In the world of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), one of the most authoritative websites in the world recently posted a great article about the impact of Google’s latest changes – the Venice Update – on local search.
The article is written from the perspective of national companies trying to rank for keywords that really should be reserved for local companies. Perhaps these companies are trying to capture a lead and sell it back to you and your competitors. Whatever the case, the article makes some great recommendations that apply to local contractors and home service professionals as well.
Here’s the recommendations we see as the best way for contractors to blow away the competition and be ahead of the game with respect to Google’s Venice Update:
- Unique Localized Page Content: If you want to rank highly for lots of keywords in lots of cities & towns, make sure you have pages dedicated for each city with lots of unique content.
- Location based reviews: The article says “Instead of one testimonial site wide add a testimonial in every market you can.” We also recommend that you have a unique review page for each city that you service, and that the reviews on each page are unique to that city.
- Mark up your content using schema.org rich snippets: In order to help Google, Bing, and other search engines properly identify your content as local, use schema.org markup to make it easily able to be parsed and categorized.
The great news for the contractor is that Nearby Now includes a set of tools that help you gather lots of unique content and get lots of local reviews – and automatically post them to your website! Our plugins also mark up your content in schema.org rich snippets, so they are search-engine friendly. It doesn’t hurt that our plugins look awesome too.
Here’s how it works:
1When you or your technician arrives at a customer’s location, use the native Nearby Now app to check-in. You may also include a comment, like “Replacing a water heater”. Later on when the job is complete, check in again, and this time, attach a photo of the finished work with a caption of “Just installed a beautiful new 50 gal. natural gas water heater”.
Nearby Now Checkin
2Next, tap the “Survey” button that is attached to the appropriate check-in. This allows you to send the customer a request for a review. The customer will receive a link via either email or an SMS text message (you choose). The link looks good on both smart-phones and desktop computers. When the customer fill s out the review, it will automatically post to your website under the correct city.
Nearby Now Review Request
Watch this great video by Josh Nelson, and start doing way more than the competition.
