Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is critical for businesses to be visible online and be discovered by potential customers. But when you are a local business, it is even more critical that people within your service area can easily find you. SEO is a critical component of your marketing strategy that will help your business rank on Google and other search engines.
Every day, more than 8.5 billion searches happen on Google, with Google owning 91% of the global market share. Local SEO and optimizing your website for Google can help drive traffic from your local area and generate leads organically.
Understanding Local SEO for Home Services
With over 95% of people searching online for local services, SEO is even more important for business owners in the home services industry. A well-optimized website that leverages SEO can be the difference between drawing in new customers or losing them to competition. For home service companies in this sector, such as HVAC contractors, plumbers, roofers, electricians, painters, garage door companies, and more, SEO can be the key to long-term growth and success.
Optimize Your Google Business Profile (GBP)
For a local business, your Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) is critical. Without a local business profile, your business cannot rank in Google Maps. And 93% of consumers use Google Maps when looking for a local business. So you can see why ensuring that you have an optimized Google Business Profile is so important.
A fully optimized profile consists of the following:
- – Business details (including name, address and phone number)
- – The primary URL for your website link
- – An optimized local service area
- – High quality photos including your logo and a cover photo
- – Relevant services and descriptions of those services
- – Active reviews and overall engagement
Maintain NAP Consistency & Build Local Citations
This one is important. Your Name, Address, and Phone Number (NAP) should be consistent across all listings and online mentions. This includes the information listed on your website as well as additional listings such as Yelp, Bing, Angi, BBB and other directories. Inconsistencies in your business information can hurt your local rankings while at the same time confuse both the customer and the search engines. Make sure you claim your listings and keep them updated and consistent.
Encourage Customer Reviews
Reviews is a significant part of local SEO. Reviews are a trust signal and influence local rankings. Most people look at reviews before booking a service or buying a product, and they have become a critical element in the buyer’s journey. A profile that has continuous reviews coming in as well as responses from the business owner shows Google that the business is active and promotes credibility.
It is important to respond to all reviews, not just the positive ones. 96% of consumers are looking for the negative reviews because a perfect score can at times promote a bit of skepticism. Negative reviews can at times overshadow the positive ones, but by engaging with these types of reviews professionally, a business can show that they care about their consumer experience and address customer concerns publicly, allowing potential buyers to see their customer service focus.
Keyword Strategy for Home Services SEO
As important as your Google Business Profile is for SEO, the right keyword strategy plays a major role in driving leads for local home service-based businesses.
Target High-Intent Keywords
Your local SEO strategy should be centered around what is getting searched by your potential consumer. For home service companies, understanding what people are using to find the services that they are in need for is important to plan out the content that is on your website and what questions it may need to answer.
Keywords like “roofer near me” or “air conditioner repair in phoenix” are good examples of high volume keywords. Make sure you are using the right tools like Semrush or ahrefs to find target keywords that promote intent and local relevance.
Create Location Based Service Pages
If you provide services throughout a wide area that encompasses various cities or even neighborhoods, this should be represented on your website. Having dedicated location pages with unique content will help your users to know that you do in fact service their area, and also help search engines to understand the service radius of your business and where you should be shown for search. Including landmarks, embedded maps, the right local keywords and testimonials from that city can help increase your chance of ranking within that city. Keep in mind, however, that Google favors proximity in their ranking algorithm, so even if you have a company that provides service 30-40 miles away, Google will more than likely provide closer businesses unless your brand is so strong and prominent that they supercede the local competition.
Balance Short-Tail and Long-Tail Keywords
Targeting those high-intent short tail keywords are important on the location pages and service pages within the website, but it is also good strategy to create content around the information your users are wanting to know. Short tail keywords are highly competitive, and most competitors target the same, so you can really differentiate by creating content that includes long-tail keywords to attract more qualified leads. This could be targeting a keyword like “the “best roofing contractor in Scottsdale, AZ” or even a query such as “who provides the best roofing services in Scottsdale”. Using a mix of high competition and low competition keywords makes for a well-rounded local SEO strategy.
On-Page & Technical SEO for Home Services Websites
We’ve covered the importance of your business profile and your keyword strategy, so now we will look at how on-page and technical SEO can help your local home service company.
Title Tags and Meta Descriptions
Optimize title tags and meta descriptions to include your primary keyword. An example of this may be Roofing Company in Phoenix, AZ | Your Brand, and your meta description should relate to this keyword and provide a compelling statement or offer. Whereas Google does not always show your meta description and at times pulls in what they want to show based on the search, it is still a solid best practice to include your locally focused keyword in these title tags and meta descriptions.
Improve Site Speed and Mobile-Friendliness
Page and site speed has a direct impact on your local SEO and ability to convert. Page speed is how long your website takes to load your page, and if too long, most people will leave or “bounce” from the page quickly. Search engines rate your pages and one of the top rating metrics is how fast the load time is, so you can use Google Page Speed Insights to check this and if too slow, you may want to have a website developer or SEO specialist review your site for opportunities to improve your technical SEO.
Google will also prioritize a fast-loading website and indexes pages with a mobile-first mentality. That impacts SEO because if your website is not optimized for mobile, your site may potentially not rank as high as it could. You can run an audit in Semrush or other SEO tools to see how mobile-friendly your site is.
Local Schema
Another way to optimize your home services website for better local SEO presence is to implement schema markup. Schema code, also known as structured data, provides search engines with additional information that they are able to interpret and display, which can improve your visibility and help you to attract clicks. Schema can add rich results that display in search such as review stars or FAQs – which ultimately help to attract more attention.
Content Marketing & Link Building for Home Service SEO
Blogging
We talked about targeting long-tail keywords already, and one way to do that is through content marketing and building blogs on your website to speak to all of the informational questions your users may have. This in turn drives more traffic to your site. Blogs establish your brand as an authority in the space and support backlinking efforts.
Backlinking and Outreach
Backlinks, links from other websites to yours, act as votes of confidence for search engines. The more high-quality backlinks your website has, the better the SEO and the higher your website can rank on Google. Here is how home services businesses can earn them:
- – Through local directories like Next Door and Angi
- – Partnering with complimentary businesses for guest blogging
- – Earn PR mentions by contributing as an expert to industry sites such as the ACHR News
Tracking SEO Success & Next Steps
Measuring SEO success is a key priority to make sure that your money is providing a return on investment. Use tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console to help understand the data and analytics and measure growth. Whereas SEO is a bit more grey than PPC marketing, you can track your growth in organic traffic, your growth in keyword rankings – specifically for those keywords that have good search volume that you want to rank for, and your conversion rate to see if your SEO is successful. Depending on how long you have been doing SEO or what the strategy may impact the time that it takes to see results.
- Organic Traffic Growth: Track via Google Analytics
- Local Keyword Rankings: Monitor in Google Search Console & SEMrush
- Click-Through Rate (CTR) for Key Pages: Identify high-performing content
- Conversion Rate: Track how many leads turn into paying customers
SEO is continuous and can take time. You may not know where to start and there is a lot of conflicting information online, so it may feel overwhelming to know where to start and create/implement an effective SEO strategy. Consider hiring an SEO agency experienced in home services SEO to get the best results, as they understand how to build strategies with a local focus to impact performance.
Elevate Your Home Services Business With Local SEO
Are you ready to prioritize lead generation and increase your organic presence? Local SEO will result in sustainable results and continued organic growth, which can be a huge impact to your business.
If you are a home services business owner looking for a marketing agency that understands local SEO and how it impacts your service-based business, contact the specialists at HardPart Media. We are a top-rated SEO company in Scottsdale, AZ and would love to help support your business growth!