Welcome to the article on SEO for tradies! We’ll explore how effective SEO strategies can help you improve your online presence and attract more customers to your trade business. As a fellow tradesperson (Electrician) and part owner of the marketing agency Tradie Developers, I understand the unique challenges a tradie can face in the digital world.
Join me as I share valuable insights and actionable tips to help you optimise your website for search engines and drive quality leads to your site. Let’s dive in and discover how SEO for tradies can be a game-changer for your online success!
Why SEO Matters for Tradies
As tradies, one of the biggest struggles is finding reliable, honest marketers. Many marketing experts and SEO specialists have likely never done a hard day’s work on the tools or dealt with clients on the job. This makes it challenging for them to gauge what is truly needed. In today’s online world, it’s crucial for tradies to find a marketing agency with site-specific experience within the tradie world to know how to market to the right clientele and provide what is needed for a trade company.
One of the most cost-effective and results-yielding forms of marketing for your business is SEO, but it must be implemented strategically. Targeting your local area through Local SEO is particularly beneficial, especially if you are a small-sized business. Correctly optimised SEO brings in qualified traffic—people at the end of their buyer’s journey (transactional stage) or those with a question or two (informational stage). Quality website content with keyword research can answer these questions and convert visitors into customers.
Understanding Your Target Keywords
Researching the correct keywords is essential and forms the foundation of any SEO strategy. Chosen keywords must be relevant; otherwise, you risk confusing Google and losing your website in the abyss of endless pages. Sites on the second page and beyond are as good as dead.
If you’re an Electrician like me and based in Sydney, Australia, creating a service page for residential sparky work in your city is key. An obvious keyword would be “Residential Electrician Sydney.” This is a high-difficulty keyword and may be hard to rank for, but with an effective SEO campaign in place, you can start locally with less difficult keywords and work your way up as you build authority.
There are plenty of great SEO software options out there, such as Ahrefs and Semrush, which can help you discover new keywords. Analysing the keywords your competitors use and rank for is a great technique as well. Depending on the age of your site and its authority, it may be best to avoid difficult keywords initially. When selecting keywords, consider their monthly traffic, difficulty, and relevance.
On-Page SEO for Tradies
Optimising on-page SEO is necessary because it showcases your expertise. When potential clients visit your website, it should be filled with correctly optimised content—explanations and breakdowns of the services you offer, showcasing your skilled team, providing common FAQs, completed projects, and testimonials from happy customers.
Target Audience and Content Creation:
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- Know your target audience, their needs, pain points, and preferences.
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- Create content that provides value and is relevant to their search queries to increase traffic.
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- Incorporate keywords naturally, link relevant content internally, and keep it up to date.
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- Understanding the meaning of E.E.A.T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) is crucial. As a tradesperson, the first E for Experience is abundant. Offer practical tips, advice, and solutions that can help your audience with their projects, guide them in the right direction, or help them decide that you’re the right person for the job.
Key On-Page SEO Optimisations:
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- Title Tags: Ensure all page titles are unique, contain keywords, and are no longer than 60 characters.
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- Meta Descriptions: Ensure all meta descriptions are unique, contain keywords, and are no longer than 155 characters.
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- Headings: Format all headings properly using H1, H2, and H3 tags, and ensure they contain relevant keywords. Use only one H1 per page.
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- URLs: Make sure all URLs are descriptive, contain keywords, and are short. Avoid using stop words like “The,” “And,” “Of,” and “A.”
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- Image Alt Tags: Ensure all images have descriptive alt text that includes relevant keywords, and rename files to be more descriptive.
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- Internal Linking: Make sure all pages are properly and relevantly interlinked to improve navigation and user experience.
In today’s world of smartphones, the majority of searches are conducted on mobile devices. Therefore, having a mobile-friendly website with fast loading times and user-friendly navigation is a must. Good user experience (UX) requires that any page within your website should be no further than three clicks away, a concept known as click depth.
Local SEO for Tradies
For a business aiming to dominate its local area, Local SEO is paramount. You want to be known as the go-to tradie in your area and build a reputation for being the best and most capable. However, to ensure that the local community knows this and engages your services, strategic local SEO optimisations must be implemented.
Map Pack and Google Business Profile:
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- Claim and set up your Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) with all your relevant business information.
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- Set your service area to your city or the specific local suburb you want to target. If you sell products or materials from a specific location, set your location as well.
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- Add all necessary NAP (Name, Address, Phone number) information.
