Roofer SEO
If you are just starting off with SEO on your website, there is a lot of information here to take in. But believe me, it will be well worth your time to invest in your website by optimizing it. While a lot of the details can be overwhelming, I’m going to break it down into bit size topics to help bring some clarity to it all.
Have you hit a plateau in your web traffic? Perhaps you’re a roofer that has already invested in your website and seen the results of SEO. But for some unknown reason, the traffic seems to have capped off at a certain point. There are reasons for this which we’ll discuss below.
What is Roofer SEO
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It’s the process of adding features to your website that help google to find your site and show it to your customers.
SEO is the process of creating content on your website that communicates to Google and your customer, who you are, what you do, where you do it, and what services you provide. Content is anything from the words you type to the pictures and videos you have on your website. SEO is the process of putting all your content in a specific order that helps Google understand it.
Having a nice website and optimizing it are two different things. SEO is setting up your website so that Google can understand what your services are and where you are located. Having a nice website is for the user experience. SEO is for the sake of Google.
SEO is what helps your website to show up in search results for the specific services you offer. It helps you show up in specific cities that you want to get roofing leads from.
Since Google is a computer, a robot, you have to tell it what to read first and what the pictures are. You have to communicate the main purpose of the page and so on. You could have a beautiful drone photo of a roof replacement but if the file name of the photo is “image1403.jpg” Google is less inclined to understand what it is. This is why you would want to title your image, “roof-replacement.jph”.
Without SEO your website won’t get hardly any traffic, which means little to no leads from your website.
Why SEO? The advantage of SEO is that you control the platform, your website. When you invest in improving the SEO value of your website, you will reap the benefits of it for months and years to come. Compared to classic advertising, where the moment you stop spending money, it stops giving you leads.
Without SEO, your website will not be found on Google. Someone will type in your service and you will show up 100 results in, which no one will find.
Bad practice SEO is an unfortunate dynamic where someone tries to optimize your site and causes more harm than good. There are specific guidelines that search engines give. If neglected or done wrong, it can cause problems and Google could stop showing your site.
Let's get into some more specifics of what is included in SEO and how to improve your website ranking.
How Google Ranks Your Websites
Google will rank your website higher in search results based on a few different factors. In general, Google needs to understand your business, the main point of the website pages, and if the user finds value in your content. So you need content that speaks to both google and the user. If Google sees that all your customers land on your page but never convert (fill out a form), then it could communicate to google that users don’t find value in your page and therefore it won’t show it in results.
Let's look at a list of the best practices for SEO. I’ll explain what is required to bring your website up to a place where search engines will be able to find your site and show it to your customers.
Keywords
You may be familiar with the term “keywords”. There are shorter keywords and what they call long-tail keywords. For example, a long tail keyword would be something like, “how to replace the roof on my shed”. These long-tail keywords provide a strategic advantage because they are very specific to the user intent.
When looking for which keyword to use for your website, there are a few things to pay attention to. Such as, how many times people are searching that roofing term, how much content created for that term already, and how difficult will it be to rank for that roofing related keyword.
There are strategic advantages to going after words like “roof replacement” because it has 60,500 searches each month. But the difficulty level is 81 out of 100. There’s also an advantage to going after other keywords like “average cost to tear off and replace roof” because while it only has 5,600 searches per month, the difficulty for ranking is 60 out of 100.
There is a strategy to choose the best roofer SEO keywords. You want to choose keywords that are already performing well in your area. You also want to choose roofing keywords for which your competitors aren’t ranking.
A question to ask yourself is, does your website show up on Google for the specific roofing keywords that you want? If you want more roof replacement leads but most of the keywords on your site are centered around roof repairs, your site might not perform as well.
Here is a list of some of the top roofing keywords.
Location Pages
Just as you would want to rank for specific roofing keywords related to your services, you also want to show up for cities. Location pages are just that, pages that use the “keyword” of the city, for which you want to rank. For example, “www.mywebsite.com/baltimore-roofing-company”.
