In this post you will learn:
Nobody can say with certainty how Google’s algorithms work except Google obviously. While those algorithms can change, we have found 5 things an SEO-friendly local service website will always need.
If you own a local service website that is turning over six figures on an annual basis and you want to increase revenue, then you need to understand these key components.
Making sure these 5 elements are in place may cost money, but those changes can help bring new clients quickly for a return on your investment.
Depending on your brand’s goals and budget, the order in which these tasks are completed can vary.
You can work on one area at a time, but the return on your investment will be slower.
Keyword Strategy
Regardless of what your budget is, having a solid keyword strategy for your brand is key. This is a very time-consuming task even with the help of platforms such as Ahref, Semrush and Google Keyword Planner (three resources you can use in your research).
Making sure your keyword choices match your buyers’ intent here is probably the most crucial part of keyword strategy. There is no point in using vague location keywords. For example, if you are a solar panel business based in Cork and you are looking for Cork clients then ‘Cork solar panels’ has to be one of your long-tail keywords. You have to imagine what your potential client is likely to type into a Google, Bing or Yahoo search when they are searching for a service like yours.
Website Design
While the look of a website is important, its functionality and speed are more important. Visitors need to be able to navigate quickly and easily to what they are looking for. People don’t spend time on websites where they have to burn brain calories to figure out how to find something. They will just move on to the next name on their search results.
Equally, Google has to be taken into consideration here as well because the easier it is for them to crawl your website, the more likely they are to rank it higher.
This is where the expertise of an SEO or development agency will help. They can help you decide what the best structure is for your brand’s goals and what is best suited to your clients’ needs.
Congruent Branding
In tandem with the structure and design of the website, it is important to have congruent branding through the website, social platforms and throughout every element of the business.
Also, it is important that logos and footers, sidebars and headers are in specific colours and fonts for your business and are easily identifiable with your brand. You wouldn’t see Coca-Cola using orange or yellow anywhere on their website. It is a specific red and a specific font used on all of their brandings.
If you want to be at the top of your niche, then you have to do what businesses at the top of their niches are doing.
Optimization
Make sure that both on-page and off-page optimization for your site are working in tandem with the view to optimizing your conversions through the website.
On-Page Optimization and Content Marketing
Once you have your keyword list researched, you need to incorporate them into your website’s content. Don’t overdo it though. Search engines will penalise you for ‘keyword stuffing’ – that is putting ‘solar panels Cork’ six or seven times in one piece of content. Keyword stuffing can really hurt your rankings.
It is also important to add internal and external links on your site, these can improve your rankings as you are lending context to your content with external links and internal links.
Off-Page Optimization
Off-page optimization includes things like local optimization, generating of reviews and link building.
Local optimization can be as easy as completing your Google Business Profile with as much local information as possible.
You should also encourage previous clients to leave good reviews for your business while any links from other websites considered to be reputable or trustworthy by Google can help improve your site’s ranking and reputation.
Content Marketing
This form of marketing is gaining more and more importance in the eyes of search engines.
Google’s E-A-T (Expertise-Authoritiveness-Trustworthiness) means that all content must be fresh. It has to show that you have expertise in what you are talking/writing about and it has to prove that you and your business are trustworthy.
Content marketing is something that few businesses have considered to be important up until recent times but with machine learning improving by the day, content is now becoming a focal point for Google.
If you require any help with any areas of your digital marketing or SEO contact us by clicking on the link below.
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