If you’re a business owner, you know that you need to be found online to be successful. And if you’re not sure how to do that, you need to read on. In this article, we’ll give you nine actionable tips for SEO for your service-based business.
So whether you’re just starting or you’ve been at it for a while and haven’t seen the results you want, keep reading. We put these tips together to help you take action on your SEO and improve your business’s ranking and visibility online.
Research the keywords that are relevant to your business.
Keyword research, in my opinion, is the most critical SEO tip for your service-based business. You want to ensure that you’re targeting the right keywords so that your potential customers can find you when they search for them.
With that, you can use countless free tools to help with your keyword research. A few of my favorites are-
- Answer the Public
- Google Adwords Keyword Planner
- Google Trends
- Keyword Generator
- Keyword Sheeter
- Keyword Surfer
- Google Search Console
- Questiondb
Use these tools to create a list of relevant keywords that you want to target. Add the keywords to a spreadsheet and ensure you’re targeting them throughout your website.
Optimize your website’s title tags and meta descriptions.
On the surface, this may seem like a daunting task, but it’s pretty simple. A title tag is the name of your website that appears on the search engine results pages (SERPs).
Your title tags should be concise and include your target keyword. For example, if you’re a plumber in Los Angeles, your title tag could be “Los Angeles Plumbing Services | Joe’s Plumbing.” Or if you’re an HVAC specialist in Dallas it could be “Air Conditioning and Furnace Repair in Dallas.” The key is using the location and the target keyword.
Your meta descriptions are the summaries that appear under your title tags in the SERPs. These should also be concise and include your target keyword.
You can use a plugin like Yoast SEO to help you with optimizing your title tags and meta descriptions. Simply install the plugin and fill out the fields for each post and page on your website.
Add keywords to your website’s images.
Images are often overlooked in SEO, but they can be a valuable asset. Each image on your website should have an alt tag that includes your target keyword.
For example, if you have an image of a plumber fixing a sink, the alt tag could be “plumber fixing sink in Los Angeles.”
Notice that we’re using keywords and locations in the alt tags. This helps to tell Google what your website is about and where it’s relevant.
Publish high-quality content regularly.
Content is king, and consistency is queen. They go together like peanut butter and jelly.
You need to publish high-quality content regularly if you want your website to rank in the search engines. This means writing blog posts, creating videos, and providing value to your audience.
It’s also important to be consistent with your content. That means publishing new content regularly, whether once a week or once a month.
If you’re inconsistent with your content, Google will eventually remove your website from the search engine results pages (SERPs).
Interlink your posts appropriately.
As you draft your blog posts, you must link to other relevant posts on your website. This is called interlinking, and it’s great SEO for your service-based business.
Interlinking helps Google understand the relationships between your website’s content. It also helps to keep people on your website longer, which is a positive signal to Google.
To interlink your posts, add a link to another relevant post in your blog post. For example, if you’re writing a post about plumbing tips, you could link to a post about choosing the right plumbing contractor.
Be sure not to overdo it with the links, though. A few per post is plenty.
Submit a sitemap to Google.
At this point, you have great content, and it’s interlinking appropriately. So how do you get Google to index and rank your website?
The answer is to submit a sitemap.xml file to Google. This is a file that tells Google about your website’s content.
You can create a sitemap with a plugin like Yoast SEO or an online sitemap generator. Once you have your sitemap, simply submit it to Google through the Google Search Console. We’ll cover GSC a little later in this post.
Reference other websites with proper attribution.
Don’t be afraid to link to other high-authority websites in your content. This is great for SEO.
When you link out to other websites, Google sees that you’re willing to vouch for the quality of their content. This helps to improve your website’s authority in the eyes of Google. For example, going back to the plumber, if you’re a plumber and you link back to the United Association of Plumbers and Pipefitters, it shows that you’re referencing quality material.
Just be sure to use proper attribution when you’re linking out. This means using the appropriate anchor text and linking the appropriate page where the material is referenced.
Get involved in the online community relevant to your business.
Backlinks are challenging to achieve, but there are some easy wins if you put in the effort.
A great way to get backlinks is to get involved in the relevant online community to your business. If you’re a plumber, this might be an online plumbing forum or Facebook group.
When you’re active in these groups, people will eventually see your website mentioned in your signature, or you might post a link to an article you wrote (don’t spam!), and they’ll follow it. This helps to increase the number of backlinks pointing to your website, which is excellent for SEO.
Of course, these will be identified by google as UGC, or User Generated Content, which isn’t as great as an inbound link from an authoritative website, but it’s an excellent way to start building links.
Monitor your progress with Google Search Console.
And back to the GSC – Google Search Console.
GSC is one of the most powerful tools for any SEO campaign. It’s a free tool provided by Google that gives you insights into how your website performs in the search results.
GSC will tell you what keywords your website ranks for, its position, how many impressions and clicks it’s getting, and more.
This information is vital for any SEO campaign. You can use GSC to track your progress and see how your efforts are paying off.
If you’re not already using GSC, be sure to set it up and start monitoring your progress.
One of my favorite uses of GSC is identifying which articles are not yet indexed. Sometimes it takes a few days to index an article, but if it goes beyond that, GSC has the option to request indexing a page manually. This prioritizes the page, but it may still take a few days to show up.
There you have it – 9 actionable tips for SEO for your service-based business. If you follow these tips, you’ll be well on your way to ranking higher in the search results and getting more traffic to your website, and ultimately growing your small business.
If you want more in-depth help with SEO, be sure to give us a call, text, or email. We’re always happy to help out.
Good luck with your SEO efforts!