When you create location pages for your roofing company, it helps google know where your company does work. It's not enough to have a list of service locations on the home page; you also need individual pages for each of your prime locations.
Each of your location pages need to be specific to that location. So writing copy and adding photos and videos from those locations will go a long way to improve the SEO of that location page.
Once you have your location pages created, you want to have a hyperlink on your homepage that goes to each of those pages. You don’t have to list all of your location pages. In fact, if you do, it could make your site look cheap. So stick with your primary locations. This will help Google identify them as more important.
Headings
Since Google reads your website like a computer, the Headings tell the computer, google, what to read first, and what is priority. Google will understand the words on your site based off of the difference between and “H1” header and “H2” header. And it will distinguish that between a regular paragraph. So when you start your page of with text that is an H1 header, you are telling google, “this is the main point of the page”. So you want you keyword to be in the H1 header.
H1 headers are typically larger in appearance than the rest of the text on the site. When creating your roofing website, if you make the text visually large, it doesn’t mean that it will be an H1 header.
Here’s an example of the different sizes of headings.
Here is an example of a website properly using the Headings
You want your content to flow in a natural progression for both the user and Google. You also don’t want to over use the H1 header. It’s normal to see multiple H2 or H3. But the H1 is reserved for the main roofing keyword that you want to rank for. You want that keyword in the H1 heading.
Meta Description
A meta description is what your customer is going to see on the search results. It’s the words that describe the link that shows up. As seen in the photo below, you have the meta title and meta description.
You need both to be specifically made to get the attention of your target audience and make them want to click on your website. This also helps communicate to google what the main point of your page is.
But keep in mind that you don’t want to put something that is not consistent with the content on the page. If someone sees a meta title that says, “Best roofing discounts in Florida” but then the page just talks about roofing and not discounts, the user will most likely leave the page quickly and go back to Google because they didn't find the discounts. Google will take note of how quickly people leave the site and conclude that it doesn’t serve them well. So it will be less inclined to show your page.
You want consistency in the meta title, meta description and the content on the page.
Are you enjoying all the finer details of roofer SEO? Keep reading, there's more.
Alt Tag
Every photo on your roofing website needs to be titled so that the computer, Google, knows what it is. So you don’t want your photo to be titled, “image76329.jpg”. Rather, you need to be titled accurately for what is in the photo and what the keyword is for your page.
If you are optimizing your roof replacement service page, you want photos of roof replacements on that page. You will also want to title those photos something like this, “roof-replacement.jpg”.
Reviews
The first and most important place to get reviews for the sake of SEO is on your Google My Business. If you have more reviews than your competition, think of how that looks to your customers.
After you have enough reviews on Google, then you can start focusing on other platforms like Yelp, Facebook and the BBB.
Keep in mind that if you get reviews on Yelp, they prioritize reviews from users who regularly review companies. So if you see your reviews being hidden on yelp, this is why.
Content
The more content the better, but it needs to be quality content. Content can be anything from the words you use, to videos and photos.
When writing a blog for example, you want to use more than 600 words. You want to have a lot of information on the page because you are helping Google understand and you are informing your customers.
A part of roofer SEO is simply creating quality content that people would want to share. Have you ever read an article that was so good that you posted it on social media? This is one of the goals you want to go for, creating content about roofing that is so good, that people share your website. Or better yet, other prominent websites link to your site.
Use photos and videos in your service pages and on your blogs. The videos don’t have to be extremely high quality, they just need to be real. Your roofing customers want to see the work you’re doing. Google loves to show videos.
Page Loading Speed
Every second counts. If someone lands on your page and it takes too long to load they will leave the page. This is part of the user experience and it dramatically affects your SEO.
Google will also be less inclined to show your site in search results if it takes too long to load. It’s imperative that you address the speed of your site. Run a test on how fast it loads, get a list of what is slowing it down, and start addressing those things.
For example, image files can be large, and as a result, it takes time for the to load on a customer's computer, so it will slow down the site.
