When you run a local business, keeping your website optimized is vital to ensuring people can find you. Optimization is about more than just adding in keywords. For small businesses, you must be strategic to ensure not only that people can find your website, but that the people who do find it are the local people who actually live in your service area. After all, if you’re offering roofing services for people in Philadelphia, and someone from Virginia finds your site, your efforts aren’t reaching your target audience.
So, how can you reach your target audience effectively? The key is to create a website with a localized presence. Local SEO involves optimizing your site to reach the people who live in your service area, and it involves a specific set of strategies to reach people in a set geographic area. Here is a closer look at what local SEO is and what local SEO website strategies for home service contractors are the most effective.
Understanding Local SEO – What Is It and How Can You Achieve It?
Local SEO involves using local techniques and strategies in your SEO efforts. This targets people searching for your service in your service area. It is impacted by several factors, including:
- Google Business Profile
- Relevant local keywords
- Online reviews
- Local backlinks
- Citations in online directories
- Proximity to the location of the searcher
- Local content marketing
- Local landing pages
Many businesses are already aware of the need to have a strong Google Business Profile, but some of the other factors are not as natural and obvious. Yet without local SEO, you will struggle to attract the people who actually want to spend money with your business, making it a vital part of growing your local home services company.
Local Keyword Research
One of the first steps in optimizing for local SEO is performing local keyword research. You must identify not only your service-specific keywords but also the local keywords that attract your target customer.
Typically, local keywords involve the service-related keyword and your service area’s location. For example, if you run a roofing business in Kansas City, a local keyword may be “roofing contractor in Kansas City.” Use keyword research tools, then add the local modifier to the results to create local keywords. Remember to add specific zip codes to this list as well.
Start with Solutions Offered
Before researching local keywords, review the various services your business offers and how those could relate to keywords. For a roofer, this might include:
- Roofing contractor
- Roofing services
- Roof repair
- Roof replacement
- Shingle repair
Get as long of a list as possible, and include both services and products people can purchase from you. You can also include issues people may have, such as roof storm damage or missing shingles.
Next, list the various locations that apply to your business, including terms like “local” and “near me,” in addition to the cities and counties you are focusing on.
Use a Keyword Tool
Find a keyword research tool and put in the parameters you have already listed. This will generate a long list of keywords, along with metrics for search volume and competitiveness. You can use these to decide your target.
Implicit and Explicit Keywords
In addition to this basic keyword research, you must understand the difference between implicit and explicit keywords. Explicit keywords include the city they are searching in or a term like “near me” to guide the results to a local provider.
However, not all searchers use these terms, and they trust that the search engines will show them local results without them. So if someone simply searches “roofer,” Google has learned to show local results.
Add Keywords to Website Content
Once you have your keywords, add them to your website content, including the titles and tags. Be strategic so the page still has a good flow, but incorporate a variety of keywords into the content to send the right signal to the search engines.
On-Page SEO Optimization
In addition to the content, you will want to optimize other factors on the page to signal local search results. This includes meta tags, such as the title, description, header, and image tags. Use local terms here to gather more traffic.
When optimizing the site, go beyond just using keywords throughout. Make sure it’s optimized for mobile users. When your customers have a serious issue and need to hire a service provider, they are likely to turn to their phones to search, and a site that is responsive will reach them more effectively. Google knows this and, as such, rewards sites that are properly optimized for mobile users with higher search results.
Localized Content Creation
To optimize a site for local search, you don’t just add local keywords throughout. You’ll need to create location-specific content for the site.
If you have multiple service areas, create a dedicated location page for each city and town. On each of these pages, have accessible contact information for your local office, and use an embedded Google Map to help people find you.
After you’ve done that, start writing blog posts that are relevant to a local audience. This might include posts highlighting events in your area or complementary businesses your customers could contact.
You can write blog posts around customer testimonies and stories and weave keywords into these. This builds credibility with local people. You can also add images to your website and blogs that are relevant to your local audience.
Building Local Citations
Local citations are mentions of your name, address, and phone number on other websites, often through your Google Business Profile and online directories. These citations help you rank accurately on Google’s local search results.
When you get listed in a directory of other local citations, it’s vital to ensure that the name, address, and phone number match other local citations and your website. Consistency is rewarded by Google and helps limit confusion among your target customers.
Make sure you link your website or a local landing page to these business listings and online directory listings. In addition, put a link on the review sites your customers use. Finally, link all of your social media profiles to your site, and make sure the name, address, and phone number are consistent there as well.
Implement Structured Data Markup
Structured Data Markup tells Google what your page content is. It is a code that Google can understand, and that code impacts your search results. It tells Google where the headings are, where the text is, and where bullet points are.
Structured data markup is used to create special search results, such as the answers to FAQs or the graphical or video search results. Having this in place increases your chances of a high rank in the local search results.
Structured data markup offers tools to mark your name, address, phone number, hours, and other data valuable to local searchers. Use this structure to increase your search relevancy in your industry and with your local audience.
Monitor and Analyze Your Website’s Performance
Set up an account with Google Analytics for your website. This will give you valuable data about what is and is not working for your site. Analyze the behavior of site visitors, including where website traffic is coming from. Use this data to make adjustments to your local SEO efforts so you can see better performance. By making changes based on data, you will see greater results in less time.
Get Help Maximizing Your Local Presence
Localizing your online presence on your website is essential to reaching the people who need the services you provide. Targeting specific cities and zip codes will bring more targeted customer to you, and this will help you meet their needs more quickly. It also leads to better customer engagement. All of this adds up to improved business growth. Yet implementing these local SEO website strategies for home services contractors is not easy.
It can be time-consuming to keep tabs on directory listings, social media pages, individual landing pages, and even your analytics, all while running a business. Surefire Local can help. Our all-in-one marketing platform for local businesses allows you to optimize your website for local SEO with keyword tools, including geo-tagged content creation, all on one platform. We give you tools to manage your online reviews, directory listings, social media pages, and content, all from one place. Our platform includes analytics and reporting, so you can get all of the data you need to make informed choices.
Are you ready to take charge of your online marketing through improved localized SEO, without excessive effort? Attend a Surefire Local demo to learn more about how our platform can streamline your efforts and make them more successful at reaching your local people.