2021 Update: Rigthous Reviews is now DataPins.

Finding a capable (and convenient) reviews platform can be complex. However, roofing contractors and other industry professionals live or die by the quality of their reputation management. In today’s podcast, Nolen and Jason talk about collecting reviews, jobsite check-ins, and geotagging. You’ll also hear them brag about our own fantastic reviews software, Righteous Reviews.

If you’ve struggled with getting your company name on the online map, be sure to listen in!

Key Facts to Learn:

• How you use your reviews is just as important as how/where you collect them.

Righteous Reviews (RR) is a web-based application developed by the skilled development team at Roofing Webmasters. Our team incorporates this feature into our websites (including our internal sites) for tremendous SEO benefits. However, because the application requires specialized coding, we only provide it as part of our general SEO for Roofers program.

Collecting reviews from clients is challenging work, especially when a roofing contractor gathers reviews through multiple citation sources, on their website, and their social media platforms. Righteous Reviews greatly simplifies the reputation management process, allowing roofers to consolidate their reviews through one refreshingly easy-to-use platform.

The website application offers two key features:

• Jobsite Check-ins

While it might not be evident at first, these capabilities provide tremendous SEO enhancements for our roofing clients. Here’s why:

In the eyes of Google, what separates your business from the many competitors in your service area? Google has to sort through countless service company websites, each with a score of professional services and dozens of city pages. Apart from these pages, the search engine doesn’t have any actual proof that a business operates in the areas they claim to.

That’s where geotagged check-ins come in handy! With Righteous Reviews, roofing contractors can check-in to a jobsite, fill in the related service and location data, include the client’s phone number and email address, take a project photo, then post it to your related service and city pages. You can complete everything in under 60 seconds per check-in.

What’s the point of this activity?

• It shows Google your business is active.

With teams checking in at multiple job sites each day, you’ll quickly create a large map of your team’s job history that Google can reference as proof of activity. Every pin on the map offers the data the search engine craves, and your future clients will be impressed by the long history of activity in their local community. All it takes is a quick 60-second check-in at each jobsite.

Now any consumer wondering if you perform a particular roofing service can see examples of your performing that exact installation, repair, etc., in their community. That’s enough evidence to sway many undecided homeowners and businesses. But, of course, Righteous Reviews has other invaluable perks for your roofer SEO.

With the Righteous Reviews program, our team provides a simple request-for-review template. Then, whenever your roofing teams finish a job, their jobsite check-in immediately sends an invitation via text or email with links to your various review sources. Our research over the years shows that Google prefers to see company reviews coming from multiple resources. So we suggest links to your Facebook Business profile, your Google My Business account, your BBB listing, and wherever you want reviews.

Again, these Righteous Reviews add geotags to any reviews submitted through this invite. The review gets uploaded to the respective service page and city page, and Google notices the extra data when it re-examines your website. No other reviews platform (that we know of) provides this automatic upload capability. Additionally, every review submitted to your company comes with our special coding that makes them work even harder for your roofer SEO.

Imagine getting the latest reviews from Facebook, Google, and Yelp automatically uploaded to your website. A simple request-for-review process generates when your teams check into each jobsite. As long as your contractors continue to perform these 60-second check-ins, you should see tremendous improvements in your website SEO.

Like all of our solutions, Righteous Reviews results from lengthy research, skilled development, and careful integration. But, unlike other review software out on the market, it isn’t a simple widget you slap onto a website. That’s why we only include RR with our custom-built websites. As a result, you’ll notice the difference in website search performance and platform ease-of-use.

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Why do my competitors rank in Google Maps listings but not my business? It can be an extremely frustrating situation to find yourself in, especially when your business has more reviews, higher ratings, and more extended history. In addition, with Google’s history of frequent algorithm changes, it can be challenging to put the finger on exactly what’s going wrong with your roofing SEO.

In our podcast, Jason and Nolen explore what it takes to show up in mapping and earn more leads as a roofing contractor. So if you’ve been coveting a featured listing for some time, be sure to listen in.

Look for These Key Points

• Should businesses focus exclusively on gaining Google Reviews?

By now, almost any roofing contractor can tell you that ranking #1 on Google means big business for your company. The top ranks of search engine results pages (SERPs) continue to shift with each passing year. The ultimate win for roofing SEO these days is scoring a spot in local packs, a feature of Google Maps listings.

Google Maps, of course, is a satellite and database-powered tool that connects consumers with local services. It features the standard pins on the map and nearby cross streets. In addition, maps listings now include crucial contact and reputation data on each business, including addresses, service type, operating hours, and reviews. That last element is a point of contention in the roofing contractor community. We’ll talk about that in a little bit.

On the other hand, local packs are a unique SERP feature that pulls three of the most relevant entries from Google Maps listings. As their popularity and influence increase, local packs grow more and more competitive each year. As a result, they earn a large percentage of clicks, pulling traffic away from other lower front-page listings. As a result, local packs typically claim second or third place in the front page order, just below Google Guaranteed entries and paid ads.

