As a contractor, you understand that customers looking for solutions to their problems can be anywhere in your area. It’s crucial that they know who you are, what you can offer, and most importantly, you are nearby. By applying local search engine optimization tactics into your overall marketing strategy, customers can quickly find you, and you can quickly help them.
Contractor Charlie offers some local SEO tips, but let’s explore this topic first.
What is Local SEO?
Local SEO is promoting your business or brand at your locality. That is, when customers in your area are searching for products or services that you offer, your business should be visible within the local search results.
Why is Local SEO Important?
If your customers are located within the same general area or have one or more brick-and-mortar locations, then local SEO is essential for your business to compete. Nearly 84% of customers visited a store on the same day after performing a local search. Plus, another study found that 70% of people searching from their smartphone wind up calling a business directly from the search results.
What Does This Mean?
It doesn’t matter if you’re a roofer, dentist, swimming pool builder, restaurant owner, or air conditioning repair. It’s not hard to reach the conclusion that if you’re not optimized for local SEO, then you’re losing to the competition in your area.
Here are some tips that can make your contractor website more visible to local searchers.
Use Google My Business
Customers searching locally are going to want to know your location. They’ll also want to know your contact information and business hours. A good tool to use to ensure your information is correct is Google My Business.
Free to use, this tool helps you create and update your NAP (name, address, phone number) so that it’s accurate within platforms such as Google Maps.
Use Schema Markup for your Website
Schema Markup is a form of microdata that you place into your website that helps search engines represent you more accurately. Google uses this to create an enhanced description of your business, which appears in the search results.
While there’s no hard evidence that this directly helps you rank higher in search results, your business will appear more prominently. This, in turn, may improve your click-through rates.
Only about 31% of websites are using schema markup. By implementing this into your website, you’re gaining a slight edge over the competition.
There’s also a free Structured Data Testing Tool offered by Google to help you check your markup.
Optimize your Title Tags, Meta Description and Content
If you’re familiar with regular SEO, then this should come as no surprise. Things such as title tags and headers, meta descriptions, and content, are still important. Your title and description show up in the search results, and the headers tell visitors what the following section of a page is about.
For local search, you can include the name of the city or area that your business serves within the title or description. These two items should also include one of your targeted keywords. Our team actually writes local city page information for every service you offer. You can learn more about it on our How it Works page.
Review Sites Still Matter
Chances are that you purchased something based off of an online review. You’re not alone. A recent survey showed that 84% of people trust online reviews.
A few of the most familiar sites where customers submit reviews include:
- Yelp
- Angie’s List
- Google+ Local
- Home Advisor
As a contractor, reviews can help persuade other customers to contact you.
Contractor Charlie offers Local SEO Services
Contractor Charlie can apply these tips and more to enhance your local SEO strategy. Contact us today to discuss how to get your contractor business website more local visibility. We can help get your business in front of the customers that are nearby.
