More phone calls. More jobs and callouts. Sustained growth.
How does all that sound?
It’s the tradie dream – and your tradie marketing strategy can help you get there.
In particular, successful SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) for tradie is one of the most powerful tools in your toolbox.
That’s because most tradies are what we call “responsive” businesses. Plumbers, electricians, mechanics… the vast majority of your customers are people who’ve just run into some sort of trouble, and need it fixed ASAP.
Most aren’t going to be too picky – in many cases, they’ll just call one of the first numbers they find on Google.
In short, SEO is all about making you one of those numbers.
So if you want your tradie marketing strategy to work, it’s crucial that you try to get the most mileage possible out of your SEO!
How do you go about that?
Tip 1) Target keywords
The heart and soul of SEO in general are keywords.
Essentially, these are short phrases that people type into Google Search. Google’s algorithm them compares different websites against the search term and makes a captain’s call, ranking different pages and results based on factors including:
- Relevance
- Page quality
- Accuracy
- Credibility
SEO focuses on getting your tradie website to rank as high as possible for as many of these keywords as possible.
The thing is, you can’t get away with simply picking phrases and words willy-nilly. In order to have an effective SEO strategy – you need to make sure you do your keyword research.
Simple put, certain keywords are intensely competitive, with literally thousands and even millions of other web pages to sift through.
Not to mention, certain keywords might be completely irrelevant. Somebody who types “electrician” into the search box may not be looking for a sparkie – they might simply be looking for a history of the trade!
Ideally, you’ll want to target words with a high search rate and a relatively low competition rate. More importantly, you’ll want keywords that are relevant to your tradie services.
The secret is to pick and choose. And the best way to do this is with keyword tools.
If you don’t have a Google Adwords Keyword Planner Tool account, fret not – there are a lot of free word tracking tools out there. Word tracker is a good example.
All you need to do is type in the word you are trying to target and the tool will provide you with a list of all the associated keyword searches, as well as frequency of searches and competition of searches.
Tip 2) Quality over quantity: what is keyword stuffing, and why should it be avoided?
With all this talk of keywords, it can be tempting to just cram your site full of the searches you want to rank for.
20 years ago, this might have worked – nowadays however, it’s a very different story!
Search engines have very specific criteria to determine whether a website deserves to be ranked high or low.
The big mistake people make when engaging in SEO is that they do what we call ‘keyword stuffing’.
Search engines are smart – they know what tricks many tradie marketing agencies resort to. If you overuse the word on a website, search engines will notice and they will rank your site poorly.
A search engine, like Google, knows that when a certain words appears too often in text – your content probably isn’t very user friendly or readable. So – a search engine won’t rank your content well.
In our experience, the percentage that a keyword appears in your content should be about 1%. That’s right – just 1%.
Not to mention, as a general rule there are a couple places where it is important to make sure you place your keywords for maximum impact.
- As close to the beginning of a sentence as possible
- In the heading
- In the first sentence
- In the last sentence
It’s about quality, not quantity. When you’re trying to improve your tradie marketing, keep these things in mind when your write your content.
Tip 3) Post regularly
At iformat, we specialise in marketing for tradies – in particular is SEO.
We’ve worked with sparkies, plumbers, mechanics, locksmiths… the list goes on and on. While each has received a custom tradie marketing package, the one constant between each of our clients is content.
Simply put, that’s because Google likes sites with high-quality content.
If you want your site to rank well on Google, a steady, ongoing stream of high-quality, original content is essential.
“Steady” and “ongoing” – those are the two important words.
If you want to gain rank (and more importantly, hold it), keeping the stream of content up is essential.
So if your current website lets you maintain a blog, we suggest using it!
Not to mention, this will give Google more pages to present, upping your chances of being discovered. It will also help “sell” your tradie services to anyone that does decide to visit your site – it’s a win-win.
Tip 4) Invest in additional applications and tools
Trust us: SEO is very numbers-focused. We spend much of our time poring over reports, looking at analytics and brainstorming our plans from there.
All of this data requires special tools to keep track of.
In addition to the standard SEO tools (keyword rankers like AWR, or general analytics like Google Analytics), it’s also worth investing in platforms such as…
Active Campaign
Active Campaign is an email automation service – however, it does much, much more than just that. In particular, it also provides site tracking and event tracking.
This means that you can track what users click on, whether they interact and what happens before they leave your site.
With Active Campaign you can find out why you are creating customers on your website, and how potential leads are using your site.
This information will help you to effectively adjust your SEO and web design to gain a greater flow of customers to your site and maximise customer retention.
Crazy Egg
Crazy Egg is a heatmap service that helps to analyse customer interaction with your website.
In particular, it can tell you where they are coming from, where they go and what they look at once they’re on your website.
For example, Crazy Egg might tell you that nobody is clicking or even seeing your contact buttons. With this knowledge, you can determine exactly what changes you need to make to your website in order to remedy the issue.
Marketing & SEO for tradies that works!
Of course, the best thing you can do for your business is to hand the SEO to a professional!
Much like you’d only call a plumber to inspect your gas lines, or an electrician to perform any electrical work, the best way to get more calls and jobs is to leave tradies SEO to the experts.
If you want the SEO on your website to be first class, you’ll want to get in touch with the team at iformat.
Unlike many other digital agencies, we specialise in marketing for tradies. Just take a look at some of the tradies we’ve worked with in the past, and how we’ve helped them take their businesses to the next level.
Our team makes it easy for you. We take care of literally everything – all you have to do is answer your phone!
Interested in more leads, phone calls and jobs?
You can contact us on 1300 84 64 50 – alternatively, contact us to discuss how we can improve your tradie marketing.
