Pest control companies provide an invaluable service to homes and are often essential to keeping homes livable for long periods of time. If only that alone was sufficient marketing. Unfortunately, providing an important service is not in and of itself enough to ensure the survival of your business. Pest control companies need to market themselves just like any other business to stay competitive. In this article, we’ll discuss an often overlooked technique in the digital marketing space: search engine optimization (also called SEO for short). You might think that having a website and paying for a few banner ads is enough. But without using pest control SEO, you are missing out on a lot of potential customers. Digital marketing is complicated, but after reading this article, it will hopefully become a little easier. Let’s go over what SEO really is and how to use it as a pest control company.
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What Is SEO?
The discussion starts with a basic question: what is SEO? Search engine optimization is a term used to describe strategies that make your website and/or online presence more visible to search engines. The idea is to make the search engine’s job as easy as possible to not only find you, but also know who to show you to. Search engines, such as Google, do this by looking at your website’s metadata—a fancy word for contents—and correlating the website to specific topics of interest. This description might make it seem like you need a Computer Science degree to implement, but that’s not true! Anyone with any knowledge of how to create or edit a website can use the strategies described here. Like with most things, you can always hire experts to take care of your SEO efforts for you, but do not feel like you have to!
Besides telling the search engine who to show your website to, SEO also helps organically push your website to the top of the search results page. This might seem superficial, but a surprising number of people only ever check out the first link on the page. Staying competitive means being top of the list. Anything less should be unacceptable. If you do not already have a website, get one now! Many small businesses either have or will have them soon, and for good reason. SEO cannot make your online presence for you, it can only amplify it. If there is nothing to amplify, it simply will not work.
What Is Local SEO?
You’ve probably noticed that the title of this article mentions “local SEO,” as opposed to just “SEO.” What’s up with that? Local SEO is simply a sub-field of SEO as a whole. Most of the strategies remain the same for both, and in fact, local SEO is often a little easier. Local SEO success just means that you want to be the top search result among businesses in your local area. This should come as a relief, as it means you are not competing against other, much larger firms from around the world.
It also just makes sense to use local SEO. It’s not like you can service the whole world anyway! You just want the people nearby to know about you, and the locals just want to know about you. Given how many Google searches concern local information only, you will do more than fine attracting the attention of only those nearby. Now, let us get into some of the strategies you can use for your business.
Local SEO Strategies for Pest Control Companies
The way SEO and local SEO work is through the way your website is constructed. As mentioned earlier, Google uses the metadata of your website to determine its relevance to certain topics. The more relevant you are to the search terms the user entered, the higher you appear on the page. When a local enters into Google “pest control companies near me,” you want to be first on the list! Below are some of the features you should pay attention to on your website.
Keywords
Keywords are perhaps the most basic and yet most important aspect of doing SEO properly. If you do not use keywords correctly and in sufficient amounts, the search engine will simply not know what your website is for. Keywords refer to common words and phrases that people use to search for businesses like yours. The “pest control companies near me” written earlier is a good example and is a very common search query for potential customers of yours. Knowing what words to use is the first step to using keywords properly. Once you have them, you can scatter them throughout your website, helping Google align it with related topics of interest. Some more examples of keywords might be:
- Exterminator
- Exterminator near me
- Best pest control near me
- *Insert Town/City Name* pest control
- Local pest control companies
- Precision pest control
- Eco-friendly pest control
These examples are fairly non-specific and should work regardless of location. That being said, keywords uniquely benefit from local SEO because you can use phrases and slang specific to your area. Knowing whether or not the locals prefer to call you “pest control” or “exterminators” is something you should pay attention to, for instance. If you want more keywords to use, you can check out the Google Ads Keyword Planner. It is a totally free service from Google that provides even more examples. You can tune the results to fit your area as well, making it very useful for local SEO.
Headings
Headings are larger pieces of text that categorically divide the content found on the webpage, such as the one right above this paragraph. Search engines give special considerations to the terms used in your headings, so take what you’ve learned about keywords and apply it here. Using keywords in your headings is an easy way to boost your SEO results with almost no effort.
Links
Something that may not have come to mind about your SEO efforts is the way you use links. Links are considered valuable to search engines, mainly because they improve credibility. A website that uses lots of links is seen as more credible and is rewarded to reflect that. Both internal links, which direct users to other parts of your website, and external links, which leave your website entirely, help in this way. Internal links are also great because they allow visitors to immerse themselves in your content and drive up traffic all over your website. External links help make you seem more well-researched, demonstrating your willingness to use outside resources when needed.
Traffic
The attention your website gets, and thus the traffic it gets is another piece of data Google uses to determine how legitimate you are. The more visitors you get, the higher your placement among the search results, naturally. One of the goals of proper SEO is to get your website into a positive feedback loop, in which the increased traffic boosts your search ranking, which boosts your traffic even more, and so on.
Digital Marketing for Pest Control Companies
Now that SEO has become a little more familiar to you, we can go over a few tips for how to digitally market yourself. Digital marketing is crucial in the modern era, and it only helps your SEO efforts when you increase your online visibility. The more people you have searching for your brand on Google, the better things are for your company in the long run.
Content Creation
Content creation refers to any and all materials you create for the purpose of putting in an advertisement. For pest control companies, videos are likely to be your best bet, as they are the best at getting across how effective you are at pest control. One route is to try and bring on current and former customers to express how thankful they are for your service. Talk about the homes you have saved, and go for a personable atmosphere. Another option is to try to make something comedic, which is rather popular for pest control companies these days.
Time of Year
It is no secret that summer is the worst month for many common pests. Resultantly, you can try and focus your marketing efforts around this time of year to maximize the cost-to-benefit ratio. Once you have earned the loyalty of your new customers, they’ll be more likely to remember you for any other pests they encounter year-round.
SEO Design Chicago Can Help Pest Control Companies
If all this information feels overwhelming, it’s because it certainly can be. If you’d rather leave your digital marketing efforts to the experts, then SEO Design Chicago can help. We provide pest control SEO services ranging from website creation, search engine optimization, content creation, and social media marketing. We can even help with local SEO in places around the US, so be sure to keep us in mind!
FAQ:
- What is SEO?
- What is local SEO?
- Do small businesses really need a website?
- Should I use links on my website?
- What can I do to drive up my website traffic?
Contact Us Today!