Three things more important than SEO
By: Ryan Kane
Have you ever been told you need to do SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to improve your visibility on Google, and then looked into what that actually means? It can be exhausting because:
- It’s a moving target
- It can be technical
- It requires frequent content addition
- It requires outreach to other websites to add links back to yours
SEO can mean a million things, and can feel overwhelming. On top of that, most AV companies offer such a diversity of services that any energy spent on this gets diluted across multiple product & service categories.
All that being said, SEO for local services businesses is getting simpler in 2019 (though that doesn’t mean it requires no effort).
There are a few key ranking concepts you need to understand as an AV Integrator serving local homeowners and businesses:
- Customer Reviews are more important than ever
- Anything you want to rank for needs its own page
- Think outside the box to get others to want to link to you
I’ll go into each of those in more detail…
Customer Reviews
These are important for two main reasons: not only does Google use reviews as a critical local ranking factor, but prospective clients use reviews as a key component of their buying decision.
With reviews giving this kind of power, needless to say, they can provide a major leg up on your competition. Here are some ideas for generating reviews:
- Create a direct link for customers to write reviews (here’s how to do that on Google)
- Include a “Leave a Review” page on your website that funnels users to this link
- Include a link to the Leave A Review page on cards that your techs can hand out while on-site
- Email past clients, inviting them to share their experience with your company via a review
Separate Pages For Each Product & Service
This is one takes a bit of up-front work, but it’s key to
helping Google understand what topics your business is an authority in. Rather than having a single overview page for
“Products” and another for “Services,” consider building out a separate page for
each brand and service you hope to show up in Google for.
This allows you to establish a single theme for each page, from the Title tag
to the Heading to the keywords in the body.
Make sure to include your principal keyword together with your city in the
Title of the page (i.e. “home automation
houston”).
Do you have multiple locations? Create a landing page on your website for each location. Each page should embed the Google Map for your location, and include the relevant contact information for that office.
Getting Links
As
a business serving local customers, the more local links you can establish, the
better:
- Are all the brands you carry linking back to you? For example, Control4 provides their dealers with microsites. Most other brands include a dealer locator (see Denon, for example). If you’re not on this page, make sure you contact your rep to get added
- Does your business support any local charity runs, or sponsor local events? Often, the websites for these types of events will include a page for sponsors, and can link back to your website
- Is your business already mentioned somewhere, but not linked? Search in Google for your name, or your business name, in quotes. If you’re coming up in the results, but it’s just text and not a link, reach out to the website in question to see if they’ll link from the article
- Finally, make sure you have claimed your Google My Business page, and updated the contact information and photos contained within
There you have it! Not an exhaustive list by any means, but if you can get started with these three ranking factors, you’ll be well ahead of the game.
Author Bio
Ryan Kane
I help home technology integrators get more leads through digital marketing at Uptumble.