Any business that wants to succeed in a meaningful way today needs SEO. They need to know about it, understand it, and use it properly. To not do so is an almost sure way to fail, whatever industry you might belong to.
For example, the garage door and gate industry is an ultra-competitive industry and you need every bit of edge over your competitors. SEO, and particularly local SEO, will give you that edge.
So if you’re a garage door and gate contractor, you better read on as we provide tips on getting your SEO right for garage door contractors.
The Importance of Creating a Local SEO Checklist
As a local garage door contractor, you probably already have your own website. It’s a must for marketing your business and letting people know about the services that you offer.
You think that you have a very good website, but the problem is that it doesn’t seem to be doing its job. That’s what happens when your website isn’t bringing in enough local and organic traffic.
For any business to thrive, whether local or national, it needs good search engine rankings. Having a sound checklist can do wonders for you. And if you can work with an expert that will help you come up and then execute a local on-page SEO checklist for your garage door business and website, that would be your best option.
Optimizing your website the proper way will mean considerable growth for your business. From higher search engine traffic, more leads, higher sales, and better overall growth. It all comes from having the right SEO strategy.
What You Need to Know About SEO
Let’s focus on SEO for a bit. What exactly is SEO and how can it help businesses, specifically garage door contractors?
Search Engine Optimization or SEO is a process that is designed to make your website more attractive to your customers as well as different search engines. It’s meant to help your target audience in finding your website more easily through a Google or Bing search, a Google My Business listing, and other locations on the Internet. Those customers could either be local, national, or both.
Any business that wants to succeed in today’s world needs to learn how to utilize SEO. As a garage door contractor, you need to learn about SEO and maximize all of the tools that it offers. In order to fully reap the benefits of using SEO, you need to fully understand it. And what better place to start than the basics?
Internal Links
Internal links are links to other pages that are within your own website. These links are a major help to customers because they make navigating from one web page to another easier. The links are also important in making sure that the search crawlers are able to recognize the validity of your website.
Exterior Links
Exterior links are those links in your website that connects to other websites. They are helpful in link building, particularly when they link to high-quality websites that can be instrumental in boosting your rankings. Furthermore, it will also help in making customers trust your site more.
Meta Descriptions
Meta descriptions, also known as meta tags, are short descriptions that the major search engines display on the results pages. Your website visitors are given a glimpse of your services and products before they even your website through those meta descriptions.
Title Tag
Title tags are what the people that search for your website online first see. They appear right above the meta descriptions and serve to describe your business in short but meaningful ways.
Search Engine Spiders
The search engine spiders, also called crawlers, are likened to small robots that search engines use for the evaluation and inspection of various websites. The spiders are used for indexing different pages by the search engines. Algorithms are used in order to give more accuracy to the search outcomes.
Your Keyword Research Checklist
Keywords are essential to SEO. Those who are experienced in SEO know just how true that is. But if you know a thing or two about SEO, then you also know that keywords aren’t everything. Proper optimization of your website is not just about using and incorporating the right keywords a couple of times.
To get your website’s SEO to the next level, make sure that your checklist includes the following terms:
Target Keywords and Related Keywords
Target keywords and related keywords are probably the most important keywords in your SEO strategy. The reason is simple enough, these are the keywords that your potential customers are going to use when searching for your website. To help you find and identify the keywords that can make your website get a higher ranking, consider using a keyword research tool like Semrush or SurferSEO.
Long-Tail Keywords
Long-tail keywords are capable of changing how potential customers find your website. If you understand and utilize them properly, then you’ll get a lot out of using them. However, it can be a challenge to fully understand them at first.
Keyword Difficulty
Keyword difficulty is about the difficulty of ranking on a search with a given keyword. An example of this is when customers search for a particular primary keyword that has a very high monthly search volume. As a result, your website will likely have a very low ranking. On the other hand, it will probably be easier for your site to rank for a related keyword with a search volume that’s more manageable.
Additional Tools to Use
There are plenty of additional tools that you can use to give your business that much-needed boost. With the help of these tools, you’ll know what you need to do to ensure that your website ranks higher – in terms of search sites as well as customers.
Google Analytics Feature
Google’s Analytics feature is actually a set of tools that are meant to help your website’s search rankings, although it would be from your customers’ perspective. Use your Google Analytics account to connect your website to Google Analytics so you can start using their programs like Google Optimize and Google Tag Manager.
Google Search Console
Google Search Console, on the other hand, is a great place for you to start your website’s journey to the top of the search rankings. It will work hand-in-hand with your website’s infrastructure so you’ll know what steps you need to take. One such step is submitting an XML sitemap.
Webmaster Tools
Webmaster Tools is Bing’s own version of a tool that will help your website get better rankings on Bing’s search results. First, you’ll need to create a Bing Webmaster Tool account and then link it to your website.
Things to Watch Out For
While SEO can do a lot to help your business, like helping your website get to the top of the search rankings, there are also things to watch out for. Issues such as outdated SEO practices could have the opposite effect and pull you down in the rankings instead.
You need to be aware of those issues so you can find the right solutions and fix them. To help you in identifying some of those issues that could impact your website negatively. The following list should give you a good idea of the things that you need to watch out for.
Broken Links
Broken links can hurt your website in several ways. They can cause a lot of frustration on the part of your website visitors and they can also cause your direct ranking factor to become lower. The key is to find broken links and repair them right away to prevent your website from experiencing any issues.
Site Speed
Site speed is important because it affects the overall experience of your site’s visitors. No potential customer will like to visit a website, only to wait too long for the web pages to load. If that’s the case, it’s more likely that they will simply move on to another site.
Duplicate Content
Having duplicate content is not good for your website. First of all, your site’s visitors will have a hard time navigating your website. And your site will have difficulty ranking in Google’s algorithms.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO is about your site’s infrastructure. In other words, it deals with the complexities of your site’s coding issues. If there are technical problems, it could lead to everything from crawl errors to a bad user experience. This reinforces the importance of putting together a technical SEO checklist.
Category Pages
A category page serves several purposes. One, it makes it easier for your customers to navigate through your web pages. Another is that it helps in giving structure to the information found on your website.
SEO Plugin
To those that maintain their own blogs – WordPress users come to mind – an SEO plugin is a valuable tool. With this tool, it becomes easier to integrate keywords as well as SEO best practices as they’re being created.
If it seems like there are so many things for you to learn as a website owner and a seemingly endless array of tools to use, then you’re right. To many, it can seem overwhelming and discouraging. When you feel that way or simply feel the need for help, simply contact us as our SEO team can definitely help you by strengthening your online presence in various ways and bringing in more new customers for your garage door business than you thought possible.
