SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation and it’s the practice of trying to rank your website as high as possible in search results.
An example of this for tradies is when you search for ‘tuckpointing melbourne’ in either Google or Bing, you’ll get a list of search results and the ones at the top of the search (excluding ads), most likely have very good SEO set up on their website so they rank high for certain search terms. Why is this important? Well it’s crucial so you can get clients without paying for ads! Who doesn’t want that?
Unless you work in the right departments at Google or Microsoft, you don’t really know what the search algorithm is so you can’t ‘game’ the system to get your website at the top every time. There’s a lot of snake oil salespeople out there when it comes to SEO, but if you simply stick on what Google and Bing say you should do to rank high and ignore the rest then you’ll do just fine. It is a game of patience though so don’t expect immediate results.
We’re going to list some of the things we do when setting up a tradie website that helps our customers gain higher rankings. However, there’s a few different variables at play like the location you’re servicing, how much of your competition is online and how much time you can invest in the SEO of your website etc. But if you get a good foundation in place and put a bit of time into it then it’ll pay off down the track.
Headings
Make sure your web pages have short, but clear descriptive headings. This means that if you’re after an emergency plumber in Melbourne you’ll want a heading for your home page along the lines of ‘All hours emergency plumber’.
Sub-headings
If required, then a more descriptive sub-heading below the main heading also helps with search results so for example if your heading is ’24/7 emergency plumber’ then a more descriptive sub-heading like ‘Specialising in blocked drains, servicing the Northern suburbs of Melbourne’ will help with rankings.
Landing pages
Having landing pages dedicated to your key offerings act as mini websites and help you rank for more specific searches. If you’re an electrician that has a few specialities like cabling, surveillance, 3 phase etc. then you’ll want to have a dedicated page for each specialty with a good amount of content around this service and the ability to navigate to this page via the menu and home page.
Keywords
Sprinkling your tradie website with the right keywords lets the search engine know that this website is for a certain type of user. For example, if you’re a builder that specialises in renovations then you want to reiterate that point throughout your website, but make sure you do it subtly as you want the website text to be for humans first and search engines second. Notice how we add the word tradie through out this blog post?
Images
Images are becoming increasingly important when it comes to SEO so having good quality images that are small in file size will help you get found via image searches. You’ll also want to make sure the image name makes sense so an image of a garden in Melbourne should be named melbourne-landscaping-services-garden.jpg for example.
Content
Content is king as they say so having fresh content on your site that’s relevant and gives value to users will get you ranking higher than anything else. The problem with this though is that not everyone has the time, money or know how to create a new blog post every week! That’s why we implement social media feeds into our customer’s websites so their business Facebook page acts as a mini blog or their Instagram page for their trade acts as a gallery.
As you can see there’s a bit to it and we haven’t covered everything, but this is a good foundation to at least give you an idea of what you should be looking out for when getting SEO sorted for your website.
Of course if you need a hand with any of the above then contact us below and we can work out a package that works for you.
