Roofing SEO Podcast

Nolen, the founder of Roofing Webmasters, would invest in marketing and keep it going. As someone who once owned a home service business, he knows how valuable marketing is for lead generation. Nolen grounds himself with the concept of marketing. Once marketing is made a priority, everything else will follow suit. The most substantial advice from Nolen would be to stay true to your marketing. Here’s how you can accomplish this as a roofer:

A roofing company’s foundation should be in online marketing. Organic search is still the best long-term digital asset. If you can get your company ranking on Google Maps and traditional results, you can dominate your local market for quite a while. The best way to accomplish this is to invest in a roofing website, not just any old site. It should be designed with marketing and promotion in mind. Even with the emergence of new digital brand platforms like Google My Business and Facebook, linking each back to the main website is key to online branding and high-ranking positions on Google. 

A custom website with a marketing foundation is the best kind of roofing website. Although new tools exist to build your website without design experience, ranking said sites on page one are not accessible, and controlling their HTML & CSS code is even more challenging. With a custom website, you will have control over what goes on behind the scenes of your site. Website makers can be helpful, but they mainly deal with front-end edits. In other words, you are placing widgets on your pages and adding elements in that manner. It might look quite good from the user’s perspective, but the coding can be bogged down and even slow down page speeds. 

When roofers think of organic search, they typically think of traditional results. But one of the most critical organic placements occurs on the Local Map 3 Pack. The Local Map 3 Pack is the top 3 Maps rankings in a specific region. It is shown based on a user’s search term as well as their current location. The goal for every contractor should be to get into the top 3 for keywords in their service area. Because most consumers find contractors through mobile search, Maps placement is more critical than it’s ever been. Remember too that Maps placements show your aggregate star rating, so you should compile reviews when possible. You should also claim & optimize your My Business profile and align it with your website.

Aside from Maps, you also want to rank on traditional organic results. The best way to accomplish this is through SEO, otherwise known as search engine optimization. SEO helps not only with conventional results but with Maps placement too. The foundation of your organic reach is SEO itself. SEO is the refinement of your web presence to best suit Google’s standards and pursue the most excellent chance of ranking high.

SEO includes everything from keyword placement, content quality, NAP consistency, inbound linking, and much more. And optimization is not a singular task but rather an ongoing process that takes consistency and attention to detail. Anybody suggesting SEO is a one-time deal is mistaking or disreputable.

As someone who has worked with hundreds of roofers to improve their SEO, several mistakes have shown to be apparent and consistent. When contractors come to us, they’ve usually had missteps in past marketing endeavors. For example, they may have placed all their resources in one channel, which is not a good marketing ideal. 

Instead, diversity should be stressed when allocating resources, financial and otherwise, towards marketing. Going for content-only leads-only, web-design-only, etc., are alarming signs of poor resource management. Another critical mistake that companies make, either before or after investing in marketing, is hiring an in-house marketer to handle everything by themselves.

We see this all the time; a hotshot in-house marketer is hired, and the company tanks. No single person can be an expert at every aspect of marketing. Roofing Webmasters employs expert web admins who specialize in SEO, web design, PPC, and local optimization, to name a few. But each member has a specialty skill, rather than having one person who thinks they know all of it. Worse yet, in-house marketers remove checks and balances from the process.

A lack of marketing diversity can be a significant problem. Sometimes roofers will hire a service that offers content only or web design only. First, these tasks as standalone services don’t do enough to improve rankings. For example, a web designer could make a visually appealing website, but if they know nothing about optimizing it, it will serve no business purpose. 

The same is true of hiring writers for content only. If they don’t understand SEO, they won’t know that specific blog post elements are necessary to rank well. Worse yet, writing for a poorly designed site with no technical optimization will make the point moot. Everything must work together for optimal ranking.

Probably the most common marketing problem for contractors is resource management or lack thereof. There’s an idea that cutting costs is the most critical aspect of a business, especially during down seasons. But when it comes to marketing, cheaper isn’t better. There has to be some commitment to marketing from a financial perspective to expect any return. 

