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Category: Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for House Painting Companies in 2023: Help Your Brand Stand Out In The Search Results (SERPs) Part 1

Does your painting business’ website show up where you want it in the Google search results for ALL potential clients?

If not, this article is for you.

We will review what SEO is, why it’s important and the steps that you can take to improve your ranking.

Unveiling the Significance of SEO: Boosting Your Painting Business Through Effective Strategies

The success of your business largely depends on how well you rank online. To achieve this goal, it’s essential to prioritize the right SEO techniques that will boost your marketing efforts and drive growth. With these strategies in place, there’s no limit to what you can accomplish!

Google processes over 5 billion searches everyday!  One out of five queries originate from mobile devices. In fact, more than half of mobile queries are “near me” searches.  For the desktop inquiries, which make up the other 80% of searches, roughly twenty percent have local intent. 

This trend highlights the importance for businesses to optimize their online presence and ensure they appear prominently when potential customers search nearby.

Its evident that local search behavior has immense potential for generating new house painting leads! By crafting a targeted campaign focused on consumers in specific areas and implementing effective marketing techniques you can enhance your visibility online. This will ultimately lead to increased chances of attracting fresh customers who may not have known about you otherwise.

Strategy 1 – Business Listings: Enhancing and Tracking Key Elements

By optimizing your Google Business Profile Listing correctly, you could potentially reach the top of organic SERPs within the local results section for your niche. 

However, don’t limit yourself to just focusing on your Google Business Profile alone when it comes to improving your local SEO campaign. Optimizing your business listings on social media sites, Yelp and other major listings is crucial for attracting customers.  

To achieve this, you will need to claim, optimize, verify, manage and sync all relevant information about your company across these platforms.  

(Need help with this? Our services will ensure that potential clients find accurate details about what you offer when they search online. Don’t miss out – let us handle the heavy lifting so you can focus on running a successful painting company! Email si@iftsdesign.com to find out more)

So, what do you need to sync across all of your listings?

Business NAP (Name / Address / Phone Number)

Make sure that your company’s name, address and phone number is written exactly the same across all listings and your website.

As an example, if your address is “123 North Smith Street,” don’t have your website say “123 N. Smith Street” and the Google Business Profile say “123 North Smith St.” Choose one version of the name/address/phone number and stick to it.

Your Painting Business’ Website

Having a link to your official website is crucial.  This gives Google and other search engines a link to follow, which gives them relevant information about your company.  It also allows customers looking at your citation to go directly to your site.

Business Hours / Description / Categories

All your listings should have the same hours, description and industry categories. If they don’t, the search engines will be confused about which is the correct and most relevant data about you. This could result in a lower result for your website in the results.

Images / Videos Of Your Painting Jobs and Team

Including high-quality images and videos can set your citation apart from others in your industry. It will maximize your visibility and sometimes, will make your citation larger than others, which catches the eye of the person browsing.

Online Reviews

While you can’t optimize your reviews, technically speaking, it is still essential to keep a close eye on them. Regularly checking up on new listings for fresh feedback is important. So is flagging any spam or inappropriate comments.

Bad review? No problem! Responding professionally when dealing with dissatisfied customers who may have had negative experiences shows that you care about the client experience and gives you a chance to fix the issue. 

This approach helps ensure that everyone has an opportunity to share their thoughts while also maintaining the integrity of online review platforms overall. By staying vigilant about these matters, painting businesses like yours are better equipped than ever before to address concerns head-on and ultimately improve customer satisfaction levels over time!

Strategy 2 – Local SEO: Attract More Clients Near You

Want to improve your local presence online? Start with your website!

Using multiple SEO strategies to optimize your website is crucial to getting more local house painting clients.

Here’s a great way to start this process:

Website URLs, Page Titles, and Meta Descriptions

When Google and other search engines crawl your site, it’s important to have these elements filled in and optimized. 

[Side Note – If your website is created in WordPress, you can use the Yoast plugin to take care of all of these]

The website URL is the website address of the page www.yoursite.com/page-name. You’ll want to be sure that the page-name element contains keywords and your local town name.

The page title is the name of the webpage that appears in the tab on your browser.  A good format for naming your webpages is “Keyword 1 – Keyword 2 | Company Name.”

The meta description is the short paragraph that appears below the website name in the search engine results.  Google does not look at this when determining page rank, but your client is going to read it. Put the most relevant information in there for them.

Contact Information and Business Hours

Just like with the citations, you want to be sure that your website clearly lists the hours and how to contact you. Make sure that this information is consistent with the citations as well.

Landing Pages

Want to attract clients from multiple areas?

Have a landing page that is optimized for each location.  However, one important thing to note – these pages cannot have the exact same text on each page. Be sure to customize it to that town or be penalized by Google.