Once your profile is set up, the real work begins – building consistent citations, managing online reviews, and leveraging local directories and listings. A citation is a mention of your business on a platform like Yellow Pages or True Local.
Community Engagement:
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- Attend local events like sporting matches or markets and support those events.
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- Create content on your website and social media based on these local events.
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- Get your business advertised and mentioned in the local paper. Be generous within the local community, and it will return the favour.
Off-page SEO – Building Backlinks for Tradespeople
Backlinks (clickable hyperlinks back to your site), also known as inbound or external links, play a crucial role in SEO. They act as votes of confidence between websites. A “dofollow” backlink from a top authoritative website is worth as much as 10 or even 100 links from less reputable sites. To rank #1 in Google, you need to be credible, trustworthy, and authoritative. Backlinks signal to Google that you are what you claim to be.
Backlinks can also generate traffic and leads. For instance, as an Electrician, if you find a website that sells quality electrical gear and notice it lacks content on a particular subject, you could create valuable educational content and offer it as a guest post in exchange for a backlink. This not only provides great authority but also brings you that website’s following, increasing your potential to convert multiple leads.
Local Backlinks:
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- Earning backlinks within your community is important. Local backlinks are still valuable, even if they are “nofollow.”
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- Once Google sees that the community trusts and believes in you, it is more likely to rank you first for local search queries.
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- Try to get citations and backlinks from local wholesalers relevant to your trade. Use SEO tools like Ahrefs or Semrush to analyse your backlinks and those of your competitors.
Monitoring and Maintaining Your Backlinks:
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- Monitor your backlink profile as spammy backlinks can harm your reputation and SEO efforts. Set up a Google Search Console (GSC) account for your website to request the disavowal and removal of spammy links by Google. GSC also allows you to monitor performance and speed.
Measuring SEO Success for Tradies
Measuring your SEO efforts is essential to understanding what has been achieved and the success of your campaign. By monitoring changes in rankings, organic traffic, and other key SEO metrics over time, you can determine how your website is performing in search results and identify areas for improvement.
Key SEO Metrics to Monitor:
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- CTR (Click Through Rate): The percentage of users who click on a specific link in search results or an online advertisement out of the total number of users who see the link.
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- BR (Bounce Rate): The percentage of visitors who land on a webpage and then leave without taking any further action, such as clicking on another page or interacting with the website.
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- DT (Dwell Time): The amount of time a user spends on a webpage after clicking on a search result and before returning to the search results or navigating to another website.
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- Pages per Session: The average number of pages a user views during a single visit to a website.
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- Traffic Sources: The channels or mediums through which users arrive at a website.
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- Top Ranking Keywords: The keywords for which a website ranks highly in search engine results pages (SERPs).
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- Location on SERPs: Refers to the position of a website in the search engine results pages for a specific keyword or query.
Making informed decisions based on keyword performance is crucial. If a high-performing keyword ranks well, it would be wise to create more content around similar keywords to capitalise on that success. Conversely, if a keyword is underperforming, it may require further investigation, maybe the content isn’t aligning with Google’s E.E.A.T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) standards and needs to be refined.
Utilising Google Analytics 4:
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- There are many tools available for tracking SEO performance, but one of the most effective, free and essential tools is Google Analytics 4 (GA4). This valuable resource provides insights into website performance, user behaviour, and traffic sources. Every business should implement GA4 to track the valuable metrics outlined above.
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- With GA4, you can more accurately set goals, monitor your performance, and evaluate your SEO campaign’s effectiveness. For example, if you notice a high bounce rate, you may need to improve your user experience (UX) by making your website more engaging or speeding up its load times.
SEO is a crucial aspect of digital marketing for tradies. By implementing effective SEO strategies, such as optimising on-page elements, conducting thorough keyword research, building high-quality backlinks, and employing local SEO tactics, tradies can significantly improve their online visibility, attract more targeted traffic, and ultimately grow their business. It’s also extremely important to track and measure SEO efforts using analytics tools, set clear goals, and monitor key SEO metrics to make data-driven decisions that lead to success.
Remember, SEO is an ongoing process that requires continuous optimisation based on insights and data for long-term success. As an SEO agency, we are here to help you achieve your SEO goals and improve your online presence. Contact us today for further assistance or inquiries. Thank you for your time, and we hope this article was helpful to you!
If you found this article useful, definitely consider reading our article on SEO For Trade Businesses: Optimising For Every Stage Of The Buyer’s Journey
