5 Things Most Painting Contractors Don’t Know About SEO
Hey everyone, Nadia Burnett here with DYB Virtual, and today I wanted to spread a little insight on some elementary SEO tactics that often go overlooked…
Unless your business relies on word-of-mouth referrals, a website that is not search engine optimized is not going to keep your calendar booked with estimates.
With that being said, I’ve worked with many painting businesses and have seen all kinds of surprising scenarios.
What I’ve found is that there are more components that go into ranking a painting website than most painters think.
It’s not their fault, it’s just that no one told them…
Today I’ve decided to go in-depth on this topic!
Here are 5 Things Most Painting Contractors Don’t Know About Search Engine Optimization
[Related: 12 Ways to Get the Most Out of SEO Blog Posts]Painting Contractor SEO Tip #1: Your Location Must Be Explicitly Accurate
All too often I’ll check out a client’s Google My Business Page and the location of their business address is way outside of their service area.
This can ensure that you will NOT show up for your target area when a user searches “Painting Contractors near me.”
The goal is to make it within the first couple listings -otherwise, your business is not even displayed when the page loads unless they click the “More Businesses” button below it.
The reason this MUST be correct is because when people are searching for local painting businesses or any local service for that matter, they almost always go to the Google My Business listings as you can see here on this heat map:
When adding the address of your business it needs to fall within the boundary line of the area on Google Maps, and it has to be written the exact same way all across the internet in any database or directory.
For example, if your exact address is:
12345 Circle Lane Unit 12C
New York, NY 12345
but you end up getting tired of rewriting that the same way in each place you input it…
12345 circle ln 12c
new york
I know it seems silly but this is a drastic difference to search engines.
If you’re not too sure whether or not you fall within the boundary line according to Google, just search for your service area on Google Maps and see if your office or home falls within the red outline:
Another thing to be cautious of when adding your business address to your Google My Business Page is that you need to add the full address:
If you’ve already verified your business name or address but find something wrong on it you can just re-verify it, but they would need to resend the letter of verification so it could take a few days.
Here’s a more in-depth article by Google about editing your listing.
Painting Contractor SEO Tip #2: Use the Correct Keywords
This one is pretty logical…
If you are a painting business that only does residential house painting but you have keywords on your website involving, “commercial contracting” or “deck staining,” this is not going to be very helpful to you at all.
Sure you may be getting traffic but if that traffic is not in your target market then it becomes an awkward situation…
Your keywords must be related to your industry and more specifically your niche.
Not only should you have your city and keyword(s) in the headings of each page on your painting site, but you should also put them in your blog posts as well.
[Related: Painting Contractors: Here’s My 101 Blog Post Ideas]Below are some very high ranking keywords for painting contractors that you should try to include in all of your blog posts where it fits naturally.
- [Your City] painting
- [Your City] painting contractor
- [Your City] painter
- [Your City] painting service
- [Your City] painting company
- [Your City] house painting
- [Your City] house painter
- [Your City] commercial painter
- [Your City] commercial painting contractor
- [Your City] residential painter
- [Your City] residential painting
- [Your City] residential painting contractor
- Painter in [Your City]
- Painting contractor in [Your City]
- Painting service in [Your City]
- Residential painter in [Your City]
- Painting company in [Your City]
Notice I said “naturally” if you throw those in every other word, your sentence won’t flow smoothly and it’s not a good experience for the reader -leading them to leave your website.
Again, tailor this list to your specific niche to get in front of your target market.
[Related: 17 Ways to Generate Leads Using Your Painting Blog]Painting Contractor SEO Tip #3: Name Your Pictures
Many painting contractors we work with are not aware that the very name of each picture you upload plays a part in whether or not you receive a new user or lead.
Way too often I’ll log into a client’s WordPress website to view their media library and find that half of the pictures are named “Screenshot_1383658734” or “IMG_9037”.
You are missing out big time!
I’m not only talking about the images you upload to WordPress, but also to your Google My Business account, LinkedIn, etc…
This goes for alternative text on the image too, Google cannot read your images, you have to tell it what the image is about.
Let’s use this image for example…
For the alt text, you might add: “White beach house, back porch, palm trees, residential painting, house painting, swimming pool”.
Painting Contractor SEO Tip #4: Put Keywords in Reviews
Of course, you are not the ones who write your reviews so you don’t always have complete control over this option…
However, when reaching out to customers that you just successfully completed a job for, if you went above and beyond and they love the work you did, I’m sure they wouldn’t be opposed to using a couple of words that you request they add inside of their review.
Painting Contractor SEO Tip #5: Put Keywords in Posts
Most people search social media networks for certain things.
Especially on Twitter, readers heavily rely on the search option.
When posting to social media (and I hope you are constantly) make sure to use your keywords as well as city and state in each post!
[Related: Painting Contractors: 7 Ways To Utilize Social Media To Get Leads]There you have it!
I hope these 5 tips helped give you some insight on how you can improve seo for your painting company.
If you ever have any questions email me at Nadia@DYBVirtual.com or book a call with me:
Until then, happy painting!!