Ronak Kothari is the founder of RONKOT, a full-service digital marketing agency.
Electrical companies feel the pressure to sustain their businesses by increasing their discoverability rate — both online and offline. However, shifting your focus from watts to local SEO could be a challenging task.
The question that makes more electricians wonder is why local SEO is important for them in 2022? Electrical services are one of the most utilized services as more people are working from home, which leads to additional wear and tear of electrical equipment.
These types of equipment may get damaged or there’s a switch panel that doesn’t work.
Thus, customers seeking such services would go online and Google to find local electricians if they already don’t have one. Search engine optimization will put your business in front of these customers who are in dire need of your services.
Now, how do you get there? The simple answer is by following the simple local SEO checklist or guide. Before we get into the guide, let’s understand what is local SEO for electricians:
What is Local SEO Guide for Electricians?
Local SEO guide for electricians is a process to build an online presence by implementing the best search engine optimization practices to appear in local organic results.
Doing so helps your electrical business to get more visibility and drive organic traffic to generate more leads and revenue. Through precise and tailored stepwise local SEO strategy, electricians can target local users effectively.
The strategy includes 3 primary steps that help you build expertise, authority, and trust (E-A-T) around your business niche and target market. Let’s see this 3-step local SEO guide for electricians to follow:
Step-1: Website Optimization to Build Expertise
The very first step is to build a website for your electrical business. It should be fast, accessible, and SEO-friendly. Website optimization is a way to build expertise for your niche. It starts with finding relevant local keywords that you can include on your important pages.
Let’s see what more you can do to build expertise through the website:
Research & Optimize for Local & Electrical Keywords
Finding relevant keywords to optimize your website is the most critical part of your website optimization. The more detailed your keyword research is, the better chances your website has to rank for relevant search terms. Here are key steps to follow:
- Use multiple tools such as Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, SEMrush, etc. to scour relevant, local, and long-tail keywords. Examples of local electrical keywords to optimize your website include:
- Local electrical contractor
- Electrical company near me
- Electrician in Dallas
- Emergency electrician near me
- Resident electrician near me
- Optimize your website homepage, about us, and service pages with important local keywords that have more buying intent.
- Most essential places to include keywords are the title tag, website copy, H1, H2 & other heading tags, URL, meta descriptions, etc.
Improve Website Content Quality
Website content quality is another optimization factor that highly impacts your electrical business’s ranking. You can improve the content quality of your website by writing unique and authentic content. Here are a few things to keep in mind:
- Write content that is user as well as search engine friendly.
- Write unique content for each electric service such as wiring, electric repair, etc. you offer.
- Localize your content with location-specific and other local keywords to rank better.
Enhance Page Experience/Mobile-Friendliness
After many years of research and analysis, Google provided a Page Experience update and fixed a timeline for its implementation to allow websites to prepare for this update. This update focuses on ranking websites that score high on certain page experience signals.
Let’s glance over what they are and how to enhance the page experience of your electrical website:
- Improve Core Web Vitals such as Largest Contentful Paint, First Input Delay, and Cumulative Layout Shift by following the best practices.
- Use mobile-friendly platforms and templates, break down content into smaller chunks, optimize media files, and avoid flash animation to enhance the mobile-friendliness of your website.
- Heighten site security with HTTPS and remove any intrusive interstitials to boost page experience further for visitors.
Create a Compelling Local Content Strategy
A compelling local content marketing strategy would increase the visibility of your electrician website for a much larger group of keywords that were untargeted before. It’s an effective way to increase traffic, user engagement, CTR, conversion, and other SEO key performance indicators.
Here’s how to approach local content marketing for electrician websites.
- Write informative blogs and articles that offer users basic stuff to get started with knowing and handling electrical equipment. Here are a few blog topics you can cover:
- How smart home devices affect your electricity bills
- Signs to know when its time to upgrade electric equipment
- Differences between similar types of equipment
- What to do in an electrical emergency, etc…
- Describe when they should consult an electrician to avoid any possible electrical hazard.
- Showcase your work through relevant images and videos.
- Write expert guides on the subject for locales to become an authority figure in your area.
Step-2: SEO Optimization to Build Authority
If the content and website optimization help build expertise, then external links and citations help establish authority in your niche. Links have been the primary signal to assess the authority of your website after the invention of PageRank.
