Are you part of a home services company doing SEO?
How many times have you thrown stuff at a wall and hoped it sticks?
- Corporate-style SEO plans could waste your precious money and energy.
- If you do 3 items without the other 2, you won’t have a full dish!
- We’ll talk through how much each of these is important and in what quantity.
This clean and clear recipe will give you exactly what you need to do, and in what order to make sure your SEO efforts aren’t wasted.
1. Prioritize your money making keywords
2 Teaspoons (consider it like baking soda: it doesn’t take a ton, but it has to be there for it to taste right.)
What single term (or topic of terms) would make you the most money if you could rank #1? Usually service + location. Failing to prioritize and focus your efforts is one of the main mistakes DIYers make.
2. Lay Your Foundation In Technical SEO
Half a cup (Shouldn’t be more than 20% of your effort, but needs to be correct.)
From proper indexation to core web vitals; take every potential advantage from a technical SEO standpoint. Tasks include (but are not limited to): noindexing thin & duplicate content, site speed, schema, optimizing meta titles & descriptions, removing orphaned pages, fixing redirects, etc. While there is a learning curve, taking your time to get this right will magnify your ability to win in the following steps.
3. Build Location Service Pages & Topical Authority
2 Cups (Content is the biggest component of SEO – if the rest of the items are on place, this lever can be mashed to 11)
Start by creating Service pages targeting all cities in your service area: ie. Minneapolis Roofing. Use keyword research to find as many topics related to your prioritized service as possible. Then, write blog posts for each of them and publish them once per week. Do not skip this step – you can’t rank on Google without creating targeted posts and pages.
4. Build Both Internal & External Links
1 Cup (Has to be in place, but once you get 10 good links, this becomes a little lower priority. Most home service businesses do not have 10 good links though)
As you write blog posts, link your blog posts and service pages to each other whenever relevant. As your blog content starts to drive more traffic, you should look to earn external links to your winning content. These links serve as votes of confidence and act as a force multiplier on your existing SEO efforts.
5. Optimize Old / Underperforming Content
The Frosting (This is one of the best places you can place your effort for flavor and delight. Hugely useful to make an excellent tasting SEO plan.)
As you continue to create new content, go back and improve existing posts that didn’t perform as well as you would have liked. Leveling up ones on the second page of Google can be quick winners.
