Lawn care SEO is relatively simple in comparison to SEO for other types of websites. In this short and to the point blog post by iGoPro Lawn Supply we will tell you everything you need to know about lawn care SEO.
We've put well over 100 lawn care websites on the 1st page of Google in their respective geographic areas by following the steps below.
Lawn Care SEO Starts With Your Website and Google My Business
Solely having a website is simply not enough in 2021 and beyond as lawn care SEO has become much more competitive in recent years. The reason we consider lawn care SEO 'easy' is because very few lawn care business owners spend enough money on marketing. So, if you do invest in your lawn care business's web presence, you can expect a great ROI in most areas.
We consider a lawn care business's website their most important online property. The reason being is that you, the business owner, are in full control of the content that is found on your website. When optimizing your Google My Business or any other property, you are playing on their turf so you have less control and they can change the rules on a whim.
A lawn care website properly optimized for search engines should land you a #1 spot on Google's search results in the organic section. A verified, fully populated, active Google My Business page with positive reviews should land you a spot on the 1st page of Google in the Map Pack.
On-page and Technical Lawn Care SEO To-Dos
Many of the things you will do to boost your lawn care SEO will occur off your website itself. Let's start by discussing what you need to do while designing and developing a lawn care website to optimize it for search engines.
- Site Speed - Make sure your pages load fast on all devices.
- SSL Certificate - Make sure your website is secure
- 1 Keyword Per Page - Google ranks 'web pages,' not websites so make sure you have a page for every keyword you want to rank for.
- Page Titles - Set custom page titles for each page. They should be relevant to the content found on that page and entice someone to click on your listing while browsing the Google search results.
- Meta Descriptions - Set custom meta descriptions for each page. 100% focus on getting people to click on your listing with the verbiage used in your meta description.
- Properly Use H Tags - Headlines are called H tags on websites. Each page should only have one H1 tag. It should to people and search engines what that page is about. H2-H6 tags can be used multiple times on a single page.
- URL Slugs - The URL slug refers to what comes after the '.com' in most cases. The URL slug should be short, sweet, and relevant to that page. A perfect example is '.com/contact' for a contact page.
- Internal Links - Insert hyperlinks in the paragraph text of your web pages to connect them to other relevant pages on your website.
- External Links - Insert hyperlinks in the paragraph text of your web pages to connect them to other relevant pages on other websites when appropriate and when it will provide some value to you. An example is linking to your mulch supplier from your landscape maintenance page.
- Schema Markup - Use Schema markup anywhere and everywhere possible.
- Optimize Images - Only use images you took of your work and your employees, equipment, etc. All images should be resized before being placed on a website to reduce the file size. Give the image a keyword friendly file name before uploading it to your site. Compress the image once on your site and give it an alt tag which accurately describes what is in the photo.
Build Citations For Lawn Care SEO
Google My Business is the king of all kings when it comes to citations for almost any business and this holds true for lawn care businesses as well. Citations, also referred to as directory listings, really help any small business that serves a geographic area near their business location.
Bing Places and Yelp are the next two most important citations for lawn care SEO.
At a minimum, also create your free citations on the BBB's website, Nextdoor, and Angi.com.
We recommend building out at least 20 more to include websites like YP.com, Mapquest, Manta, Hotfrog, and on and on.
If your lawn care business has a commercial address, you should show your address online and create your profile on Apple Maps. Apple Maps only allows businesses to list on their map if they have a commercial location.
Create A Business Facebook Page For Lawn Care SEO Purposes
Even if you hate Facebook as much as we do, you should verify and fully populate a business Facebook page for your lawn care business.
Facebook is a very authoritative website at the end of the day with millions of users on it daily. You want your lawn care business's NAP (Name, Address, Phone) on there at the very least.
How To Make SEO Work For Your Lawn Care Business
The trick to actually getting results from SEO for your lawn care business's website is to collect analytic data and then use this data to add and improve content on your website over time.
The free tools you should connect to your lawn care website include Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and Bing Webmaster Tools.
If you are building your lawn care business's website yourself to save money please make sure you connect these tools so in the future you can contact a professional lawn care SEO service like Optimized SEO and Websites and they will have data to work with!
While You Are Waiting For Lawn Care SEO To Kick In
If you did not know, SEO takes time. At a minimum, SEO typically takes 3-6 months to yield results.