Beyond the traditional keyword optimization, Google looks for three essential qualities in a website. These include:

• The expertise of the content creators

These E-A-T factors can be traced back to Google’s 2015 Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines and heavily impact the search engine’s ranking of your website (including Maps listings). However, when it comes to proving trustworthiness, few elements influence Google’s (and people’s) judgment more than User Reviews. 

In the past, Google emphasized the collection of reviews on its platform. The relationship between reviews and list ranking seemed clear: get more five-star reviews and get higher rankings. However, Google now recommends earning reviews across a broader spectrum of sources. Some of these may be from social media platforms (such as Facebook and Instagram). Others come from citation companies, including Yelp and Angie’s List.

Your roofing team probably works hard as it is earning new reviews from clients. Now there’s the thought of collecting them across different platforms. The most important players in this new plan are the people interacting directly with the clients. Simply asking for reviews and offering a reference card will usually do the job. Next, make sure your social media platforms have the reviews call to action optimized and ready to take on the additional traffic.

Google also rewards businesses that display reviews within their website. The widget you incorporate could have a significant effect on Google’s perception of your business. One of the review tools that we love at the Roofing Webmasters is DataPins. Our clients can pull reviews from various platforms with this widget and allow customers to leave reviews directly on the website for their chosen medium (Facebook, Google, or Yelp, for example).

Roofing contractors can also use the widget to send invitations to review. Imagine quickly requesting reviews via text messages that include a direct link to your website! Finally, roofing professionals can check into job sites and that geo-location data gets embedded in your website. Essentially, this provides proof to Google that your company performs services in those locations. You can listen to Jason’s take on this capability around 8:10 in the video.

We stress the importance of other roofing SEO factors in your company’s Google Maps listings. Reviews alone will not provide the rankings you desire. Google’s examination of your company website also impacts your local SEO rankings. If a business skimps out on professional design, keyword optimization, and other essential activities, they will almost certainly not appear in local packs. With that being said, reviews are crucial to ranking well.

Are you tired of getting left out of top ranks or even the front page altogether? Our team at the Roofing Webmasters would love to help! We support numerous contractors with website design, ad campaign management, and SEO for roofers (among many other services). As a result, our clients enjoy premium rankings, higher site traffic, deeper user engagement, and superb lead generation.

The post How To Show Up On Mapping (Podcast) appeared first on Roofing Webmasters.

Having passed the infamous 20th of March, the spring season is here, and it is prime time for roofing companies to capture business leads. Punxsutawney Phil may not have been spot on with his early spring prediction, but the weather is starting to progress closer to warmth across the nation. With cold spells still interjecting themselves, this combination of hot and cold has a chance to create severe hail storms, something we’ll touch on more later. But spring, in general, is always going to present a major opportunity to roofing contractors. But how does one take advantage of the most suitable season to generate roofing leads and grow your business?

The truth is that winning the race for spring roofing leads should start before the spring season. The companies that have already created a custom website optimized it for search and placed themselves on Google My Business will have a significant head start on those late to the party. Google and Facebook reviews of these businesses are also an essential factor determining who scoops up most of the leads this spring. The gap may already be large.

Not everyone had the foresight to optimize their website before spring, especially those new to the roofing industry or a specific location. Having an aged domain name will always be ideal for SEO purposes, and optimization takes time in general. Most new roofing campaigns are looking at a 6-month minimum for organic ranking. One way to close the gap in the meantime is to invest in PPC management through Google Ads. Buying clicks can get leads quickly.

If PPC is out of your price range, the time to start gearing up for next spring (2020) is right now. While the idea of waiting this long may seem discouraging, it will pay off next year. Remember, while you might lose the SEO race this year, you can get a head start on the race next year. The reality is that the roofing business is more like an online marathon. If you consistently improve, you will end up winning in the end. So even if PPC is an option, you should still invest in SEO for next year right now.

There are some roofers in the industry known as storm chasers. But the truth of the matter is that companies who are already optimized for hail storm roof damage in their service area are going to have a leg up on fly-by-nighters. The top roofing websites have an individual webpage for storm roof damage and their homepage and pages for other services. Over time, this page optimizes for the target keywords that heal inflicted homeowners’ search on Google. 

Your business must have a presence on Google My Business and supporting reviews and a verified address to generate local leads. The goal for roofers is to show up on the Local Map Pack, a group of Maps listings selected by Google based on relevance, radius, and reviews. Roofers should try to generate as many reviews as possible and do so consistently. Google checks not only quantity but also recency. Google Ads can also appear on the Map Pack if adequately connected to your GMB account.

Are you tired of losing out on spring roofing leads every year? Roofing SEO Webmasters’ complete digital marketing package can solve your problems once and for all. As a digital marketing agency that provides custom website design, content marketing, Google Maps optimization, PPC, and SEO, there’s no aspect of the race that we can’t enhance. The best leads come from an investment in your own brand, which we empower our roofing clients. We build everything from the ground up with custom codebase, schema markup, and logo design.

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