Ignoring marketing altogether is the fastest way to destroy your business or halt it from ever getting established in the first place. Affordability should remain a vital consideration, but relative to its potential ROI. For example, you should look for a full-service marketing agency that is also affordable. Avoid going for the cheapest option in the process of sacrificing services. Contractors should always try to keep their roofing company in perspective.

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When success comes in business, it’s natural to become overconfident. Roofers who understand the dangers of overconfidence are less likely to make critical mistakes that will reverse the progress of their business. Roofing Webmasters is a digital marketing agency for roofers, and we’ve helped hundreds of roofing contractors achieve business success. While most can capitalize off of this progress and continue its upwards trajectory, there are occasions where contractors get too big for their britches. They overestimate their financial security after a few big roofing jobs and start making poor financial decisions. We’ve even heard of roofers taking entire years off because of financial security. Once the cushion is gone, it’s challenging to re-establish yourself in the marketplace.

Roofers are far from the only business owners to engage in this kind of behavior. Every successful business has beneficiaries, but maintaining success can be just as difficult as achieving it in the first place. There are common threads between business owners who become reckless in their decision-making. And no, that doesn’t mean putting your life at risk (although we could tell you some stories about that too), but it means putting your business at risk. Marketing, in particular, is not something to suspend after starting a roofing business. It’s an ongoing process and must be executed year-round. That goes for up seasons and the highly discouraging down seasons for roofers. Even those who make great money (many are our clients) must continue to market their business to maintain that level of success. Check out these pitfalls of overconfidence:

Commercial roofers will get big-paying jobs and feel like a million bucks, and there’s nothing wrong with celebrating your successes. We can help you get into commercial roofing if you’re currently in residential exclusively. But you must maintain a realistic perspective to ensure that success does not reverse course quickly. There have been confirmed cases of commercial roofers taking entire years off, thinking their business will be there for them when they get back. Not so fast. As you were taking an extended vacation and enjoying the fruits of your labor, another company in your service area was gaining ground and closing the gap on an industry you once dominated within your zip code. Taking a year off is a terrible idea for roofers who hope to continue their business in the future. 

The first thing most newly rich roofers go for is a boat. They want to see a tangible representation of their success, and what better way to see it than on the water? Boats are a great way to celebrate your success. But don’t buy a yacht. Buy something within your price range, and that fits into the trajectory of your business growth. Again, you don’t want to be taking away from your roofing company as its ascending. You can halt its growth and distract you from the end goal of your business, which is to live a fabulous lifestyle over time, not just in spurts.

The other primary item roofing contractors go for is an expensive pickup truck. They want the biggest and fastest, and who can blame them? If you can afford it, go for it. But like with the boat example, don’t become consumed by your latest job. As a commercial roofer, you might have just finished a massive paying job because of great marketing and a lot of hard work. Just be mindful that a single job is not a signal for the new normal of your business and that to sustain success, you must keep after it over the long term.

There’s a misnomer among some businesses, including roofing companies, that once you establish your company as a mainstay in its market, you can tamper down the processes that got you there. Cliche sayings talk about remembering where you came from, but it holds in the world of digital marketing. If you can remember a time when you had very few leads, no website, no social media, no phone calls, then you should make sure you are never in that position again. A suspension of your marketing endeavors will not allow you to Cadillac your way through roofing season. Instead, the status you worked for will begin to deteriorate and even reverse if you forgo marketing altogether.

One high-paying job is not enough to keep you in that payment bracket for good. Sometimes commercial roofers will work on massive properties and decide that they will only work for that kind of money from now on. Limiting yourself is a dangerous way to do business. While big jobs come around their fair share of the time, resistance to more typical jobs can make the bigger ones less likely and less frequent. There is a tendency not to accept anything less than a job that was so valuable to you as a roofer, but that’s not the way the commercial roofing industry works. It’s not always ego that drives this attitude, but sometimes it is. The bottom line is this; to sustain success over time, you can’t become overconfident and stop accepting roofing jobs that don’t match your highest profit tier.

