As a commercial electrician, you need every tool you can get to drive local business. Your focus is on helping people solve their electrical issues. So you may not give much thought to the importance of your website. Here's why investing in your website and SEO can have huge returns.
That's understandable. It might just seem like an advertisement for yourself just ready to be viewed by everyone. If only it were that simple. The thing is, your website is more than just an online brochure. In fact, a well-designed website that's strategized for SEO can generate a major number of leads and sales. And in the long run, it's way cheaper than using traditional advertising.
Here's the bottom line.
A commercial electrician must have a strong website to improve SEO.
In terms of SEO, how does your website measure up? Well, first, let's take a look at SEO.
What is SEO, exactly?
It's an acronym that stands for search engine optimization. SEO is basically the process of making your commercial electrician business more visible to those all-powerful search engines. In turn, this means more people will find you because you'll place higher in a search. SEO has quickly become recognized as the most cost-effective way to advertise your business online, with the greatest long-term benefits.
What does SEO involve?
It's not as complicated as it sounds. Here are four basic actions that move toward increasing SEO.
- 1. Choosing the relevant keywords people might use to find your business.
It's no secret that people are using Google to find a commercial electrician. As early as 2015, there were at least 6,600 searches per month in the United States for the term “electricians.”
2. Developing a back linking strategy to help you rank higher for those keywords.
You've got the keywords, so now you need to develop a strategy to get people to link to you from their sites. You can do this by creating interesting content. And keep that content coming. Adding fresh content keeps visitors coming back and helps you place higher in the search engine results. As more back links are built to your site, your site starts to rate higher in Google’s rankings. In turn, you receive more people searching for that perfect commercial electrician. In this case, you.
3. Being sure your site loads fast.
This is a definite consideration for a commercial electrician. Think about it. When a person encounters an electrical issue, they want to find an electrician quickly. And even if your traditional website loads quickly, you need to remember that many people will be doing searches on their smartphones. Your website needs to be optimized for mobile devices and smartphones. Unless you want to lose prospective clients and sales, that is.
4. Optimizing your site's HTML code so Google understands it.
As its description implies, optimizing HTML code is a bit more technical. Without going into it too deeply, all websites are developed in code. This HTML code looks like many lines of incomprehensible words and symbols. But there are robot search spiders (or crawlers) that travel websites and read this code to index the information and decide whether its search worthy. If they get tripped up on ineffective HTML code, the site will not receive a good ranking.
So how do you do this? Consider investing in a search engine optimization campaign tailored especially to a commercial electrician.
What are some effective SEO marketing strategies for a commercial electrician?
Whether you do it yourself or you hire someone to handle your strategy, here are a few things that you'll want to address.
First, optimize your Google business page.
You may not know it, but you have a Google business page. It is created by default so if you haven't yet claimed it, do so. Then be sure that it's updated with current information. This is the page where you'll publish your reviews in order to rank better in your local market. It's a good way to stand out from your competitors.
Second, now get those reviews.
Local SEO has a lot of advantages for workers in the electrical trade because it's unusual to see electricians travel far out of their local areas. As mentioned earlier, people demanding electrical services typically usually want them quickly. A lack of electricity can shut down a business. Local searches are likely to give higher search results to companies that have reviews. And Google puts an emphasis on this. So how do you get reviews?
Well, assuming that you're a quality commercial electrician who really knows the business, getting reviews is pretty easy. Ask and you shall receive. If your customers are pleased with your service, then ask them to give you a good review on Google. You can add instructions on your website or even your business cards on how to do this.
Additionally, you might send out an email blast to all of your satisfied customers and ask them to take a quick moment to give you a review.
Third, you need meta data.
Put simply, meta data means "data about data." A skilled website designer can up your SEO by helping your webpage get noticed through meta data. This includes using title tags for pages on your website. So what's a title tag? It's a short and descriptive title of the content that is on each page. Data about data. And it's a basic signal to Google that can help you place higher in a search.
This abbreviated title appears at the top of webpage in your browser and when you hover over the title section, the full title appears. On most browsers, at least. This is another area where it's helpful to employ the services of professionals in SEO strategy because they know how to determine target keywords and how to place them in the title tags in the most effective way. Title tags are an absolute must for your home page but should be done at the very least on the important pages of your website. Particularly ones that describe the specific electrical services that you offer. Eventually, it'll be in your best interest to have a title tag for every page on your site.
Fourth, keep adding content.
So we touched on this earlier. But here's the nitty gritty. Google has a real love affair with content. When you add new blog posts to your site regularly, you're likely to get more traffic. More traffic equals more inbound leads. More inbound leads usually means an increase in your search rankings too. You want to have content that's a minimum of 500 words. While longer content usually ranks better, this won't be the case if the content is too wordy or doesn't relate to anything about electricity or being a commercial electrician. In other words, choose quality over quantity.
A good rule of thumb for small businesses is 2-4 new blog posts each month to make a big difference in generating leads. Fortunately, you can always turn to SEO strategists who know writers who can supply you with relevant content that will help boost leads for you.
Fifth, get internet business listings.
Internet business directories are like the new-school version of old-school telephone books. But with a lot more information. Think about how a typical customer might find your business.
First, they will do a search for a commercial electrician. What often pops up first is a directory such as Yelp, Thumbtack or Angie's list. The potential customer can then see ratings and reviews of your company, as well as others. So that's why it's important that you are listed in all of the major internet business directories. Give this a try. Type "commercial electrician in [your locale, like "Dallas", for example]" into Google and make a list of the directories that show up on at least the first 5 pages of search results.
Then be sure you have a claimed and optimized a listing that matches the same business name, address, and phone # that is on your website. This sort of consistency is a factor in helping Google determine who you are and where you’re located.
Are you finding all of this SEO business overwhelming?
If SEO is new territory for you, it can seem like learning another language. But you really can increase your impact if you make the investment in developing an SEO strategy. Current trends show that a large number of those who specialize in trades such as plumbing and electricity are not really putting a lot of effort into digital marketing. In other words, it's still a pretty untapped resource and as a commercial electrician with this knowledge, you can stand out from the competition. take advantage of it. . If you're ready to start letting SEO work for you , just remember it's one of the best investments you can make.
You're a skilled commercial electrician and you know your field. Use your website to put yourself on the map. You can then start leveraging your knowledge and providing information about your trade without doing a hard sell on yourself, which can be a turn-off for some people.
Most importantly, with an SEO strategy team on your side, you can get back to the work you love. And you'll have more of it. If you're a commercial electrician who's starting putting SEO to work for you, we'd love to hear about it. Please feel free to comment below. And help out a fellow electrician!