There are also different load speeds for desktop and for mobile, and since half or more of your users are on mobile, it's important to optimize for both.
This can feel like a lot of work. But take these items to your roofer SEO specialist and they will be able to address these items. To learn more, see this article on Does Page Speed Affect SEO
Backlinks
Backlinks are when other sites have a link that people can click on and it will take them to your site. It’s like having other websites pointing to your roofing website, voting for its place on the internet.
Your website needs other prominent websites that point to your site. A prominent website would be something like a local news channel or reputable brand. For example, Owens Corning, if they were to have a link to your roofing website, that would be an incredible backlink. Local news media would also be a significant boost because of how big of a brand that would be.
There are also cheap or poor quality backlinks that can do harm to your site. Some websites will find your URL and link to your site for no good reason. This isn’t something to worry too much about unless it gets out of hand. It’s easy to monitor when you have some kind of SEO software that monitors these things.
In order to secure high quality backlinks from reputable websites, it typically takes a lot of effort. When someone tells you they are going to get you backlinks, ask them for examples of what and how they will do this. Sometimes they might be referring to “citations” or business listings rather than actual backlinks.
Internal Linking
Since you have multiple pages on your site talking about your different roofing services, you want to help your users navigate your site and find the helpful information they need. This is done by putting hyperlinks, internal links on your pages.
Let's say you have a page on your site where you are talking about roof replacements and you reference something about your thorough inspection process. You could have a hyperlink on the word “inspection process” that a customer could click on and it would take them to another page on your site where it talks about your inspection process in detail.
Be intentional with these links. Don’t cover your page with them. Use them where it makes sense. You can also link to external sites like GAF, in order to help your user find more information. This can also help Google to understand what your page is about. So internal linking strategy helps both the user and search engines.
Duplicate Content
If you copy content from another page on your site or from another website entirely, search engines will recognize this and it can limit or damage the effectiveness of your website. You need your content to be unique. If Google finds duplicate content between two pages, they will determine which page they think better serves your customers and show that page. The other page won’t get traffic. If it happens a lot, they might get to the point where they flag your whole site.
You can keep track of things like this by using SEO tools and Google Search Console to help track and maintain these things.
To clean up duplicate content, you can change the content on the pages, build them out with more content or do a 301 redirect to have it point to the page you prefer to be the prominent roofing page.
Citations
Whenever you have a business listing website like Yelp or Chamber of Commerce, you want to make sure that your roofing company has its website listed on there as well. There are tons of these types of sites and they help your SEO ranking.
It’s also very important to make sure that all your information is exactly the same so as not to confuse Google. You want your company website URL, phone number, and address to be the exact same across all platforms.
Authority
The last thing I want to mention is the topic of authority. Google and the end users are able to tell the difference between fluff and actual quality information. So you want to make sure that you are writing high quality content that benefits your users.
Figure out what questions people are asking about their roof and have a roofer write the responses. This is also where quality backlinks will help as well. Your site will carry more authority if other reputable companies are pointing to your site.
You want to be seen as the expert on the topic. If someone wants information on a shingle, do you think they will trust a handyman site or a CertainTeed site? They will of course be more inclined to trust the CT site because it is the authority on the topic. You can do this with your roofing website. You can be the authority on the topic for your local community.
How To Improve Roofer SEO
Audit Your Website
Starting off, you’ll want to get an idea of how your site is performing. You’ll want to audit its performance. This can be done by using different tools that Google provides and other third party SEO tools.
Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool will help you check the speed of your site on both mobile and desktop. Your website could be half a second faster and it would make a difference. Studies have shown that a faster site increases conversions. A slow website will hinder the user experience and the likelihood of a search engine showing your site.
-insert photo from test.
When using this tool you will see both a rating for your website and a list of things you can do to improve the speed.
Another great tool is Google Search Console, which will tell you if your impressions are increasing or decreasing. It will tell you what terms people are using to find your site and so much more. It helps you make sure all your pages are being indexed, that is, showing up on google. There is a lot of detail that goes into using this tool and it’s certainly a must have for roofer SEO.
