Did you know that 46% of all Google searches are done to seek local information?
Nowadays, using local SEO strategies is essential for your business to find the right customers and grow your company. Keep reading to find out the top local SEO tips for your home service company.
What Is Local SEO?
There is a slight difference between SEO in general and local SEO strategies.
So what’s the deal?
The main difference is that search engines will take into account your location when you’re searching for local information or local businesses. That means that through local SEO efforts, you can appear both in search engine results and map searches within your functional area.
So, the difference is that you’ll focus on showcasing your location throughout your SEO efforts for your business to show up in those geographically specific searches.
Let’s dive into the top SEO tips you need to know.
1. Keyword Focus
As with traditional SEO, your focus on keywords is paramount in finding success with your local SEO efforts.
Not only should the location feature in your keywords, but your business should also focus on long-tail keywords.
What does this mean?
Here’s the gist of it. Some people may visit Google and type in, ‘home service company’, but it’s more likely that a searcher would use a more extended search term such as, ‘home service company in Philadelphia’. If your business is located in Philadelphia, you’re going to want to show up in those results.
The same can be said for your products. Perhaps you offer services or products in a specific niche, these should be included in your keyword strategy to rank for these too.
2. On-page SEO Tactics
On-page SEO is all the tactics that are within your control for the SEO of your website. These are things like:
Meta descriptions
Title tags
URL names
Internal linking
Mobile responsiveness
Image and video SEO
Heading tags and alt tags
And the above is still not the complete list!
The thing about on-page SEO is that it can get quite technical, precisely because you have to perform various tasks and tactics on one page and then repeat the process repeatedly for all the pages on your website.
That is when it can be an advantage if you decide to partner with an SEO agency that offers these types of services.
3. Google Local Ads
Even if you feel like paid-for advertising is out of your reach, it isn’t!
Local services ads are a Google service that allows you to connect with customers in your operations area. If you want to get seen by the right people who are looking for your services, within your geographical location, it’s almost a given that you should be looking at this service.
What local services ads does for you is on a click-by-click basis, so you only pay if someone contacts you directly through the advert itself. It gives you a great ‘Google Guaranteed’ badge along with your company’s ad, which adds a certain level of surety.
Google local services ads even have a bidding system, which means that you can make your budget work for you. And remember, the more traffic you get, the better your SEO efforts will start to work for you.
4. Make Your Content Work
The content you’re putting up on your website should not only represent your brand and your business but should also shoot the lights out when it comes to your SEO strategy.
Content should stem directly from your original SEO strategy, which means that the audience you researched and decided on when you started your SEO journey, should still be the audience that you’re creating content for.
By creating content that uses the right keywords, along with the correct formatting, and most importantly, the regularity of posting, you’ll be creating useful, relevant content for your ideal target audience and also, increasing your search engine rankings.
5. Get Those Reviews
Word-of-mouth marketing is far from dead; it’s simply shifted from the man on the street to reviews online. Countless people will research a business or brand online before they decide to make contact.
And guess what the first thing they look at will be?
Your business reviews, of course!
By being responsive to reviews, and engaging with both happy and unhappy customers, you’re showing a certain level of reputation management. This means that people will immediately look at your business in a different light!
It shows that you care about how your customer feels, that they’re important and that you go the extra mile. Remember, though, that reviews can be left on any platform that your business appears on, from Google to Facebook and just about anywhere else.
The more places your brand appears, the more you need to prioritize your reputation management and make sure that you’re on top of all your customer feedback and reviews.
Success With Local SEO
When you’re diving into SEO, and this, of course, includes your local SEO efforts too, you need to remember that all your efforts will not give you an overnight change.
SEO is a journey, not a destination. Ensure that you’re ready for the commitment to what your business needs to do to keep up your search engine rankings, and be willing to change your strategy if it’s called for.
You know, if you’re looking for an agency that understands home service companies and what it takes to rank, then look no further, you have found us.