If some of these conflicts seem like good problems to have as a roofer, don’t hesitate to get in contact with Roofing Webmasters. As you’ve read and heard, the contractors making these decisions are making them based on success. Suppose you cannot even think about boats or trucks right now because of low call volume, lack of roofing leads, etc. We can turn that around for you. We are a top roofing authority in the SEO world and create custom websites for contractors and companies throughout the United States. The profits achieved from our services are meant to be enjoyed, but it’s also important to keep perspective on your roofing business so that you can continue to maintain that level of success. 

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Roofers can benefit from ranking on Google Maps, especially in the Local 3 Pack, which is the top 3 Maps results and are displayed prominently on a Google SERP. Members of Roofing Webmasters recently attended an SEO conference where someone in the audience asked why their clients’ Maps ranking was low despite having the highest quantity of reviews in their market and industry. The conference speaker was unable to explain, so today, we will. Reviews are only one part of Google’s Maps grading system. Although there is no official list, this is what Roofing Webmasters considers as the factors based on our years of marketing:

• Tenure

Maps rankings are relative to market and industry. Roofing contractors understand their sector quite well, but less are aware of how competitive their market is online. For cities with fewer than 50,000 people, ranking on Maps is far easier than cities with higher populations. The double-edged sword is that placement on the Local 3 Pack is far less valuable for low populated areas. Regardless of your particular scenario, these components will factor into your ultimate placement. Roofing Webmasters can help influence some of the factors to boost your Google Maps ranking and hopefully solidify your business on the Local 3 Pack for relevant Keywords.

If you read up on local SEO for roofers, you know that the three local ranking factors are proximity, prominence, and relevance. However, while Google publishes these factors themself, it is essential to break down the more specific components that make up these factors. So let’s take a look at six local mapping factors for roofing businesses in 2021.

The longer you’ve had your Google My Business profile up, the more likely you are to rank on Google Maps. For brand new listings, implementing best practice strategies can get you listed on Maps in 12 months or less. One year might seem like a long time to rank, but keep in mind that many roofing markets are highly competitive. For less populated cities, you might rank in closer to 6 months. Another variable is your target keyword. Higher volume keywords work similarly on Maps to how they work on organic. The highest volume keywords are the most competitive and require the most work to achieve rankings. Some terms have so little volume that no Local 3 Pack will even exist for the corresponding query.

The most apparent factor is reviews, which entails both the quantity and the quality of the feedback. At the conference mentioned above, the person who posed the question referred to a client with a high amount of reviews and high quality. While that particular company could not show up on Maps, they did achieve one of the most important steps: review generation. The reason they didn’t rank is rooted in the other factors on this list. Reviews alone are not enough to establish a secure ranking in the Local 3 Pack. Still, it would help if you always were trying to get as many reviews as possible in an ethical manner and respond to customers who leave testimonials.

Sites with low Domain Authority struggle to rank on Maps listings the same way they do with organic. If your website has zero inbound links pointing to it, there’s a minimal incentive for Google to trust it at all. They are taking a considerable risk in funneling consumers to a virtually unknown company and have no votes of confidence from other sites on the web (inbound links). A lack of backlinks doesn’t mean you should try to get any old links since many are pure spam and can negatively impact rankings. The best way to build connections is content creation, distribution, and syndication. Of course, the higher quality content is more likely to be linked to, and the trust and authority of your domain should increase accordingly.

Generating reviews is not easy. So when a marketer tells you something simple like; you need more reviews, it doesn’t help much. To get more reviews, you need to implement a reviews program and, ideally, a website widget. Both work collaboratively when adequately integrated. Roofing Webmasters recommends DataPins, which helps with both reputation management and Local SEO. The program has steps that every employee should follow when dealing with clients:

1. 1) You ask the satisfied customer for a review in person.

If they don’t budge after the reminders, leave them alone, as continuing to bother them might prompt them to publish lousy feedback. You should also avoid requesting reviews from customers who complained about your work. As a local contractor, you know when a customer is pleased or unpleased, and you should act accordingly.

