As a business owner, you’re very well aware of how important your company’s website is, and its ranking on Google’s search. The majority of traffic goes to the first few results, you always want to take necessary steps to make sure your site reaches on the first page of Google. This is a challenge for most business owners

10 SEO Tips for Contractors and service companies

A walk through with SEO(Search Engine Optimization) for contractors may seem a bit complicated. But no need to worry, here are some basic things you can do to help boost your ranking.

1. Use Unique Titles for Each Page of your Website

It is always recommended to have a unique title for the pages of your website. Such as your home page or pages that have high ROI. You can either have unique title descriptions, or you can choose not to put any description at all. Definitely, shouldn’t have duplicate title descriptions. These are big mistakes that sites with lots of pages make and it’s something that is strictly against Google’s terms.

2. Do Some Research on Keywords

Keyword Research is to learn about what exact “terms” people use when they search for something on the web. Well, these “terms” usually change depending on localities. With the help some of the great free tools, you can find these “terms” for yourself. Google’s Keyword Planner plays a vital role in any keyword research. It helps you to find the most commonly used terms and the average number of searches for that keyword in your area.

3. Searches based on Locality

The Top Google Search Results are generally dominated by ads from major brands. The amount of space available for your site to appear is limited. But, when it comes to searches for local businesses, Google always prioritizes on delivering local search results over National or International search results that hold more general search terms.

So, a brief understanding is required of what customers are looking for and then build the content of the page to conjoin those keywords.

A small tip for business owners is to get listed on all popular local directories like Yelp, Google Maps, etc.

4. Include Keywords in your Permalink

A permalink is a permanent link to your page and posts, and it doesn’t change with time.
Permalink structures of some sites include numbers to identify pages, which is bad for SEO and doesn’t look good either. Always use texts in URL structure and make sure to include Keywords.

Instead of having a URL this: http://companyname.com/?link&id=16
Make something more like this: http://companyname.com/yourblog/

5. Write Great Content

Unlike the ’90s and early ’00s, when SEO was considered to be keyword stuffing, where you dress your page with all the keywords and get away with it, this won’t work anymore as Google has blasted this practice and could even penalize your site for that.

Modern SEO is focussed on providing relevant information about the content what customers search for. If your site provides good user experiences like answering people’s question or helping them with the right solutions for their need. Google will recommend it to more people.

6. Provide Easy Social Sharing Option

One of the best ways to get traffic to your website is through social sharing. When users find relevant information from your page, few of them might consider sharing it. That’s why the use social sharing buttons is a big must. That way, your post is ready to be shared whenever a user’s mood strikes.

7. Keep your Website Updated

Dynamic pages often rank higher than static ones. That’s the main reason why blogs, forums, and directories rank high on search engines. They are always being updated with new content. Frequently updated contents on your page directly imply that your business is on and active.

8. Avoid Frequent Domain Name Change

Historical data is often used in rankings. So, the age of the URL does play a role in search results. If you change your domain name too often, your page will never rank at the position it deserves. Great content in a website with a lasting domain name matters a lot.

9. Avoid Using Things that could Slow Down your Website

Site speed plays a vital part in ranking algorithms. Site speed reflects how quickly a website responds to web requests. Get rid of any non-essential items, from your website like large images, flash graphics and unnecessary plugins that could increase the page load time.

10. Include Image Alt Tags

Google encourages the use of alt tags for images in your page. Each image should have an alt text. Not just for SEO purposes but also because visually impaired people otherwise won’t know what the image is for. Google places a relatively high value on alt texts to determine what is in the image, also to determine the topic of the surrounding text.

Writing great content and following the above steps will hardly take a few hours and will lead you to gain optimum results. Be patient cause SEO is not a one-time activity. You will start to see some traction over days.

None of the above matters if you create content that sounds monotonous. Allotting some time per week for your page contents will definitely perk you up with your site’s ranking.

Author Bio:

Kiran Babu works closely with the digital marketing team at ReachOut Suite in optimizing websites to drive maximum, qualified traffic by gaining visibility in search engines.