While you are waiting for the search engines to crawl your site and re-position your website in the search results based on the optimizations made there are several things you should be doing.
Focus On Collecting Google Reviews
Lawn care businesses with lots of positive reviews stick out in a good way in the Map Pack!
Customers are much more likely to leave a business a negative review if they have a bad experience. On the flip side, most people don't think to leave a positive review if they have a good experience. So, actively request your clients to leave you a review. Copy your direct review link from your Google My Business then text or email it to your customers and ask them to take 1-2 minutes to leave you a review.
Post Regularly To Show Your Lawn Care Business Is Open, Active, and Accepting New Clients
Nope...we aren't talking about Facebook posts but still recommend posting to Facebook at least once a week.
What we are really talking about is posting to Google My Business in particular. This is also done from within your Google My Business dashboard. One post per week is plenty to make it clear to Google your lawn care business is open, active, and accepting new clients.
Another type of post we are talking about are blog posts. Utilize a blog on your website to focus on long-tail keywords. An example would be to create additional content on your lawn mowing service in your blog if you really want to attract people searching for a lawn mowing service to your website. Your site should have an 'individual service page' dedicated to your lawn mowing service. You should use your blog to focus on the keyword phrase of 'weekly lawn mowing service' for example. Be sure to interlink these pages!
Google Ads Get You To The Top Of Google For Lawn Care Service Search Queries Freaky Fast
If you don't have 3-6 months to wait for some organic traffic to find your site, you'll need to run ads to get your website to the top of Google nearly instantly.
Google Ads can also provide you with great insight for lawn care SEO too. Like Google Search Console, Google Ads will show you a list of search queries people are typing into Google when your ad is shown (Search Console shows you the queries for organic results...). If you believe these queries are valuable to your business that is your sign to create content around these topics with your Google posts and blog posts.
Lawn Care SEO In Action
We told you we've gotten 100+ websites to the 1st page of Google in their respective geographic markets. Here are links to some of the best performing lawn care websites we've built to date.
- BNB Lawn Mowing - bnblawnmowing.com
- Spokane's Finest Lawns - spokanesfinestlawns.com
- Sam's Personal Landscaping - samspersonallandscaping.com
- Boiling Springs Lawn Care - boilingspringslawncare.com
- Fishwater Landscaping - fishwaterlandscaping.com
- Riverview Turfworks - riverviewturfworks.com
- Gwinnett Lawns - gwinnettlawns.com
- True Lawn Care - truelawncare.com
- Chamberlain Lawn Care - chamberlainlawncare.com
- Green Touch Lawn Care - greentouchlawns.com
- Forty Acres Lawn Care - fortyacreslawncare.com
- Great Expectations Lawn and Landscape - greatexpectationslawn.com
We Told You Lawn Care SEO Was Easy!
At the end of the day, all of these tasks are pretty simple! At the same time, there are a lot of them to make and they all need to be implemented in the proper manner to ensure they provide the search engines with accurate info and so that they don't cannibalize each other!
If you need help with your lawn care SEO contact Ryan with Optimized SEO and Website. Optimized SEO and Websites specializes in website design, re-design, SEO, and Google Ads management for lawn care businesses across the United States with clients in nearly every state!
Bonus Lawn Care SEO Tips
Before we let you go, we wanted to touch on the topic of 'backlinks.'
The bottom line is you probably don't need to get backlinks to rank a lawn care website! Backlinks become much more important when trying to rank a website nationwide or worldwide. Since most lawn care businesses only serve a small geographic area, don't get hung up on trying to get backlinks.
Whatever you do, never pay for backlinks! They will 100% do more harm than good!
If you are dead set on getting some backlinks for your lawn care business, you should be prepared to do lots of outreach and have a valid reason as to why another website would want to provide a backlink to your site.
Remember, backlinks will only benefit a lawn care website if they are coming from a related website. Getting a backlink from our website would be very beneficial for example. Our site gets 350+ people on it daily and is relevant. Reach out to Lawn & Landscape Magazine or Turf Magazine to see if you could get a backlink from their site to yours. Just make sure you have a great piece of content on your site for them to link to or be prepared to write an excellent article for them to place on their website which should include a backlink to your website!