In last month’s column, we introduced the ASK framework to help you focus on Attracting, Selling, and Keeping better customers. Today we will double down on local SEO, by far the best strategy for attracting new customers to your business.
Local SEO
There’s a lot of ‘one size fits all’ advice for using SEO and Google to attract customers to your business. Every time you open your email, you’ll probably see offers of help to achieve ‘five-star Google reviews’ and ones ‘to get you to the first page of Google’.
The truth is that Google has learned to spot the people who have tried to cheat the system over the years. Trying to cheat your way to the top of Google search results will most likely be a waste of time and money.
Also worth pointing out is that ranking on the first page for a local company is simply not good enough. To grow your customer database, you must start by building a lead-generating website that delivers new leads consistently. Most businesses that are crushing it will rank in the Google Map Pack, the top three businesses typically featured below the map that appears on a Google search.
Before getting into the nitty gritty jargon of SEO, you need to remember the number one rule. Your online business doesn’t need to be perfect, it only needs to be better than your local competition.
SEO is a huge subject requiring an entire book to explain in full, but let’s take a shortcut and look at what key areas of SEO affect your business ranking locally.
Technical SEO is the number one reason you should use a web professional and not try building your own website. Unless, of course, you fully understand how to make your site mobile-friendly, HTTPS secure, and super-fast via a Content Delivery Network? Sitemaps, Robots.txt, and featured ‘rich’ snippets are other aspects that can make or break your website’s chance of generating leads, so consider this as an investment, rather than a cost.
However, one essential part of technical SEO for you, the plumbing/HVAC business owner, is taking ownership of the website’s planning.
It would be best to start by creating a list of Google search phrases you would like your business to rank for. Then ask your web team to conduct keyword research on these phrases. This data will help you plan and build a website that ranks with Google and actually sells to humans.
A good basis for a website is around 12 to 18 pages. You will also need to plan the content of each page with your website developer. Remember, they do not know your business, industry, or customers like you do. This is why you must work with them to plan what pages are the most important and what content they should feature. This structure will help you plan what words, images, and videos will be required to get the attention of Google.
On-Page SEO Content
Thankfully on-page SEO and the creation of written content are well within the skillset of people that can use a laptop and string together 1,000 words. The words, title tags, meta descriptions, internal links, and alt text are simple enough to learn. You can then choose to implement them yourself or instruct the web team on your requirements.
Your content needs to be the authority in the local area for your chosen speciality; boilers in Bristol, heat pumps in Hastings, solar in Sheffield, or air-con in Aylesbury. Google will reward the best three pages on the internet with the top three positions in its search results. However, it will only display local companies in the local map pack, which is above the national search results.
For local search, Google gives the advantage to the three local companies in the map pack.
So, how does it choose the top three local companies? In competitive areas, local companies with well-structured websites will have an advantage over their local competitors in the map pack. Dominating the map area and owning a well-planned website go hand in hand.
Backlinks
There is another area of SEO worth discussing – backlinks.
Please don’t pay for anyone to build backlinks to your website until your website is a fine-tuned sales machine with original, valuable, shareable advice.
If you pay people on Fiverr for hundreds of backlinks, you will be wasting your money, and possibly harming your website.
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