Avoid these SEO mistakes that could hold you back.Over the years we have seen many SEO mistakes made by our clients before they come to us. In many cases, we have to spend time un-doing the previous efforts made by either someone within the company or other SEO companies that have tried to optimize the site before us. Here are the 10 most common mistakes we have seen roofing companies make with their SEO:
1. Copied content
Content can be the hardest part in creating a company website. It’s hard to have someone else write content about your brand and but you’re also busy running your business so the idea of sitting down and writing pages and pages of content sounds daunting. We get it.
Content specifically about your company should be handled in-house or by someone that is very familiar with your brand. Anything else you can outsource to a writer or writing service but make sure they are not copying it from other sites. Copied content from other websites is no way to get to the top of Google. If you can’t pass a test using copyscape.com you need to rewrite your content.
2. Keyword stuffing
Keyword stuffing your content is an old SEO tactic that doesn’t work anymore. So why are people still doing it?
Google bots have actually reached an intelligence level where they understand what you’re content is about so you don’t have to write “Orlando Roofing Company” as many times as you can on the page to try to rank for that phrase. You can actually get punished for that kind of over-optimization. Your content should be natural and informative. The more words you have the better, but don’t just stuff it full of your keywords or write just for the sake of word count.
3. Not optimizing for your local market
For the majority of roofing companies, your goal is to target new residential or commercial clients in your city. Optimizing your site to rank for city specific search is important in reaching that market.
Sure, the generalized keywords “roofing company”, “roofing”, “roofers”, “roof repair”, etc receive more search but that’s because you’re looking at general, national search volumes. The more specific and location based searches are more likely to be performed by someone looking for a roofer in their area, signifying buyer intent. You’re better off capturing that audience than the people performing general searches, probably doing research, not looking to make a purchase.
4. Not optimizing titles and meta descriptions for your pages
How is Google going to understand what you’re site is about if do not make it clear to them? Your relevancy to a search has a lot to do with how you rank for that search. Titles and meta descriptions of each page on your site help relay a message to the Google search algorithm that you have relevant information to provide relating to the search performed. Don’t leave these things unmanaged on your site and make sure there is a unique title and meta description for each page.
5. Using the same anchor text for every link
If you or a SEO company is building links to your website (which is still a very important ranking factor) you should be paying attention to the anchor text of these links and making sure it is not the same for every link.
Your link anchor text should be a mixture of brand, misc and keywords but very light on the keyword text. Link building is supposed to look natural, even if you are paying for it. If you’re anchor text is mostly your main keyword focus, you’re going to stick out like a sore thumb to Google and you could face a penalty for spammy link building practices.
6. Buying links in bulk
We’ve also seen plenty of cases where a business owner knows they have build links to their site in order to be competitive and they go about it the wrong way. There are two general problems we usually face with these cases: the company was too aggressive with their link building, or they tried to be cheap about it and built too many bad links.
In the case of the business being too aggressive, this usually happens when a new site with a new domain name is started and they want to be number one ASAP. If you’ve read anything about SEO and organic rankings, you should know that it is going to take some time. It’s like a relationship. You can’t just walk up to Google and expect love at first site. You need to take your link building slowly, building up the brand with quality links, not quantity.
The types of links you are building are also important. If you order 50 blog comments from Fiverr for $6, do you really think that’s going to shoot you to the top? If that were the case, don’t you think everyone would do that? Those comments are most likely going to be taken down off of the sites that they were submitted to and those certainly don’t look natural.
7. Hiring a SEO company because they’re cheap
Our type of service gets a bad reputation because of the vast differences in what each SEO company actually offers and what they charge for it. With that being said, you definitely get what you pay for. If you hire anyone for any less than $700 per month I would seriously question what you’re getting out of that service.
If you understand what goes into a SEO campaign you shouldn’t think that it’s going to be cheap. There are companies that will charge a lot less, but you’re going to get a combination of bad quality work and a lot less of it. If you’re looking to compete in your market, you’re going to have to be willing to invest in a SEO company that is actually going to help and cultivate a return on your investment. Don’t believe us? Just search “What should SEO cost” using Google and you’ll see many articles that will back up our argument.
8. Not hiring a professional to build your website
A professionally built, technically sound website is the first step in the right direction for your SEO campaign. Most companies, including us in most cases, will not even take on a SEO project if the website is built on some kind of website builder platform or something we know Google will not favor. There are many things that need to be altered on a website in order to rank so if those things can’t be done with the platform your site is running on, we suggest a rebuild or looking elsewhere for SEO services.
9. Ignoring site speed
The speed that your website loads plays a pretty significant role as a ranking factor. You can use tools like GT Metrix and Pingdom to assess your site speed and see what needs to be fixed to improve it. You can bring that list to your website developer or if you hire us for SEO, we’ll take care of it.
10. Not having a mobile-friendly website
Having a mobile-friendly website is a must. If you still have a separate mobile site or haven’t rebuilt with a responsive layout it’s time to invest in a new website. You will not reach your full potential online with a site that does not pass the Google mobile-friendly website test because you will most likely not rank very high because Google assumes the user experience is going to be poor when visiting on a mobile device.These common mistakes can be avoided by hiring the right person or company to handle your SEO campaign. Make sure you look in to who you’re hiring before you make a decision. Not all SEOs offer the same level of service or expertise. All of these mistakes can be avoided but remember to avoid shortcuts, cheap services and be patient.