Google analytics will help you see the organic traffic that is coming to your site and what people are doing once they land on your page. For example, if users are landing on your page and then leaving right away, this could be a sign that you don’t have enough information on the page or something needs to be changed to help them convert.
Other SEO tools like SEMRush or Ahrefs will give you even more detail on backlinks that are pointing to your site, whether or not you have duplicate content and so much more.
SEO Strategy
After you gather all this information from the items listed above, you can start compiling a plan for what to address first. Some items are more important than others. For example, improving the speed of your site is more important than creating more blogs. Even though blogging is a good way to rank for more keywords.
Map out a strategy for the most important pages you want to fix first. This should be your primary service pages like your roof replacement and roof repair pages. Address the headings, keywords, content and copy for those pages. Along with all the other tactics listed above.
After addressing your service pages and home page, you’ll want to create a list of topics that to write more content on. Topics that have a high search volume and also are relevant to the needs of your customers.
You can gather ideas for SEO content by looking at what your competition is ranking for and what they aren’t ranking for. Both are opportunities in their own way. If your competition is ranking for it, that means your customers need that information. If they aren’t ranking for it, then it means you have a chance to create some high quality content on that aspect of roofing.
Implement Roofer SEO
Remember there are ways to mess this up. You don’t want to keyword stuff. Don’t over do it on the keywords. Remember that your top priority is talking to your customers, second is talking to Google.
Getting backlinks can be difficult and time consuming but the more connected you are in the community and your city the more chances you have of talking to people and getting your name out there.
Once you start performing the SEO updates, refer back to your Google Search Console to make sure the pages are being indexed and don’t have any problems.
How To Measure Roofer SEO
There are a million different things you can measure when it comes to marketing and roofer SEO. So I want to give you the birds eye view KPIs that I use for watching the progress of SEO
Organic Traffic Growth Year-Over-Year
If your SEO is working, you will see your traffic increase. Some websites will increase faster than others. It depends on a lot of different things. While more traffic is good, make sure it’s legitimate traffic. Watch out for spam bots that are just pushing up your numbers but not actual users.
Specific Keyword Ranking
You can track specific keywords that you want to rank for, whether it’s roof replacement, skylights, or any other roofing term. If words are dropping off, you can dig into why that is and work on that content.
Total Impressions Year-Over-Year
An impression is when your site appears in someone's search results. So it means someone searched a roofing term and Google felt like your site might answer their need. One of the first indicators you’ll see improved will be the total number of impressions. Of course, this doesn’t mean they are all quality impressions, but if you’re putting out more quality content about roofing and you see your keyword ranking going up and impressions increasing as well, this is a good indicator.
If you’re creating content but impressions aren’t increasing, something is wrong, and it alerts you to find out what. It could be that your pages aren’t indexing or something else.
Backlinks
Are you increasing the number of backlinks? Are they quality backlinks? Are you dealing with toxic backlinks? All of these are slower moving parts but are something to keep an eye on.
Click-Through-Ratio
The percentage of impressions that resulted in someone clicking on your site. If your impressions are increasing but your click through ratio is dropping, this could have something to do with your meta description and meta title or your overall ranking needs to increase. People typically don’t go past the second or third page of search results.
Bounce Rate
Good content will keep people on your page as they gather the information they need. At the same time, a good page can give the information so quickly that the user might leave quicker. So what you’re looking for is the extreme, the high bounce rate means you need to look into what could be causing this. Which leads you back to reviewing the content and the meta title.
Form Submission
When SEO is working, you will get more leads, that means more form submissions. Tracking the form submissions will give you the number of organic leads you are getting vs the number of paid leads. You can also use tools like CallRail to track even more accurate data on this. Because someone might come to your site from the roofer SEO but might call rather than filling out a form. So you will want that data too.
Site Health
This is an overall rating that SEO softwares give. They measure all the components that improve the health of a website. Measuring everything from backlinks to duplicate content, H1 headings and so much more.
