You want to rise above your competition? – Don’t make this 2 mistakes that everybody make

I wanted to write this post because it baffles me that nobody is doing this obvious and natural thing on their website.

I analyze roofing contractor’s websites every single day. We can put them in 4 categories:

1. Outdated design non-optimized, non-mobile friendly, no existent SEO websites that are awful and I wouldn’t contact that roofer even if my life depends on it – 25%
2. Outdated design, some on page SEO (like title tags, meta descriptions) – 25%
3. Ok looking websites, with some optimization – 30%
4. Great looking websites, fully optimized: website speed, SEO, mobile friendly etc – 20%

They all have 2 things in common (even the best ones out there).

1. Less than 10% of all websites has Google schema on their website. It still baffles me that there are marketing companies (still) that are managing those websites but they didn’t put Google schema on the website. You need like 5 minutes to set it up and I guarantee you will see a significant boost in rankings.“Learn how you can implement Google schema by yourself”

The second thing is, and the reason I’m writing this post is that nobody (when I say nobody I mean less than 5%), has any content about the city they want to rank in.

If your goal is to rank on the first page in Google for roofing related keywords (and it should be) you probably understand that you need to have a website that talks about roofing.

You probably have pages about roof repair, roof replacement, residential roofing, commercial etc. And that is great. You have to have them (QUICK SEO TIP: make sure you have at least 500 words of content on every page you have on your website).

This is the part that baffles me. Ok, your goal is to rank for the roofing related keywords in your area/city. Something like roofing contractor + city (Let’s make it Dallas).

You want to rank for the Keywords like: Dallas Roofing, Dallas Roofing Contractor, Dallas Roofer, Best Roofer in Dallas etc. Awesome, good for you.

Let me ask you a question? If you want to rank in Dallas (or any city that you are operating in), why don’t you have any content about the city of Dallas?

Isn’t it natural to you and to Google to have content about Dallas if you want to rank in Dallas? If you understand that you need to have content about roofing and if you want to rank for roofing related keywords, why don’t you have any city related content?

Please don’t be offended by this rant, you as a business owner don’t have to know this kind of stuff. This is for all of you that want to do DIY SEO and for marketing companies that charge top dollar for their services and they don’t understand (or don’t care) that you need that type of content.

You probably know that backlinks are the most important factor when it comes to ranking well in Google. Everybody talks about how you need high-quality backlinks and a lot of then. That is true but that is only one part of the bigger picture.

Picture it like this: your website is like a car. If it’s a shitty car (without tires) you can put the fastest engine in the world but it won’t go as fast as it should. But if you have a nice, optimized, well structured car even if you don’t have the best engine in the world (engine represent the quality of you backlinks) you can still go pretty fast e.g. rank well.

How you can fix this.

If you are managing your own marketing campaigns

Write 5 posts about your area. They need to be well written and have at least 500 words of content (every post). You can write about whatever you want as long as it is about your city.

Example:

If you are a roofer from Dallas. Create 5 pages with 500 words about Dallas: best places to eat, what to see in Dallas, famous people born in Dallas etc.

One more thing. Don’t forget to put a link on those pages back to your homepage (this crucial). Just link it back to your homepage (or page that you want to rank in).

If you have multiple cities. Write 5 posts about the each city and post them on your website. I promise you will see instant results.

If you are paying somebody and you are not happy with results

Ask them if they did this for your city. If they didn’t or they say that it is not necessary, they are not up to date with how to market properly in 2018 and you need to find somebody else. You need better marketing for roofing companies.

Is it natural to you that if you want to rank for roofing Keywords you need roofing related content and if you want to rank in a specific area you need content about that area?

Is it natural to you that if you want to rank for roofing Keywords, you need roofing related content and if you want to rank in a specific area you need content about that area?

Agree? Disagree? Thoughts? Let me know in the comments.

Matt Jacob has been in the marketing business since 2008, working exclusively with roofers for more than 5 years now. He has come to know all the tricks of trade inside-out and he is committed to helping roofers by sharing some of the most important ones. Find out where your best opportunities lie, as well as which challenges lurk out there for roofers – all in his detailed blogs.