Things got crazy during the last few years dealing with the pandemic. Most home service companies saw a massive influx of new business, as everyone seemed to be stuck at home, finally with some time to tackle those long-overdue projects. The roofing companies that saw the largest spike? Were already dominating the search engines. In this 2022-2023 guide, we will go over some of the key things you need to focus on for your roofing business when it comes to good old Google.
If you’re a roofing company, you know that online visibility is key to your success. You need to be at the top of Google search results/search engine rankings if you want to generate leads and make sales. In this blog post, we will share nine Roofing SEO tips that will help improve your ranking on Google and bring more traffic to your website. Follow these tips and see the difference they make in your business! This SEO guide will be game-changing for you in the way you gain knowledge on the topics that can have the biggest ROI + return for you.
#01: Research Local Roofing SEO Keywords
When it comes to a roofing SEO campaign, local keywords for roofers are extremely important. In order to rank well in your city, you need to include keywords that are relevant to your area. For example, if you’re a roofing company located in Chicago, you would want to optimize for Chicago Roofer, Roofing Chicago, etc. Picking the right target keyword is extremely important.
Top Roofing Keywords
** This Data has been gathered from various SEO Roofing clients we’ve worked with, as well as various SEO Tools **
While the impact of each can vary from city to city, these seem to be the most common, and most advantageous to try and fight for. When you see (City), just replace this with the town/city you’re looking to have a presence in.
#1 Roofing companies near me
#2 Roofing contractors near me
#3 Roofers Near me
#4 Roofing (City)
#5 Roofing Contractor (City)
#6 Roof Repairs (City)
#7 (City) Roofing
#8 Roof replacement cost
#9 Metal Roofing (City)
#10 Roofing Services in (CITY)
#11 Commercial Roofing Contractor
If these are relevant to your business, then I highly suggest you take a look at them if you aren’t already. Some of these should have their own pages, like “Metal Roofing”. This will allow you to create a page of information super dedicated to Metal Roofing related inquiries. Roof Repair is another big one that should have its own page of information. Since an install and a repair are completely different needs, make sure you provide solid content for the user that will help them make an overall decision.
Great Keyword Research Tools for Roofers
Our personal favorite is Ahrefs. These advanced tools really allow us to compare ourselves against competitors, and help us save a crazy amount of time. These are the key to helping uncover the secrets within the organic search and finding search terms that could end up being massive for your business.
#02: Research Your Competitors
It’s important to research your roofing competitors so you can learn what tactics they’re using to rank well on Google. You can use an SEO tool like Moz, or SEMRush to research roofing companies near you and see what keywords they’re ranking for, their Page Authority, Domain Authority, and much more.
It’s also a good idea to research roofing contractors in other big cities who aren’t competing with you so you can learn new strategies that are working for roofers in those areas. We like to use a tool called “SpyFu” that has some pretty powerful research tools, as well as getting some data on the competition!
There are free tools, such as GMB Crush, that can help you compare your Google my Business listing to your competitors. This lets you see what kind of categories they’re including, as well as other interesting tidbits that can help you get an advantage.
#03: Publish High-Quality Content
Roofing companies need to focus on high-quality, comprehensive content if they want to rank well on Google. Your website should be full of informative and helpful articles that provide roofing tips, advice, and insights for homeowners. When you produce high-quality content, you not only improve your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) ranking but you will help potential customers solve problems or questions they might have.
Doing this provides an extremely positive experience, which can help lead to potentially a deeper inquiry about what you do, that can help them. Part of your content management strategy needs to be solving the biggest problems your audience might have!
Content is king. So content creation is a must!
When it comes to roofing, your roofing website’s helpful content should be high quality and informative. It should also include keywords for SEO purposes. Some roofing companies make the mistake of using stock photos or boring text on their roofing websites because they think this will save them time – but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Helpful content is key for a successful roofing website, and it’s also important for SEO.
#04: Use NAP Citations – Important Trust Factors
NAP citations are important for a roofing SEO strategy because they tell search engines who you are and where your business is located. These citations or inbound links include important contact details like the name of your company, address, and phone number (NAP). You can get these from a variety of online directories such as Google, Yelp, and Bing.