Here are ways to build authority for search engine optimization of your electrical website:
Build More Links from Relevant/Local Sources
Backlinks still rule the roost as a high-quality link-building strategy helps your electrical website dominate the search engine. Getting links from third-party acts as a vote of confidence in the eyes of Google. They are a catalyst to rank high in local SEO searches.
Let’s see how you should approach this:
- Reach out to local niche directories, relevant business sites, and media publishers to acquire more links.
- Do more guest posting and PR outreach among relevant and authoritative industry publishers.
- Audit your competitors to find more link-building opportunities and replicate the same for your brand.
Create Citations on Locally-Relevant & Popular Platforms
Citations act as a business listing of your electrical website on relevant review sites and local directories such as Yelp, Ratedpeople, Trustatrader, etc. Creating more citations widens your net and helps move up your electrical website in local rankings.
Let’s have a glance at how you can do so:
- Find locally authoritative business listing directories and review sites where you can sign up and list your business details. Here’s a listing of one of the companies on Yelp:
- Sign up on at least 10 to 20 popular and authoritative websites for effective citation building.
- The first place to start your citations and business listing is Google Business Profile.
Step-3: Google Business Profile Optimization for Trust Building
Formerly known as Google My Business, GBP optimization helps instill trust in your audience when they make a local search to find electricians nearby. Google business listings are sort of mini-websites that build local presence and trust among your target market. Let’s see an example:
Here’s how you can utilize GBP best to your advantage:
Claim & Verify Your Electrical Business
The first thing you need to do is claim and verify your electrical business on Google. Without adding or claiming your business listing, you wouldn’t be able to fill in the necessary business details.
Let’s see how you claim & verify your business:
- Add or claim your business listings from Maps and Search functions from Android or desktop devices.
- The next process is to verify your business listing by following one of the methods provided by Google which are postcard, email, phone, search console, or through video.
Fill Complete & Necessary Details
Once you have claimed and verified your business listings, the next thing you want to do is change or modify the necessary information to make your profile complete.
Here’s what to keep in check while doing so:
- Ensure your Name, Address, and Phone Number are correct and consistent across the web.
- Assign the primary category that best describes your business. Also, add a few additional relevant categories too.
- Add your business working hours and accurate location info to give users an idea of when and where to reach you.
Get More Reviews for Relevant Electrical Services
Reviews are sort of social proof for your business. It helps other users to trust your electrical services and employ you for the best work.
Let’s see how you can get reviews for your electrical business:
- Ensure your Google listing gets reviews with high star ratings and overall positive sentiments.
- For the same, provide your customers with better services and experience that encourages them to leave a review.
- Reply to each review you get on your listing even if it is a negative review you have to handle.
Add Relevant Electrical Work Images
You may have heard the phrase that images speak louder than words. Well, that ain’t wrong if you ask Google. Practice adding relevant electrical work images to further optimize your Google Business Profile.
Here’s what you can do to optimize GBP with images:
- Add as many relevant and high-quality, focused images to your profile as possible.
- Replace the generic background image of your GBP with a branded image.
- Add photos and videos of your offices, technicians, and even satisfied customers (with permission) for a boost in your local SEO ranking.
Take Your Electrical SEO to Next Level
Today, local SEO has become a powerful tool for small local businesses like electrical contractors to get more work and sustain the company. Since it’s a competitive niche, strategic SEO implementation helps you stand above the rest. However, you need to tailor your approach based on your business category.
It may seem overwhelming at first if you are the only one doing it, but it may get easier if you just outsource your local SEO to an expert local SEO team. Ronkot is an experienced and adept team of SEO specialists that offers to implement strategic SEO for your small local electrical businesses.
Get in touch with us to discuss more about your local SEO requirements with our experts and get a hot beverage from us.
Further Reading
A Definitive Guide on Local SEO for Plumbing Companies to Rank Higher for Local Searches
A Complete Guide on Local SEO for Hair & Beauty Salons
A Beginner’s Guide to Optimize Local SEO for HVAC Companies
A Complete Local SEO Guide for Real Estate Agents to Rank Higher on Google
SEO For Non-Profit Organizations: 8 Ways To Increase Online Visibility
An Ultimate Guide for Roofing Companies to Boost Local SEO & Leads