There are many reasons that construction business owners sometimes fail to pay proper attention to SEO issues. First of all, much of their effort goes into the actual running of their businesses. Some business owners are not necessarily knowledgeable about SEO. Finally, some business owners simply do not know where to begin in their SEO efforts.
It is not necessary that you become an SEO expert in order to improve the traffic to your business’ website. The following five tips can be implemented by all home improvement business owners to improve their SEO results.
Produce Quality Content
It is important to supply quality blog posts, articles, and other materials on a regular basis. Your content should not be filled artificially with keywords in an effort to rank higher on search engines. Instead, the keywords should appear in the content in a way that feels natural to your website’s visitors. Business2Community reinforces, “your content needs to inspire readers (your potential customers) to engage with the content.”
The content of the website should be a mix of current events and evergreen material. Evergreen material never gets outdated, and quality material of this type can identify your business as a leader in its industry.
Make Use of Social Media
Most business owners, especially contractors, feel social media marketing is a waster of time. How about you?
We recommend every contractor – small or large – make use of at least one or more social media platforms to remain in constant contact with potential clients and existing customers. Regular posts on social media will increase traffic to a business website when readers click on the links that are included. Social-media posting is also great for boosting SEO. The more followers and likes you gain on social media, the more likely major search engines will view your business website as relevant.
Get Reviews
All entrepreneurs understand the importance of reputation when it comes to business. The things customers say about your business will have a great impact on future success, and that is even more important online. Podium reinforces, “consumers who used to rely on word-of-mouth recommendations now rely on online reviews. In fact, over 80% of consumers trust reviews as much as they trust recommendations from family and friends.”
A business owner should pay close attention to what is said about his or her company online. It is important not to underestimate the importance of these reviews. Nine out of 10 consumers explain that their purchasing decisions are influenced to some extent by online reviews. Proactive business owners should take the initiative to solicit reviews from customers who frequent their establishments.
Use High-Quality Images
Internet search engines have a preference for high-resolution images. When images are included on websites with lower resolution than is needed, the website visitor may struggle to view the image. This is also true when images are not properly formatted. This is why, as 8Days explains, it’s essential to format images to your purposes. Don’t just use images without adjusting them in some way.
For most situations, JPEGs are the best image format for business owners to use when uploading images to a website. This is because JPEGs are effective at keeping files down to a manageable size without sacrificing the quality of the images.
Respond to Customers
Readers of articles and blogs should be able to share their thoughts on the material. This will sometimes result in spam being left in the comment sections of the articles and blogs, but these irrelevant comments are minor inconveniences. Spam can be filtered and eliminated, but the positive effects of the comment section are long-lasting.
The first benefit is that when website visitors read comments on a blog or article, they naturally spend more time on a webpage. This time will be increased more for the customer that chooses to reply to the comment of another customer.
When a business owner takes the time to answer comments personally, customers feel that their thoughts and feelings are appreciated by that business owner.
Conclusion
Many business owners can get quite uncomfortable when SEO is mentioned to them. This uneasiness is understandable as the plate of a small business owner is often filled with responsibility. However, improving the SEO of a business website does not have to become a dreadful chore for the owner of a business.
These five quick tips will no doubt prove successful at improving the SEO efforts of any small business owner.
If you are a local contractor and need online marketing services, keep Initiate Lift in mind.