Below, we’ve actually listed a few of the main directories you should set your business in, as well as some roofing directory listings! Link building helps build trust with Google and is ultimately part of the key ranking factors. It without a doubt needs to be part of your digital marketing strategy.
– Google My Business: This is the most important one, as it will have your NAP on both the website and Google Maps listing. You’ll need to verify the listing with a postcard or phone call.
– Yelp: This is probably one of the most popular review sites out there, so you’ll want to claim your business and make sure all information is correct (NAP, hours, ect)
– Bing Places for Business: Similar to Google and Yelp, this is another big search engine that has a business listing service.
– Manta: This is a roofing directory that has information about roofing companies, products, and services.
– Houzz: This is another roofing directory with photos of roofing projects, company profiles, and more.
Other Contractor related Directory Listings
#05: Optimize Your Images for SEO
When you upload images to your website, you should optimize them for SEO by adding a title and description. You can also add alt tags to help rank better in image searches on Google.
When uploading images to your website, be sure to make the file names relevant to roofing or roof repair (for example: roof-repair-Miami).
#06: Optimize Your Website Speed
There are a lot of roofing websites out there, but not all of them are optimized for speed & performance. This is an important factor for SEO because Google takes website speed into account when ranking pages. Think about it, if your website is silly slow, the customer is going to leave. Not even Gandhi has that kind of patience. When your bounce rates increase, this is a clear signal to Google that their experience probably isn’t great.
There are a few things you can do to optimize your site speed:
– Use a content delivery network (CDN): A CDN stores copies of your website on servers around the world so visitors can access it from any location. This helps speed up load times because browsers don’t have to request data from your server every time someone visits your website.
– Minimize redirects: Redirects are an important part of SEO, but too many redirects can slow down your website. Try to keep the number of redirects as low as possible.
– Optimize images: Make sure your website’s images are compressed and formatted correctly.
– Use caching: Caching is a process that stores a copy of your website’s data so it doesn’t have to be recalculated every time someone visits your website.
– Web Hosting: Your websites: Yes, the speed of your website can be influenced by your hosting company. The kind of hosting you employ is one of several variables that might affect how quickly your website loads. While there are many plans, and options out there, we prefer a provider such as Siteground or Cloudways.
#07: Optimize Your Title Tags and Meta Descriptions
Your roofing website’s title tags and meta descriptions are important for SEO because they help you rank in search engine results pages (SERPs). They also provide potential customers with a snapshot of what your roofing website is about.
Title tags should be around 50-60 characters long, and meta descriptions should be around 150-160 characters. Be sure to include your roofing company’s name, address, and phone number in both the title tags and meta descriptions!
#08: Optimize Your Roofing Website for Local SEO
Local SEO is important for roofers because it helps you rank in local search engine results pages. This is especially important for contractors that only serve a specific geographic area.
There are a few things you can do to optimize your roofing website for local SEO:
– Add your roofing company’s address and phone number to your website’s header and footer.
– Include keywords and phrases related to your roofing company’s location in your website’s title tags and meta descriptions.
– Add a Google Maps widget to your website.
– Claim your roofing company’s business listing on Google My Business (Google Maps, Bing Places for Business, and Yelp.
#09: Using Service Pages (One of the Most Powerful Tips for 2022)
If you’re a roofing company then odds are your visiting clients at their homes. This means you are likely going to be a service area business. So to truly capitalize on covering a larger territory, you need to create pages specifically dedicated to those towns and cities.
Remember previously how we talked about Keywords + (City)? Well, you have to think that this can apply to more than just where you might physically be.
Most Roofers will travel up to an hour if the job is right, so think about those towns and cities you want to have some visibility in. My tip on this, you can create hundreds of pages like this in your area, and even Google themselves has said the duplicate content won’t hurt you. So if duplicate content is a fear here, don’t let it be! You can even go as far as including a Google Maps Pin on the page for each city.
The sky is the limit (figuratively, and sometimes literally) with what you put onto these pages, so feel free to get creative! You’ll want to make sure you include your company’s address, phone number, and website link on each page.
#10: Customer Reviews are Critical!