Blog

Having a blog is a great way to improve your SEO!  

You can showcase your latest projects, highlight an employee, inform your clients and prospects about a frequently asked question, or talk about events that are happening in your town. Each one of these allows that specific blog entry to be optimized to a set of keywords that are relevant to your local area.  More about this in the next post…

To Be Continued…

Ready to get started? Implement the two SEO tactics above.  

In our next post, Strategy 4, Strategy 5 and Strategy 6 Will Be Revealed.

Revitalizing Your Online Presence: Generating Phone Calls and Conversions

Is your online presence working for you? 

In today’s digital landscape, a compelling online presence is the cornerstone of any successful business. It serves as a digital storefront, #1 salesperson, your biggest fan and more, enticing prospects to engage with your brand.

So – what entails a successful online presence?

There are 3 main parts:

  • Branding 
  • Google Maps Optimization
  • Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

In this article, we will explore these 3 key elements that can transform your presence online into a powerful client-conversion machine. 

Let’s get started!

Part 1 – Business Branding

Just as a compass guides travelers, a strong brand identity directs potential clients towards your business. It’s crucial to communicate the unique value proposition your brand offers. 

However, rather than focusing solely on yourself, shift the spotlight to the benefits your clients will gain by choosing your services. On your website, create a captivating headline that resonates with their needs and aspirations.  It should have nothing to do with you yet.  People are always looking at the “What’s In It For Me” outcomes.  So, let them know all of the great things that can happen when they work with you.

Then, use the subheadings to highlight features that reinforce these benefits.  This is where you can talk about your knowledge, qualifications, past case studies and more. By following this strategy, you create an emotional connection, compelling visitors to take the next step on their journey towards conversion.

Part 2 –Optimizations To Rank Higher on Google Maps

There are 3 main factors that determine how your business ranks on Google Maps:

  • Location (how close you are to the searcher)

Location emphasizes your proximity to potential clients, ensuring they can easily find and access your business.

  • Relevancy (how relevant your business is to their search)

Relevancy demands that your Google profile and website are optimized to align with their search queries, demonstrating its value and relevance.

  • Prominence (how prominent is your website)

Prominence focuses on elevating your website’s visibility and credibility.

Ensuring that Google “likes” your site by adhering to search engine optimization (SEO) best practices will ultimately increase your organic traffic and conversions.

Since you can’t really change your location, focus on credibility and relevance.

Increase Credibility and Relevance

One great way to increase credibility and relevance is via social proof, like reviews or testimonials.  This is always beneficial to you because if a prospect sees someone similar to them getting a good result with your company, they can picture themselves in that position as well.

The best part? You don’t have to toot your own horn at all.

Video testimonials are the best way to get social proof and can be easily done via Zoom. They are an invaluable asset that humanizes your brand, instilling trust and credibility. They can be posted in a myriad of places, such as:

  • YouTube
  • Your website
  • Google Business Profile
  • Rumble
  • Social Media
  • LinkedIn

…and more!

So, how can you obtain impactful video testimonials that convey the story of how you have positively impacted your clients’ lives?

Meet with happy clients on Zoom and ask them these simple questions:

  • What was the problem that you hired us to solve?
  • Why did you choose our company over everyone else?
  • What was the work that we did for you?
  • Were you happy with the results?
  • Would you recommend us to friends and family?
  • Anything additional you would like to add?

This question structure will create a great testimonial every time because it follows a story narrative. People love to hear stories in a particular order, so this should help your interviewee tell a compelling story.

Once the interview is complete, edit the video to enhance the quality and remove any portions that don’t make sense to include. This video can then be shared everywhere!

Additionally, don’t overlook the power of written testimonials.

Gather positive reviews from platforms like Google and incorporate them into your website, either as widgets, text or screenshots, to further strengthen your social proof.

Part 3 – Conversion Rate Optimization

Google can send you all the traffic in the world, but none of that matters if they don’t convert into clients.

So, how can you increase the conversion rate on your website?

There are many ways to increase conversion rate, but we are going to discuss 3 here.

1 – Make it as easy as possible to get in touch with you on every page

This includes having your phone number at the top of your website, making sure that the number is clickable, having a chat box for people that don’t want to call, and having a contact form for people that don’t want to chat. Make it impossible for someone to find a reason not to get in touch.

2 – Showcase trustworthy elements on your site

Be sure to have an SSL attached to your site so people know that their information is secure. You can further denote this with a padlock graphic on your forms. 

3 - Have a quick loading website

Be sure that your website loads in 3 seconds or less. This will ensure that a prospect cannot get upset by the load time and leave your page frustrated.

