5 Actionable Local SEO Tips for Contractors

Posted by Adam Zobel | Wed, Mar 22, 2017

 5 Actionable Local SEO Tips for Contractors
I was recent­ly asked by Melody Infin­ger of A David Cre­ation to pro­vide a few of the local SEO tips con­trac­tors should fol­low to increase their online vis­i­bil­i­ty and leads. Here are the top five areas that every con­trac­tor that serves a spe­cif­ic ser­vice area should keep in mind.

Local Ser­vice Area Pages

For painters and con­trac­tors that serve more than one city or town, in order to be vis­i­ble for geo-tar­get­ed queries you may need to cre­ate ser­vice area spe­cif­ic pages. For exam­ple, if you are locat­ed in Glen­dale CA, but want to be vis­i­ble in Bev­er­ly Hills CA, you’re going to need to cre­ate a spe­cif­ic ser­vice area page that’s opti­mized for this area. A com­mon pit­fall I see many con­trac­tors make when imple­ment­ing this strat­e­gy is to dupli­cate their con­tent across these pages. Best prac­tices calls for mak­ing these pages as unique and as spe­cif­ic to the area as pos­si­ble. This can include: 
  • Project pho­tos from the city or town
  • Local­ized content
  • Reviews from cus­tomers liv­ing the city or town
Start with some local­ized key­word research to see what ser­vices you pro­vide are being searched for in the cities and towns in your ser­vice area. In addi­tion to cre­at­ing ser­vice area spe­cif­ic pages, it’s always a good idea to pub­lish detailed project recaps that are opti­mized for the area the project was com­plet­ed in. See below exam­ple of a con­trac­tor who con­tin­u­ous­ly updates pages spe­cif­ic to a ser­vice and ser­vice area with new project pho­tos and descriptions:  Image Cred­it: New Life Bath & Kitchen

Google My Business

For many geo tar­get­ed queries or search­es with local intent, Google users will see a spe­cial 3 pack of local busi­ness­es that appears below the 4 paid ads on top and above the tra­di­tion­al organ­ic list­ings below This set of results can and will dri­ve new web­sites vis­its and calls from poten­tial cus­tomers. Rank­ing fac­tors for this set of search results are a lit­tle dif­fer­ent than tra­di­tion­al organ­ic results and include dis­tance, promi­nence and rel­e­vance, with dis­tance typ­i­cal­ly being weight­ed the most heav­i­ly. A few things you can be doing to ensure your pro­file ranks high­ly include: 
  • Ver­i­fy and opti­mize your GMB page
  • Add plen­ty of project and team photos
  • Ask sat­is­fied clients for reviews
  • Share updates on your profile
  • Define your ser­vices area

The Impor­tance of Inbound Links

While there are over 200 rank­ing sig­nals that Google incor­po­rates into its rank­ing algo­rithm, I like to cat­e­go­rize them into two main cat­e­gories which are con­tent and links. Google uses the inbound links from oth­er web­sites to help it assess the author­i­ty and rel­e­vance of your website’s pages. Pages with more author­i­ty will often­times have an eas­i­er time rank­ing high­ly for the search terms they are opti­mized for. Here a few tips on ways you can earn inbound links: 
  • Do some­thing news­wor­thy like a com­mu­ni­ty event and then get­ting the word out to local media out­lets, your cham­ber of com­merce, and oth­er web­sites that pub­lish com­mu­ni­ty news
  • Cre­at­ing link wor­thy con­tent — high-qual­i­ty con­tent that’s opti­mized may earn inbound links from others
  • Uti­liz­ing part­ners, affil­i­ates and oth­er busi­ness­es you have an exist­ing rela­tion­ships with
  • Thought lead­er­ship – con­nect with and get pub­lished on indus­try relat­ed blogs. You are the expert. It’s like­ly you’ve learned some­thing through expe­ri­ence that oth­ers in your indus­try could ben­e­fit from
Look­ing for more ideas? Check out this post on the Moz blog.

Bar­na­cle SEO 

This term sim­ply refers to latch­ing on to or estab­lish­ing a pres­ence on 3rd par­ty web­sites or plat­forms that are rank­ing for the key­words you are tar­get­ing. So the thought process is that you can increase your com­pa­ny’s vis­i­bil­i­ty by cre­at­ing and build­ing out a pro­file on these net­works. Bar­na­cle SEO is a key ele­ment to a suc­cess­ful local SEO cam­paign. For con­trac­tors, Yelp, Houzz, Angie’s List, Thumb­tack, Porch, and Home­ad­vi­sor are all online com­mu­ni­ties that sur­face fre­quent­ly. My advice is to try search­ing for a few key­words that are rel­e­vant to your ser­vice and see what plat­forms are con­sis­tent­ly rank­ing high­ly, then start there. The below image show a search result for the query Hunt­ing­ton Beach Con­trac­tor.” You can see that the major­i­ty of top posi­tions are held by review sites, online direc­to­ries, and oth­er platforms: 

Review Strat­e­gy

Earn­ing reviews from sat­is­fied clients is impor­tant for a cou­ple rea­sons. One, they pro­vide social proof that can influ­ence a poten­tial customer’s deci­sion to con­tact you. In fact, one sur­vey found that 90% of cus­tomers are influ­enced by online reviews and that 85% of cus­tomers report­ed read­ing online reviews. Two, reviews are a major vis­i­bil­i­ty fac­tor on plat­forms like Yelp, Houzz and Porch to name a few. Mean­ing, con­trac­tors with more reviews will typ­i­cal­ly receive more organ­ic visibility.  Make sure you have a review strat­e­gy in place to ensure you’re earn­ing online reviews from your sat­is­fied clients.

Wrap­ping It Up

By fol­low­ing and imple­ment­ing these five tips, you can increase your busi­ness’s online vis­i­bil­i­ty, traf­fic, and qual­i­fied leads. Email Melody Infin­ger with ques­tions or to request a free consultation.

About Adam Zobel

Adam came to us with a background in teaching, writing, and a work history that included serving numerous small businesses (including assisting with content writing and marketing efforts). He was a natural fit, and enjoys connecting with our clients, creating unique content that reflects their culture and voice. We keep him busy! Adam handles blogging, email campaigns, website content creation, copywriting for print and promotional materials, social media, letters, mailers, and more. He also does a dynamo impression of Nicolas Cage, but you didn’t hear that from us. Adam lives in New Hampshire with his wife and two boys. He is also a 1st cousin of David’s wife!

     
   
       

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