The Need for Roofers SEO Marketing

Roofers need SEO marketing specialists to thrive in an era during which people rely  less on recommendations from friends and family, and rely increasingly more on Google to look up reviews of roofing companies, do their own research and simply find out what roofers are where they live.

Roofers make most of their money seasonally, either just after a fierce storm or during spring, fall and summer. It’s best to work on your SEO marketing strategy in winter. It takes about 3-6 months to see results in where your website ranks in search engine results pages (SERP) when you revamp existing content or develop new content (and a new website design) with search engine optimization (SEO) in mind. So if you need roofing SEO marketing, it’s best to start now so your site ranks high in SERP by early to mid summer, when you want to do the majority of your business. 

 

What is Roofer SEO Marketing? 

You see Google Ads at the top of every search results page every time you search for something. The ads are the words, links to websites and photos that appear under the word “sponsored.” Next, you may see results for local providers related to the goods or services you searched for. These results usually appear under a label called “Businesses.” Next, you’ll often find featured snippets, i.e. a list of questions called something like “People Also Ask.” 

After all of that, you see websites and snippets about those sites that fall into the category of “organic”  content. These are sites that Google places – for free – in a highly visible part of SERP because Google’s algorithm detects that the webpage has quality content, relevant information, and is produced by a company with expertise and authority. 

Websites also appear in this place if the webpage is structured with SEO in mind. SEO is a free way to get your company’s content into other highly visible places on a search results page.  Roofers need SEO marketing know-how or specialists to end up on page one or two of SERP for free. 

It’s not exactly easy to get your company on page one of search results for free and it takes awhile to increase your page rankings in Google. 

A great roofer SEO marketing  management company, like SEO Design Chicago, will handle all of your SEO for you. We can also tackle other digital marketing services like pay-per-click (PPC) ads, social media, online reputation management, web design, website maintenance and other digital services for you.

 

Mastering SEO involves learning all about:

• The best keywords to use in page titles and throughout body copy
• Writing effective text and finding great images
• How to read analytics reports, that show how often and where your site appears in SERP, along with other information like where your customers live, what times of day they visit and what makes them leave your site  
• How to move forward with new strategies based on that data

You can take an online course in roofing SEO management, read books about the topic, or watch YouTube videos. We even offer training to you or your employees. But what is your time worth? What’s the monetary cost of each hour of your time? Every hour you spend learning about how and why you need roofer seo marketing is an hour that you take away from other things you need to do to run your business. SEO Design Chicago will likely be a better use of your time and money. 

 

What Do Roofers Need to Know About SEO Marketing to Make Sure Their Site is Ranking High in SERP

At SEO Design Chicago, we have worked with many roofing companies over the last decade to make sure their online content appears high in search engine results pages. Ideally, we aim for pages one-to-three of SERP. Ideally, you’ll appear in the first section. But this is an ideal situation that requires a lot of ongoing work. It won’t happen instantly, and with a few simple fixes to your site. We usually follow a step-by-step checklist like this to make sure we’re doing the best we can for roofers trying to up their SEO game. Here’s what we do, and what we advise any roofers to do on their own, or with the help of experts:

1. First, do a SEO analysis of your current website, if you have one. This will tell you where you’re ranking in Google and Bing and for what keywords. We  offer a free SEO audit as part of our initial consultation with you. If you want to do an SEO analysis on your own, you can. There are several free tools out there. Just search for “free SEO audit.” However, beware. These sites will give you an audit for free, but you’ll need to provide a credit card first. After a certain number of days, you’ll be charged a monthly fee. Also, there’s no point in doing an SEO audit on your own website if you don’t know how to interpret the results.                                                                                                                                                                             
2. If you do understand the report, and see that you’re ranking high for certain keywords (the phrases or words people enter into a search bar), that’s awesome. You should create more content like that page. You don’t want to create a replica of that page – Google actually dings sites a few points if they feel they’re doing the same old thing page after page. But you want to creatively figure out ways to add new pages to your site that include those keywords. Sometimes, it means you can start a blog and write posts that include those keywords. Or create a Frequently Asked Questions page and include a lot of questions and answers with those keywords. Add those words to other pages on your site too. But this is where roofing SEO marketing experts like us come in handy. if you’re not ranking at all in Google, or ranking on page 100, we know how to fix those pages. We also know how to create more content like the pages that are doing well in Google and Bing results, without doing the same thing twice.                                                                                                                                                      
3. While you’re doing all this, think about your target audience, including their income levels, fears about getting a new roof (like the cost), concerns about the safety of you and your employees and more. Life is expensive right now. So people will put off something like a  new roof or repairing a roof if they can. Make sure your site has a lot of information about how delaying roof repair or a new roof will cost a person more in the long run. And be sure to explain any financing options you may offer. You can also just include links to other websites about how people can find creative ways to make big repairs and home improvements.                                                                                                                                                                        
4. Think broadly about your business goals. For example, more sales is the obvious major goal, but you won’t reach that goal unless you reach other smaller milestones, like increased web traffic, an increase in phone call inquiries, an uptick in social media followers and more.                                                                                                                                                                            
5. Consider what your budget is for SEO and/or other digital marketing services (such as online review monitoring, social media content creation, and more). Remember that any time you spend on roofing SEO is time you’re taking away from other business needs. Many skilled tradespeople find that hiring out their digital marketing and SEO needs is worth the cost when it comes to return on investment.                                                                                                                                                                   
6. Throughout this whole process, be sure you are researching what keywords your clients or potential clients are likely using when they need roofing services. We think like people do, and we use advanced tools like SEMRush and Google Keyword Planner to see what roofers keywords are used most commonly. For example, we just used Google Keyword Planner to search for roof repair and found that 10K – 100K searches for that term monthly. There’s been a 90% drop in that search term over the last three months. Why? Because we’re writing this in winter. No one thinks about roof repair in winter.                                                                                                   
7. Once you get a sense of what keywords you need on your site,  rewrite your current site so that those words are placed in the right places on each page. These places include titles, headlines, body copy and the alt tags of images. We can also show you how to “hide” these keywords in meta tags, or words that you place on the back end of your website so Google can find the pages faster.                                                                                                                                                                                    
8. Another part of SEO is making sure your site is smartphone friendly and contains quality links to pages on your own site, and other websites. These things are the other SEO metrics that matter to Google when their algorithm decides where to place any particular page in search results. If you can’t deal with web design, don’t. We couldn’t repair our roofs if we tried. We’d hire you. Sometimes, you just need to call in specialists.                                                                                                                              
9. You must always keep an eye on your website metrics, called analytics, so that you can see if your SEO strategy is working. SEO tactics don’t put your site on page one of SERP overnight, but you should see a difference within six months. If you don’t, something is off with your SEO marketing.                                                                                                                                                   
10. Finally, you want to post new keyword rich pages to your site on a regular basis. New content, usually around 1500 words in length on each page, is a signal to Google that you’re an expert in roofing and your site should be featured high in search results. Content creation is a key service we offer our clients.

 

Reach out to us for a free consultation. We’ll make sure we give you shelter in the digital age.