We’ve talked about off-page SEO, how to get in front of your target audience, setting up a foundational link-building strategy, and the value of implementing content marketing strategies. The other juicy, but massively important item we kept for last, is customer reviews on Google! Month over month, we see reviews playing a huge role in our client’s search rankings. Those who hunt down reviews, and get great referrals, always seem to do better. The Google map pack is the biggest prize for local businesses. Being in that Google map pack for your various services & offers will without a doubt, keep your phone ringing!
Our testing has shown the client’s map-pack ranking being highly implicated to the number of reviews, the quality of reviews, images being added to a review, as well as keywords being mentioned within the review itself.
#11: Schema Markup
You can add a type of code called schema markup to your website to give search engines more details about your content.
For a roofing website, this can be especially helpful since it enables search engines to understand the exact products and services that your company provides.
Benefits of Using Schema Include:
Enhanced search results: When you implement schema markup, the search results from your website may contain extra details like ratings, costs, or service areas. This can make your search results more noticeable and encourage more clicks.
Improved local SEO: Schema markup can aid in the better understanding by search engines of the location and services of your company. This is crucial for a roofing business because customers frequently look for roofing services in their immediate region.
Increased website traffic: Schema markup can assist in bringing more relevant visitors to your website by giving search engines more information about your company. More potential clients for your roofing business may result from this.
#12: Using Entities Within Your Information
An entity is any person, place, or object that is relevant to a specific search query in the context of search engine optimization (SEO).
Since they can aid search engines in understanding the context and intent of a given search query, entities are crucial to SEO in 2023 and beyond. Search engines can more effectively match a search query with pertinent and useful information by comprehending the things that are related to the query. These are basically different types of words that help establish relevance to what it is you actually do, or provide.
In the context of SEO, the following entities could be significant to a roofing company’s service:
Roofing materials: This could include things such as asphalt shingles, metal roofing, tile roofing, and more. Now, this can even be expanded to include things that are highly related, such as tar, flashing, vents, skylights, valleys, ridges, gables, chimneys, eaves, gutters, downspouts, dormers, and dozens more.
Roofing services: This may involve services like roof replacement, roof repair, and roof inspection.
Roofing contractors: The names of certain contractors who work for the business or the name of the roofing company are examples of possible inclusions in this.
Locations: This could encompass entities like the city, state, or area where the roofing company offers its services.
What Drives Traffic From the Search Engines?
What are the factors that drive traffic from search engines? There’s no one answer, but it depends on what you want to find. For example, if your goal is promoting an online business then certain keywords will be more relevant than others for helping people get their product into front-of-mind with potential buyers.
How Long Does SEO for the Roofing Industry Take?
SEO for Roofers can take anywhere from a few weeks to months, depending on how much time you want to spend. There are many different techniques that need attention during this process and some may be quicker than others so it’s important for each person who wants their home improved by using these methods to get an accurate estimate before beginning anything else
Mentioning benefits such as increased property values or better resale value plus other things, in the long run, makes customers comfortable with investing money into improvements even if they aren’t sure about all of its aspects at first glance
Is SEO A Good Investment for a Roofing Business Owner?
Roofer SEO may produce significant benefits in a short period of time. Your traffic may explode overnight with a few properly placed adjustments to your content. Everything in this guide takes time, and you must invest in it if you want to see any benefits. If you choose the correct keywords to target, the payoff will be enormous.
What are the common mistakes that roofing contractors can make when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO)
- Avoid using an excessive number of keywords in your text in an effort to trick search engines is known as keyword stuffing. Search engines may interpret this as spammy or low-quality content, which might actually have the reverse impact and lower your ranks.
- Duplicate content: Copying content from other websites or using the same information on different pages of your website can harm your SEO efforts as Googles algorithm continues to tackle spam efforts.
- Unorganized website: An disorganized website can make it challenging for search engines to understand the content and page hierarchy, which can negatively affect your rankings. Use logical page structure, clear headers, and clear subheadings.
- Lack of mobile friendliness: It’s critical to ensure your website is mobile friendly as more and more people use their phones to search for businesses online. Your website’s rankings may suffer if it is challenging to read or navigate on a small screen.
- Insufficient high-quality content: Google’s algorithms give websites with relevant, high-quality content priority. If your website doesn’t have interesting, educational material, it could undermine your SEO efforts.
