Whether you perform residential or commercial landscaping work (or both), you should optimize your business’s website for higher search rankings.
As explained in this Chitka study, The higher your site ranks for its target keywords, the more traffic it receives. And with this traffic, you’ll have an easier time attracting new customers and growing your landscaping business.
But how exactly do you optimize your landscaping website for higher search rankings?
Define Your Target Keywords
The first step in search engine optimization (SEO) for a professional landscaping website is defining your target keywords. These are the keywords for which you are trying to rank.
Common examples of target SEO keywords for landscaping companies include “landscape design,” “lawn maintenance,” “landscape installation,” “landscape irrigation,” “retaining wall installation,” “weed control services,” “grass seeding services,” etc. If you need help choosing keywords, run some basic terms through Google’s AdWords Keyword Planner tool for ideas.
Plan Your Content
One of the biggest mistakes that small business owners make on their website is failure to create fresh content. When you’re busy running a landscaping business, you may overlook the importance of creating new content for your website. But without content for visitors to digest, your website won’t appear in the search results.
So, using your target keywords as reference, create content that’s relevant to your audience. You can publish articles about different types of retaining walls, for instance, or how to manage invasive garden weeds. Search engines will crawl this content, analyzing the words and context to determine where your site should rank.
Backlinks
Ever since the early days of Google, the search engine giant has used backlinks in its ranking algorithm. If you have several backlinks from authoritative sources related to landscaping, Google and other search engines will view your site as being popular, increasing its SEO value and subsequent rankings.
With that said, you shouldn’t buy backlinks — that’s against Google’s terms and could result in a rankings penalize. Instead, encourage other sites to link back to your website by publishing high-quality content and sharing it with your followers on social media.
Display NAP
Be sure to include your landscaping business’s name, address on phone number (NAP) on your website. According to Moz, this is the second most influential local ranking signal, only behind links. Like content, search engines will also crawl your business’s NAP, helping you rank higher for local searches.
Photos, Photos, Photos!
Images are a fundamental component of a landscaping website. According to some reports, web-based articles with images receive 94% more pageviews. If your website doesn’t feature images, you’ll struggle to generate traffic and climb the search rankings. And because landscaping work is highly visual, prospective customers will look at a company’s portfolio to decide whether or not to business with them.
Follow these optimization tips when using photos on your website:
- Using a tool like Optimazilla, “shrink” the file size of your images before uploading them to your website (large files consume more bandwidth to load, which can slow down your site and potentially lower your site’s search rankings).
- Give each image a short, unique description in the alt text attribute.
- Choose the right file format. JPEGs are ideal for photographs of landscaping work because they support a variety of colors. PNGs, on the other hand, are better for screenshots and buttons because of their small size.
Include Your Website URL on Business Cards
Who says business cards are a thing of the past? For local businesses such as landscaping, they are an effective way to attract new customers and retain existing customers. After performing landscaping services for a new customer, give him or her your business card. The next time they need landscaping services, the customer may refer to your business card to find your contact information. According to a study conducted by DesignCrowd, more than 84% of businesses still use business cards, and 65% of contacts save the details of those cards.
In addition to the benefits listed above, business cards can help funnel customers to your landscaping website. By listing your website URL on your business cards, you’ll reap the benefits of more local web traffic. This is important because these are typically “local” users in your surrounding area. Search engines notice the location from which a user accesses a website, using this information in their ranking algorithm. If your landscaping company operates in Minneapolis and you hand out business cards to surrounding residents, search engines like Google will see a spike in local traffic, making it easier to rank for landscaping-related searches performed by users in Minneapolis.
Google My Business
You can increase you landscaping company’s visibility in the search engines by creating a Google My Business (GMB) listing. These listings consist of local businesses and are displayed in Google Search, Maps and other Google properties. When you search for a local business or service like “car wash,” Google displays thee GMB listings at the very top, along with a link to other local car washes.
If you want your landscaping company to appear here, you’ll need to create a GMB listing and complete your profile (add hours of operation, services, prices, address, phone number, etc.). You can also include a link to your landscaping website within your GMB listing, helping your site rank for local searches.
These are just a few SEO tips for landscaping companies. If you’re ready to take your landscaping company’s online presence to the next level, contact us today. Mankato Web Design is the industry’s premier provider of SEO and digital marketing services.
