How to DIY your SEO for electricians
Ensuring you’re found when potential customers search for you online is a cost-effective marketing method – and the good news is there’s plenty you can do yourself.
We spoke to Karen Dauncey, Founder of The SEO School, to understand why SEO matters, and the little things you can do on your website to make a big difference to your business.
EG: Why does local SEO matter for electricians?
KD: The days of relying on a Yellow Pages listing and an ad in the community magazine to attract local customers are pretty much gone. According to a recent survey by BrightLocal, 98 per cent of consumers used the internet to search for local businesses in 2022. By using local SEO strategies, electricians can connect with customers actively seeking your services – and the benefit is, when it comes to looking for electricians, most potential customers are going to be searching for you using a local search term – for example, ‘electrician’ and your town or city.
EG: What is local SEO for electricians?
KD: Local SEO is just SEO with a local twist. You still need to do thorough keyword research, focus on quality content that’s relevant and useful to your local audience, build backlinks to your website, and have good on-page technical SEO (more on this later!). Local SEO adds a local element so you rank for keywords that include your location, and uses tools such as Google Business Profile and Bing Places in addition to traditional SEO practices.
EG: Who needs local SEO?
KD: Any electrician who works in a specific region, city or suburb needs local SEO. Local SEO works for both those businesses with a physical location, as well as mobile services – just make sure you hide your residential address on your Google Business Profile. You can use Local SEO as a residential electrician, commercial electrician or if you offer specialised services. The benefit of focusing on local SEO is you have the potential to rank in both the Google Maps result as well as in the Google listings below this, and if someone is searching for an electrician in their local area, and you come up twice then you’re more likely to get the click and conversion.
Top 10 tips for improving your local SEO |
| Here are Karen’s top 10 tips for improving your local SEO |
1. Establish your Google Business ProfileAdd as much relevant information to it as you can. Your Google Business Profile is arguably your most powerful local SEO tool, so you need to add new posts regularly which contain relevant information for your local audience. |
2. Get your business onto other map listingsDon’t forget Bing Places and Apple Maps! |
3. Get a listing on local business directoriesThere are plenty of these around, including Yelp, True Local, Yellow Pages, and more. You can find a list of directories here theseoschool.com/citations |
4. Get genuine customer reviewsMake an effort to ask for these once you have completed a job as these are big ranking factors when it comes to local SEO. I would highly recommend asking for these in person once you finish the job where possible, and advising the customer you will be sending them a text with a link so they can easily leave a review, and/or organise a follow-up email. You can also consider printing off postcards to leave at clients’ homes/premises with a QR code and a link to your Google Business Profile reviews. |
5. Establish a link-building strategyWe’re talking links to your website on other websites. Ideally, you want to get your website listed on local business directories, trade directories, business associations, and professional memberships. |
6. Add the keyword ‘electricians’ and your local keywords to your websiteThe first thing to do would be to add ‘Electricians + suburb or town name’ to the SEO title on your home page. Eg. Electricians Wollongong. |
7. Add location pages to your siteThis means creating an individual page for each suburb in your surrounding area and having a page per suburb. For example, have one page for Electricians Currambine, one page for Electricians Iluka, another page for Electricians Carramar and so on. You can embed a Google Map onto each page and you also need to have a comprehensive page of content that covers all aspects of what you do. People will land on these from search, so you need to give a good overview of what you do! If you need help with this one, it would be worth engaging your web developer (or finding one!). |
8. Ensure your website is mobile-friendlyRemember, most customers are going to be viewing your website on a mobile device, so make sure you check your website on a mobile device. Can you navigate easily between pages? Are your contact details easy to find? Is your phone number clickable so people can ring you directly from the website? |
9. Name the geographical areas you work inMake sure you mention the areas where you work on your website, ideally on the home page. Many electrical businesses work from home so don’t advertise a home address, but you can highlight your local suburbs. |
10. Contribute onlineEstablish yourself as not only an expert in your field but also as an active participant and contributor to your local community. Comment on Facebook posts when people are asking for advice and be willing to help. |
If you’d like to learn more about local SEO, Karen’s just launched a new Local SEO Results Course. Check it out at courses.theseoschool.com/local-seo-results. And readers will get $50 off the course by entering the code SAVE-50!
Keywords: The lowdown
Keywords are essentially the words and phrases you would like your website to appear for when people search, and they help Google understand what your website is about. There are a number of tools that can help you research keywords, including Semrush, Ahrefs and UberSuggest. Most offer a free trial, but in reality you know that the people you want to be found by will be searching electricians plus your town or city.
Log into the back end of your website, and make sure the following mention your keywords: Meta title (the title of your page that appears on Google), H1 (your main page headings) and H2 (your subheadings).
You can also use image file names and image alt text for your keywords, too.
Quality content: The lowdown
Quality content effectively means content that’s going to be of value to your potential customers, and by publishing quality content your website is showing Google you’re a good source of information. Producing quality content regularly (for example, once per week) will also keep you front of mind for customers, and will often provide answers to questions customers may be searching for – for example, how to install a home cinema. If you’re producing good quality content, your chances of earning backlinks is also increased, which leads us nicely on…
Backlinks: The lowdown
Backlinks are links to your website from other sites. Listings sites are a great opportunity to quickly establish backlinks, and search engines see backlinks as a validation of your website and content – after all, if it’s good enough for someone to link to, it must have merit. But where else could you get backlinks from? Other local businesses perhaps, commercial customers, or wholesalers who might have a ‘local electrician directory’ on their site?
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