Page Speed
Last but not least would be the speed of your website. This must improve if you hope to rank on Google for roofing topics. Get your developer involved and they can help you with this because it can become pretty technical.
Keep an eye on all these different KPIs and you will have a good grasp as to how well your roofer SEO is performing.
Local SEO
We all want those local leads so let's dig into what will help bring that in. There are things you can do on your website and with local business listings. While there are many business listings, we’ll address the most powerful one, Google My Business.
Google My Business
You don’t just want to create a GMB, but you also need to be active on it as if it were a separate platform. You can post content on there, such as blogs, photos and more. Treat it like you would a social platform, where you keep it updated with posts. As always, privatize getting reviews on your GMB above other review platforms because it carries the most weight in SEO.
Location Pages
On your roofing website you want to create separate pages for each location you want to rank for. The URL, keywords and content should all focus on your services and the city itself. Your content needs to be unique of course, so any photos or information you have for that specific location will help.
When talking about Roofing SEO, the two things that come to mind is the marketing tactics that you're going to use on the website and the other is your industry knowledge that you bring to the tactics.
I started this company after 15 years of being a roofer. I worked every position in the company, was very successful in the marketing department and decided to start my own company to help roofers get more leads from the website.
Roofer SEO By Marketing Agencies
The two things that I think about when it comes to roofer SEO is the marketing tactics and your industry knowledge. Most agencies are going to specialize in one thing or another. When it comes to the big picture of marketing. With SEO, you will find that some companies are specialized in SEO, and even specific aspects of SEO because they may have found one tactic that works really well for them and so they kind of repeat that over and over.
There are other companies out there who are not doing a good job with their SEO at all and I think we’ve all probably experienced that. I know I have hired an agency to do SEO and it just completely crashed on me. So when you are interviewing an agency, a helpful way to find out how good they are with SEO is to ask them essentially, what their “secret sauce” is.
What's the thing that makes them different? I would ask agencies this back when I was running the roofing company. I would ask them, what exactly makes you different from the other SEO guy. They would tell me how they specialize in backlinks or they specialize in getting more attention from one source versus the other. But when you boil it all down, those are the tactics that you would use in the technical side of your marketing and your SEO.
How A Roofer Adds Value To Roofer SEO
The one thing I really want to point out is the industry knowledge. You as a roofer have knowledge that the marketer doesn’t have. When you bring that to the table you're going to be able to improve your roofer SEO significantly.
For example, because you sell roofs you know what it's like to sit across the table from somebody. You know what the customer is going to ask. You know what the customer is going to ask on the phone when they first find the leak. And you know what they're asking right before they sign a contract, when they are considering you versus another company. All of that information helps you in knowing what to put on your website for the benefit of roofer SEO.
A marketing company gather their information based off of what they see other roofing companies do. They might run other websites through software and learn what people are searching on Google. Which is all great and very important. But they don't always know what it's like to be a sales person in the conversation with the homeowner.
Your Sales Experience Will Help In Roofer SEO
So you want to remember that as the roofer you bring special knowledge that's going to help your SEO. For example, you know the customer early on is going to ask questions like, why is my roof leaking, is it my pipe, why are the pipes on my roof leaking? The homeowner goes into random details that a marketing agency might not be fully aware of.
The next step further on in the sales process, your customer might be asking you what's the nailing strip for, how is that any better than this brand, or this brand vs that brand, what's underlayment, what's peel-and-stick.
These are words that people put in their contract. For example, when you give your customer a contract, they're going to look at those terms and they're probably going to search on Google and figure out what this information is. They're going to get a little bit of an education on things like, this pipe collar vs that pipe collar.
Roofer SEO Content
Since you understand, as a roofer, what your customers are going to be asking, this gives you the ability to write content for those specific questions. That will build out your SEO profile, it will help you build out more content on your website to actually address the needs of your customers.
So that’s the advantage. When you think of roofer SEO, you’ve got the tactics and you also have your industry knowledge. And when you blend the two, you become a powerful force on Google.