Ready to learn about the tips and best practices to get your landscaping business ranking on the first page of Google?
When potential clients search “best landscapers near me”, the order of the results that appear is not accidental. Search engine optimization, more commonly known as SEO, is a marketing technique used to improve your website’s ranking on search engines like Google. These search engines populate results through carefully crafted algorithms which people refer to as Google’s spiders. These spiders crawl the internet to analyze and determine which websites are high-quality and most relevant to a search in order to give the best possible results.
Think about it like this: Google wants users to be happy with the search results it populates and find their answer within the first few searches. This is why Google will search for websites that prioritize the user experience. This is something to keep top of mind when doing SEO for your business, as many people mistakenly focus on the algorithm too much.
Here are some tips and practices for getting your SEO strategy underway:
Build out subpages for your website
A great place to start is on your website as this is the hub of your online presence. Your website is also where all your search traffic will be directed to so it is important to have a good amount of quality content provided. By adding subpages for your products or services, you can provide more quality information for both customers and Google’s spiders to learn more about what you offer.
We would like to preface this with the fact that there is a sweet spot with how much information you provide. Too little information will not help your customers or SEO ranking to understand your business, but too much information will overwhelm your customers and also flag the Google spider’s that your over-optimizing your website. This means when you do build out these subpages for your services, refrain from going into every last detail of the service. (That’s information overload!)
Consider creating dedicated subpages that give a brief overview of the services you offer (one for lawn care, one for landscape design, one for hardscaping, etc). Doing so will create more information for customers and more quality SEO opportunities. This way, when people search for a particular service that you offer, they are more likely to land on a dedicated service page rather than a generic page that lists all of the services you offer.
Oftentimes a person may search “lawn care near me” rather than “landscaping services near me”. By creating these subpages and having good local SEO practices, you can better capture these people.
Optimize your pages for local keywords
Now that you have your website subpages in the works, you need to consider how to optimize your website with local keywords. Local SEO, a powerful subcategory of SEO, allows you to rank for these local keywords and reach highly qualified prospects located in the area you serve. In order to determine the best local keywords, you will likely need to do keyword research.
Upon determining your keywords, you will need to implement them in your written content, page titles, meta descriptions, subheadings, and alt text for images. This is where SEO gets more technical if you are not familiar with the backend of websites.
It’s important that keywords are integrated with the user in mind and not just the algorithm. Consumers checking out your website will be turned off by clunky content written around keywords – and Google knows this and will penalize you for it.
List your business with Google My Business
If you haven’t yet, list your business with Google My Business. Having Google My Business is crucial for any small business looking to capture local markets. Google My Business enables your business listing to appear in the local search results specific to the services you offer and on Google Maps.
Plus, Google My Business is great for review generation as you can manage and highlight customer reviews. While online customer reviews will help your business to gain more credibility and trust online, they also help with your SEO! When you acquire them regularly, they provide a constant influx of fresh content for the search engine to analyze. The more content available, the more Google will understand your business. Oftentimes customers will unintentionally describe your services to Google, adding SEO value to your business.
Keep your contact information consistent and accessible
Being consistent with your NAP information (your name, address, and phone number) is also important for SEO as this is essential information about your business for customers. If these contact methods are changing, Google’s spiders scanning the web for mentionings of your business, will find these inconsistencies and penalize you.
Make sure your information is consistent – everywhere. Across you website, on Google My Business, and in online directories.
Relevant citations and backlinks
Acquiring relevant citations and backlinks are great for SEO. A citation is when your NAP Data is referenced online. These references are great signals for Google when ranking you. The easiest places to get cited are online directories. Think Yelp, Citysearch, Angie’s, NextDoor, etc.
Backlinks are also helpful for SEO ranking. Backlinks are when another website has a link to your website. This signals to Google that another resource finds your content valuable. As you generate additional backlinks, the more Google will see your content and offerings as valuable, helping your ranking.
Remember, SEO is a process
Depending on your comfort level with your SEO knowledge and your computer skills on the backend of websites, many of these efforts can be implemented rather quickly. Although be aware that some of these efforts take a bit more of “watering and fertilizing”. SEO can take time, so don’t expect to see overnight results!
It’s time for your landscaping business to dominate the search engines for searches in your area! If you would like to work with us so that we can manage the SEO process for you – contact us today to chat.