Other Important Tips for Roofers in 2022
Don’t forget to be set up with the Googles!
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a web analytics service that offers basic analytical tools and data for search engine optimization (SEO) and marketing. Google Analytics is used to track the operation of a website and gather information about its visitors.
Google Search Console
Google Search Console is a free Google service that allows you to track, maintain, and troubleshoot your site’s visibility in Google search results. When Google detects indexing, spam, or other difficulties on your site, you’ll get an alert. This tool will show you which websites connect to yours.
Google Ads
Google Ads PPC is a tool that allows you to market your company, offer items or services, build awareness, and drive visitors to your website. You may create and edit your ad campaign, including the ad text, settings, and budget, at any time with your Google Ads account, which is maintained online.
Google Local Service Ads allow you to connect with individuals who are looking for the services you provide on Google. Customers in your region will see your advertising, and you will only be charged if a consumer contacts you directly through the ad.
Google Business Profile
The key foundation to local search engine optimization in the roofing industry are free resources like the Google Business Profile. This is definitely something you need to take action on and get in place if you take nothing else from our article.
A local roofing company should have a Google Business Profile since it promotes your business in local search results and on Google Maps. A Google Business Profile can make it simpler for customers to locate and contact your company when they look for roofing services in their region.
You may add details about your company, such as your location, operating hours, and services offered, to your Google Business Profile, which can help prospective clients to learn more about you. Customers may also post reviews on a GBP, which can help your company gain reputation and trust.
In general, a Google Business Profile can be a useful tool for expanding your local roofing business and bringing in lots of new prospects, opportunities, calls, and revenue.
Optimize for Mobile Devices
More and more people are accessing the internet from their mobile devices, so it’s important to make sure your website is optimized for these devices. A mobile-friendly website can’t take the back seat anymore. They’re definitely in the driver’s seat!
There are a few things you can do to optimize your website for mobile devices:
– Use responsive design: Responsive websites use a single code base that adapts to any screen size, which makes it easier to manage and update your website.
– Minimize files sizes: Make sure your website’s files are compressed so they load faster on mobile devices.
– Optimize for touch: Make sure your website’s buttons and links are easy to tap on mobile devices.
– Use a mobile-friendly font size: Make sure your website’s text is easy to read on mobile devices.
Optimize Your Website for Search Engine Crawlers
Search engine crawlers (also known as robots or spiders) are programs that index websites for search engines. It’s important to make sure your website is optimized for these crawlers, because if it isn’t, your website may not rank as high in search engine results pages.
There are a few things you can do to optimize your website for search engine crawlers:
– Use descriptive titles and meta descriptions
– Add keywords to your website’s header and footer
– Use semantically related keywords: roof repair, roof replacement, roof installation
– Avoid using Flash or JavaScript: Some search engine crawlers have difficulty indexing websites that use Flash or JavaScript.
– Use an XML sitemap
The importance of Internal Links
Internal links are beneficial since they might assist Google in better understanding and ranking your website. You may tell Google which pages of your site are significant and what they’re about by offering Google links to follow along with descriptive anchor text. This also provides a great experience for your potential leads, as they can easily find more relevant content that could assist them in their journey.
For a roofing business, internal linking has a number of advantages:
Internal linking can improve user navigation and make it simpler for visitors to explore your website and get the information they need. By doing this, you may enhance user experience and increase the possibility that visitors will stay on your website longer.
Increased page views: Internal linking can help readers visit more pages on your website, which can boost traffic to your site overall and attract more prospective customers.
Better indexation: Internal linking helps search engines grasp the structure and content of your website.
Utilizing internal linking will aid search engines in properly indexing your website, which will boost your search engine ranks.
A Trusted Roofing SEO Company
Are you looking for reliable roofing SEO services that can help take the stress away by trying to work through that list above? SEO For roofing contractors can definitely seem overwhelming and might seem like a daunting task, but the Roofing SEO team at Social Spike Marketing Group have you covered. We specialize in helping contractors gain more roofing leads, visibility, and ultimately, more growth! Book your free strategy session with us today and let us help you create a winning plan for your business.