Every part of your digital marketing campaign should be ongoing, from blog posts on your website to Google posts on your Google My Business page. The latter can make your Maps listing more relevant and encourage Google to prioritize it. Regular work should expand beyond your Google profile alone, however. You also want to continue to work on your main website, blog posts, social media channels, and every other avenue for lead generation. Unfortunately, Google tends to grade roofing companies as a complete picture rather than based on individual or isolated snippets of branding. That’s why when skeptics suggest that SEO for roofing companies doesn’t work, they are misleading listeners. Maps, like SEO, are something that requires consistency and commitment.

A major misnomer about Maps rankings is that Google understands the services you offer based on relevance to your industry. So, for example, you might assume as a roofer that residential roof repair is implied as one of your services. But if you don’t have a page specifically for residential roof repair on your website, Google will opt to prioritize a website that does have that page published. It’s not that Google’s algorithm is unintelligent; it’s just that there’s more reason to trust websites that have service pages for each of these specific categories. The solution to this whole “problem” is simple, and it is to make new pages for every type you wish to rank for on both Maps and organic.

Sometimes Google’s algorithm can seem like a Rubix cube and frustrate business owners (including roofers) across the country. Even when it looks like everything is being done right (like you have 100 five-star reviews), you still might lack the actual local presence you seek. With Roofing Webmasters‘ list of ranking factors, you can take your local roofing company to the next level in 2021. We provide local mapping services, including everything mentioned in this blog post and on the embedded podcast. We’ve been working with roofing clients for over a decade and have over 200 clients. We understand what it takes to maximize local reach.

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Video marketing for roofers is the act of using video content to market or promote your roofing company’s service, brand, or product. In 2021, YouTube is the most prominent video marketing platform though roofers can also self-host videos on their website and distribute them to various other channels.

Recording a video with your smartphone or camera device is easier than ever before in 2021. Most contractors have video cameras on their phones, allowing them to produce videos of their team on the job and in the office. But once you record videos on your device, where can you publish them for promotional purposes?

The largest video platform in the world is YouTube. It also happens to be owned by Google and, therefore, tied directly into their search results. When someone types in a phrase like how to get into commercial roofing, you’ll notice that our video of the same name is displayed on page one of organic search results:

You can do the same for your website if you’re willing to create video content.

Another great platform for video is Facebook. Like YouTube, Facebook has a native video upload, so that you can upload the file directly to the Facebook servers and publish it on your business page. It’s good to diversify your video files, but it’s also good to share them. In other words, if you already have the video uploaded on YouTube, sharing it on Facebook could help it get more views. You might select a different video as a Facebook exclusive.

You can cut your video into 15-second clips and upload them on Instagram. 15 seconds is the maximum length, so they can also be shorter if necessary. While you shouldn’t expect a video about roofing services to go viral on a platform populated primarily by sensationalists, it does help your social media signals. It can have an overall positive influence on your site.

Roofing companies can publish self-hosted videos directly on their website. WordPress makes this easy with their media upload feature and allows web admins to embed the video files wherever appropriate throughout the site. Be careful about overloading your website with video files, however, since it can potentially slow down your website’s loading time and negatively influence user experience. 

For companies, it helps to know precisely how video marketing occurs from start to finish. While some roofers naturally understand modern technology, others need help with the step-by-step process. Roofing Webmasters can help you outline the entire video marketing sequence.

For roofers with no videos, we have a production set inside of our offices. We invite you to come down and cut a video, and maybe even a podcast, and allow us to distribute them through all the appropriate channels. Distribution helps build more media signals for your roofing company and increase your Google brand’s visibility, which should help boost search rankings.

If you have existing videos, including drone shots, we will chop up your video and distribute it through multiple channels, including YouTube and other social media. We will then integrate it onto your website. We have a video specialist in-house who will ensure that your video is edited professionally and appeal to customers who visit your social media and website.

The trick to video marketing is integrating it into your SEO strategy. We do this by taking your YouTube video and embedding it on a relevant page or blog post on your website. We then write original content that describes the video. Note, this is NOT a transcription, but rather a summary of the video. Summaries make for an excellent content enhancer that should appeal to Google and its users.

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