Being in the home repair business is a very intimate matter. After all, you’re going in people’s homes. There’s nothing more personal than going into your client’s homes. This means you get an amazing opportunity to build long-lasting relations with your clients. Not a lot of businesses get this chance.
Although locking your clients is a crucial step for growing your business, there’s only so much that can be done. Word-of-mouth publicity is an old trick of the trade. While it still is relevant, it’s not smart to use it as the main source of your marketing. The times are a-changing, and you’ve got to keep up if you wish to survive.
With more people turning to Google for all their home servicing needs, you can’t focus on your online presence. This is where you’re going to get most of your business in and post the 21st century.
To make sure you reach the unlimited flow of demand that comes online, you need proper SEO (Search engine optimization) in your website. SEO is basically the restructuring and revamping of your website in order. And with a great SEO in place, you’ll be in the limelight and receive a regular inflow of leads.
But nothing good comes easy. Results from SEO is no different. You can try out different SEO templated and guides all you want, but what you eventually will need is a personalized SEO plan of action. This requires a ton of research and a number of features to be included. To give you a sense of direction, the list of tips below will be of great use.
6 actionable SEO tips for your home service business
You’ll get quite a few SEO guides all across the net giving you vague and inconclusive suggestions. When you read them, you see that you don’t know what to do with the information. They’re either too technical or too common to help improve your SEO. This is why we’ve handpicked 6 tips that you can productively implement and expect significant results.
1. Grab the homes around you.
Going online can get overwhelming. And tempting. You’ll see that there’s the demand coming from everywhere, all across the country or your city. This will tempt you to keep expanding your search horizon. You’ll be thinking of ways to capture the more widespread market. Macroscale will take over your micro perspective which you had offline.
But this is a flawed approach. You’re forgetting the treasure at your doorstep. Your local market and clients. Even online, you need to optimize your site to reel in your local clients and demand. And this is done using your Google My Business (GMB) listing. List your service in GMB and keep it fresh and updated to get spotted by your local clients who are looking for home repair companies around them. This is a market you don’t want to miss.
The GMB listing is what includes you in these Google map results at the top of the first page. So make sure you add pictures, keep every detail accurate, and use tags that help identify your service.
2. Building that reputation.
Do you know what sells? Experience. Prospects are 100% more likely to book your service when they know you’ve given great services before. This is why it Is said that the biggest step is the first step.
If you’re having trouble getting leads and clients after your first few, you’re doing something wrong. That is: You are not taking full use of your previous work. Getting these clients to leave their reviews and testimonials is just as important as the quality of your service. These reviews will bear witness of your exceptional service.
But now that you have the reviews how do you get them to show? While you should keep a page for testimonials on your website, it has a different effect when Google shows these reviews to prospects. And this can be done by getting more clients to review your work. In fact, Google doesn’t even look at businesses with reviews less than 3. That makes the bare minimum. The next move here would be for you to reply to each of these reviews. Google’s algorithm actively hunts for businesses that stay active and responds to its reviewers.
Side note: Don’t think about using phony testimonials. If you’ve been looking for a sign, this is it. Google—and your audience—will clearly see through these illegitimate reviews. You shouldn’t have a doubt how this can harm your business.
3. Perfecting your headers
When building your website, you have to be in both your audience’s and Google’s shoe. This is especially apt when you’re creating your site’s headers, title tags, descriptions and URLs (basically all your meta elements). Studies have shown that businesses have witnessed improvements of over 48% just by optimising their metadata.
But it’s easy to get carried away in either direction and make the headers too keywords heavy, or devoid of any keyword at all. The most apt descriptions and titles are both: attractive and optimized.
This makes perfecting your meta elements tricky. Here are a few tricks to help you out:
A good rule of thumb is to keep your meta titles (the big headers seen in the results page) limited to 50-60 characters. This will make sure they don’t get cut off. Your title should describe your page’s content accurately while also using keywords, this impresses both your audience and Google.
Another trick is to put your best keywords in the start of your descriptions and titles. This will make the algorithms job easier, eventually bringing your website to the top of SERP (Search engine results page).
Your meta description should run for about 250-280 characters and be enticing enough for the audience to be intrigued by it. Your meta description is like a trailer for your website. And the effort put in creating an impactful trailer can get you amazing returns.
Finally, the URL tag for your site should also contain well researched keywords. Consequently, this will make the algorithm accurately assign your website to the relevant sector’s results. Not many businesses do this in their websites even now, so this can be used to get you an edge over your competitors.
4. Where are you?
Everyone likes it when job is made easier. Google is no different. You can gift Google your location on a map to help it locate you better and much quicker. We’re not just speaking about you putting your address in your website. You’ll need to pinpoint your location, or locations on the map to ensure a streamlined process.
Essentially, an address is enough to understand where you are in the world. But Google doesn’t want to spend too much time reading and analysing your address. This is the mistake most business make. Even if you look up websites right now, you will not find a location map in every site. This is what differentiates a well optimized and successful website from another that is failing.
Think of it, when a prospect looks up, say ‘kitchen refurnishing around me’, Google will pull up results based on the person’s location. So, if you’re close by, and have an active location page, you’re likely to be the first person that Google recommends.
5. Understanding keywords
Possibly the most talked about and basic feature considered when implementing SEO: Keyword optimisation. Being the most talked about feature, it is bound to get influenced by the thoughts and styles of the population. This implies that you need to be careful when utilising this feature or even taking in any advice for the same.
Additionally, since it’s the most common feature, it has obviously been overused. You might easily find keywords to use in your website, but most of these are going to one’s that have already been used. To make your keywords give you returns, you’ll need to invest some time and effort into research. They keywords you end up using should be ones that are uncommon, unused, yet still very fitting to your sector and service.
But it doesn’t just end here. You must know that watering a plant too much kills it. In much the same way, using too many keywords in your plant…uhm website… will ruin it. When you’re writing content for your website, remember that you’re eventually speaking to humans. Your content should be easy to read and understand, with the keyword placement being more subtle than obvious. For this, consider using long-form keywords. These will make your content much more interesting and easier to read, while also checking the SEO box.
6. Being multi-screen friendly
What are a few things you would never leave your house without? Unless you’re from the 19th century, your mobile phone has definitely made the list. This goes to show how important it is to keep phones in mind when building your website. Most of us loves the comfort of getting things done with our mobile phones, and calling for home maintenance services is no exception.
This might come as a surprise, but mobile phones have only recently gained a lot of attention. To give you some context, till 2016, online traffic was dominated by desktop users, overpowering the mobile phone. This is also why many websites are not very responsive for a mobile screen. That is, the graphics and the design are made according to the big desktop screen, sabotaging the look of the website when opened and seen through the smaller mobile screen.
Your website design should be fitting in all kinds of screens, from small to big, and all the divisions in between. No discrimination. This kind of design is called a responsive design.
Even Google has spoken about the importance of mobile responsive websites to help rank higher in the SERP. The signs can’t be any clearer than this.
Although these 6 features give you comprehensive coverage for your home service website’s SEO, this is not all you need for the perfect plan. In other words, these are all necessary features, but not sufficient. A guide with all the required features would be bigger than your telephone book.
But don’t fret, our SEO service covers each such aspect. Just tell us what you need and you’ll be welcomed with an elaborate and personalized SEO service.
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