one search engine. At the moment, that place is UpWork, and from there, things go downhill quickly.
Make a plan for keywords
Before you start making content, you need to know what to write about and what words to use. Think about that required reading there. Instead, we will focus on selling home services through content. We’ll pick this lucky gardening service in Beverly Hills and look at what they do.
When we talk about “content marketing,” we think of their blog. It has helpful posts about:
When to change out plants
Native plants
What bees think about garden plants
Plants that bloom late in the summer
How to fix plant damage caused by winter in the spring
Why winter trimming is important
Garden nooks
“Things to think about when choosing a company in your industry” is, without a doubt, the most important content marketing blog post in history. Warning: The blog post is a list of things and traits that, by chance, will make the reader choose your company. People do this, though, because it works.
Anyway, that’s the kind of content marketing that makes you famous and wealthy. Your readers are interested in the information you have on your site. You made yourself out to be an expert in your field and the voice of authority in your field. You have a stage where you can answer the questions that people always ask you. You talk about your job, which is the one thing you know the most about.
Something About Niches
Remember when we talked about how a broad search like “home furnace” is different from a search that is focused on a small place with a lot of people? For a big, general search, it’s hard to rank high on Google. For a narrow search, it is easy to rank high. This is what we call “long-tail content marketing,” because the chances of someone looking for “how to get Nutella stains out of couch upholstery” are always low, but never zero.
Find a topic that isn’t already covered to death on the web but is still popular enough to bring in some traffic. This is your ideal area. This is easy to do when new things happen in your business. When a new law or regulation affects your industry, when science shows something new about your business, or when there’s a hot new trend in your industry, being the first to jump on the bandwagon and write about it can help you get more traffic.
If you don’t want to do that, you can focus on the local side, which is another area where there is likely to be less competition for search volume. This could be a local pest or an alien species that is bad for drain spouts, or it could be weather that affects your roofing business, or it could be that the weather is especially hard on a type of wood you use for trim. When you put together what you do for a living and where you live, you’re going to get something unique.
If that isn’t the case, almost every home service is a good fit for “evergreen content,” which is content that will still be useful years from now. Tomorrow, the news of the moment will be old. Advice about how to keep gas appliances safe will still be useful in 20 years. About 80% of your content plan should be content that will always be useful, and 20% should be news that is current and important.
