As a roofer, you need work. End of. Many contractors are fortunate enough to have built up long customer lists, a name for themselves, a good reputation and so on. This allows them to always have a steady stream of jobs to work on throughout the year without having to think too much about where the next job will come from. However, you don’t start with all of these things. You have no recommendations, no advocates for your work and no track record. So getting your first roofing jobs can be tricky. How do you overcome this problem? Marketing! Today we wanted to share how you can get roofing projects through internet marketing specifically. So don’t fret if you don’t have any projects to work on yet. These tips should see you get a steady stream of roofing jobs throughout the year.
- Your website
A website is essential for online marketing. You need some sort of presence even if you don’t use a website specifically – like an Instagram page. But a website is necessary, realistically. It’s the central hub from which things like an Instagram page can stem from. It’s your home base, you control the platform, what goes on it etc. – you only have so much control over channels on other platforms like Instagram and Twitter. If you’re on a budget, there are website builders these days that you can use yourself to make your first basic site. You can go from nothing to completed within a day or two. It’s that easy these days. Sure, you won’t have an all singing all dancing website, but you don’t need one. Something basic is more than enough. Alternatively, you can pay someone to do this for you. Just make sure you’re going with someone you know like and trust as you will be speaking to them more than once throughout your business. You will want to like them because of this. And you need to trust them because this is an integral part of your business and marketing.
- Get your website seen
A website is pointless if it can’t be seen. You need to appear on Google for local search terms to you or your website is only good as a legitimacy test. By ‘local search terms to you’ this is probably going to mean any variation of the word roofer or roofing and your local areas that you serve. Several years ago it was easier to get to the top of Google than it was now. Don’t let this discourage you though. Everything always gets harder, not easier. It’s like house prices. Sure, if you bought in London 20 years ago, your money would be worth a lot more now, but that’s just how it is. You have to get into the game eventually. It will be even harder for the people that delay the move.
- Content
The easiest way as a tradesman to get your site seen locally is through content. It seems basic but it is absolutely true. If you click on any local tradesman websites you will notice that there are a few pages. Services, home, testimonials and a contact page. There are barely any words on the website. Well think about this logically. How can Google TRUELY know who you are, what you do and where you cover without extensive description? Google is just a machine after all. They cannot look at your website and infer your perfect customer and location. You need to make it painfully obvious to them. So, writing weekly article about what you’ve been doing and where is going to show this to them. And as you remember after checking all of your local competitors – there is very little competition on the content front! Create a blog page and start documenting what you are doing in detail and you will soar past the competition. Make sure to keep these articles over 500 words long (but can be less than 1000).
- Linking
This is going to sound complex, but it isn’t. And it is pretty essential. So pay attention to this part. The content is the meat and veg of the operation. That’s 90%. Now we need to tie in the last 10%. The sauce. Linking. Within these articles you will need to link them back to your homepage. Sure, you might think the page is linked and it’s all good. But it’s not quite linked how it should be. Especially if we want to show up on Google for search terms (again, your service and area) that suit our business. So, somewhere near the start of the article you are going to want to use this formula. Link the words you are trying to rank for (service and area) back to your homepage.
Let’s say it’s roofers in Nottingham. We know there’s over a quarter million population here. We know it will be a popular search term. We then want to link those three words (roofers in Nottingham) back to the homepage, without the link opening in a new window (if you are on WordPress you will say a box that you can tick or untick asking you to open the window in a new page). For simplicity, just make sure the link doesn’t open in a new tab. This is to do do with Google robots.
I bet you’re thinking this all sounds strange. And it does! But all we are doing is communication to Google what this content is about. Then when we link it back to the homepage – we are ‘powering up’ our site. The homepage is what ranks. The content is what helps the homepage TO rank. So they work together. And that is why we link these articles to the homepage. If you really want to get technical, feel free to drop us a message and we can go into more detail about how we are ranking so well for local roofing search terms.
- Extra tips
If you follow the tips above you will really dominate your local search as you will swamp out the competitors with really good content and Google will assume you to be the local authority on the topic. Let’s throw in some extra precautions you can make to ensure you dominate the local search. One is to create all of your social media accounts. This helps to build your digital footprint and brand, which basically means to solidify your position on Google as real and credible. You can even then link OUT (meaning when you click on the link, it is opened in a new tab) to these channels on each article. Another tip is to include your NAP (name address phone) at the bottom of each article to keep reinforcing to Google the consistency of you and your business. A third tip is to get your onsite SEO looked at by a local professional. They should be able to do some one-off work on your main site which does not change much like your blog page. They can alter the wording, titles, tags and so on to communicate with Google what you are trying to rank for. Even your page structure is relevant to how well you rank, so lots of impact can be made here in a short space of time.
Rounding up
That’s it for now. This is more than enough information to make sure you get to the top of the search for your local roofing terms. Remember that you will get work eventually. Keep persevering. Keep speaking to people. Keep putting yourself out there. Keep writing. You will eventually get up the search engine and get your first enquiry! Then the rest will be history. You can build up a client list, testimonials, skills and so on until getting new clients is a problem of the past. As usual, feel free to get in touch if you want any help!