Time To Get Started

Your website holds the key to unlocking your business’s potential, acting as a bridge between you and your ideal clients. Make sure that you have built that bridge as strong as possible by following the outline discussed above.

Need help implementing any of the optimizations discussed in the article? Let IFTS help!

Call 412.715.6266 or send an email to si@iftsdesign.com to get started.

Helping Your Painting Business Rank in the Google 3-Pack

When you search for a local business on Google, the first three results that appear are known as the Google 3-Pack. The 3-Pack (also known as the local pack or snack pack) is displayed with a map that provides the location of each business as well as basic information about each business. The 3-Pack is above normal search results, which makes it a valuable piece of real estate for any local business that wants to reach people who are looking for something in their area.

Let’s talk about helping your painting business rank in the Google 3-pack.

In our experience, a lot of phone calls come from just showing up below the map in Google when someone is searching for a painter.

The best part about this? These calls are coming to you free of charge. So, how do you get more of these free calls?

To rank in the 3-pack, Google looks at 3 things:

1 – How close your business address is to the searcher, or proximity

2 – How prominent your business and brand are online, or prominence

3 – How related your company is what the person is looking for, or relevance

Now, you can’t do much about the first one, so you need to concentrate on the other 2.

Let’s start with prominence.

For this, Google is going to look at how many other websites link to you online.

This isn’t about the quantity of links, but the quality of the links. So, you want to be sure to have links from all of the organizations that you belong to and if possible, from all of the charities that you participate in. These are the types of high-quality backlinks that Google is looking for.

Google is also going to look at a bunch of different online directories/citations and make sure that your name, address and phone number all match what is in your Google Business Profile and on your website.

If you’ve moved locations a few times, you may want to look into a tool like Yext to help you get that all straightened out. We also offer this service at our company.

Now, let’s move onto relevancy.

It used to be that the closer your company name was as seen in your Google Business Profile to the search terms that someone put in, the more likely it was that you would show in the 3-pack. However, companies started to game this system by naming themselves things like “Pittsburgh House Painters” in their Google Profiles. Once Google became aware of this issue, they replaced looking at the business name with looking at your reviews!

So, Google now wants to see detailed reviews about your company, and they will look at the keywords used within the reviews to determine the relevancy to a person’s search term.

For example, if someone in Oklahoma City was looking for someone to paint their living room, Google would probably expect words like “interior painting”, “painters”, and “OKC” to be in the review text.

So, what does this tell you?

You need to get reviews on a regular basis to establish the relevancy that Google wants to see.

Unfortunately, these can’t just be any reviews.

They need to be high-quality reviews that mention words that Google wants to see…which will help you get more free phone calls.

So, how do you accomplish this seemingly impossible task of putting words into people’s heads? 

You’re not a magician.

Well, when you ask for a review via text or email, we have found that it’s good to provide a nice basis for them, which helps avoid writer’s block and allows you to put ideas in their heads…kinda like Inception, but without Leonardo DiCaprio.

As an example, you could send the following email:

“Mrs. Smith – 

We hope that you found our service to be extraordinary.  If that is the case, we would love for you to leave us a review.

To help you get started (and avoid writer’s block), we have found that the most impactful reviews answer these questions:

  • What work did we do for you and where are you located?
  • Was it done well?
  • Why did you pick our company?
  • What was the best thing about working with our company?
  • Would you recommend us to family and friends?

Please click here and it will take you directly to our Google Review Page: [Link]

Thank you for choosing us and we really appreciate you taking the time to leave a review.” 

By asking these questions, you help guide them to use the words and phrases that will make your reviews relevant to most searchers looking for companies like yours. In addition, they will leave reviews that look non-spammy and well thought out.

The other thing about reviews is that you need to get them regularly…and this is for a few reasons.

Reason 1 – Google wants to see recent reviews to help with relevance

Reason 2 – Prospects want to see recent reviews to help them make a decision

In fact, almost 50% of people won’t even consider a review relevant if it was written over one month ago.

So, you’ll need to create a system that helps you get reviews on a regular basis.  We have a whole video about this, which I’ll link to in the description.

As a bonus, you should respond to reviews to help increase your relevancy. In your response, it gives you a chance to mention the place you worked and what the job was. It also allows you to express your gratitude to the person that took the time to leave you a review.

So, in summation, ranking in the 3-pack requires 3 things:

  • Proximity
  • Prominence
  • Relevance

Because you can’t change the first one, be sure to concentrate on the second two to have the best profile possible and get more phone calls than your competition.

If you have any questions about the topic discussed in this article, or if you need help with ranking in the Google 3-pack, contact IFTS at 412-715-6266 or email Stacey Ivol at si@iftsdesign.com.