Search Engine Optimization For Roofers

As a local SEO company in Arizona, we have many small business contracting outfits, and with microbursts and monsoons, Arizona is a popular place for the roofing trade. One of the lessons we have learned in doing optimization in the era of SEO penalties such penguin and panda, is to brand our companies in their niche. Every niche has some commonalities, and some unique needs specific to their industry.

Get to the point, what should I do for my roofing SEO?

The Basic Social Media for Roofing Companies


Social Media! I won’t go into the social media we all know and love, those details could fill volumes and we can go into them in another post. Here are the basics:

Specific Social Media For Roofing Contractors

Here are the best social media for contractors:

Houzz.com

Houzz is fantastic for contractors. It allows you to do so much:

  • post pictures by project
  • favorite and vote up pics
  • get followers, likes and re shared
  • request and receive reviews from customers and peers
  • ask questions and take polls
  • answer questions, with pictures and links
  • tag and group pictures in tons of creative ways for collaboration, embedding and resharing

It basically has the best of every single social network in one kick ass contractors website.

Angies List

While not so much exclusive as they used to be, it is still a worthwhile place to make sure you have a few positive reviews. Way back when, it was actually started by a woman names Angie with a list she kept. Now this is not so much the case. In the beginning, a placement on the site was highly coveted, and could only be achieved through a very exclusive nomination and selection process. Now, for the right amount of money, anyone can get in. They also offer a free profile, though I have seen that go down over the years, I may be mistaken but it seems I was not always able to get the free account through.

The long term outlook for this directory is lower, but still good. And, their is some evidence the algorithm may be swinging to support directories, so keeping an active profile could become more important. The other scenario is that AngiesList will give into the temptation and add every single industry in existence to their directory in a mad attempt to squeeze a few more dollars into that quarter’s P & L, which they have started doing, but have not fully surrendered to it just yet. (I think they might still, but I hope not).

Home Advisor

It is a good, high PR website, with an attractive profile and an easy review system for contractors. It does have one fatal flaw: they use telephone # tracking, with proxy #s. This causes your roofing business to list a number contrary to the # you have listed everywhere else, and is a negative signal for Google maps, whom values heavily the consistency of NAP (name, address, phone number), but is still recommended. I also believe Google has to make more allowances for proxy numbers in the near future, they are after all in the analytics industry, it would be natural to support that move. Home Advisor is not a replacement for a professionally designed AZ website created by a local designer, but it does assist business in making conversions out of visitors, by offering a valuable third party review mechanism so your clients can research you on the web.

Roofing.com

This cool site is a forum for roofers, but it appears to have a decent moderator and produces decent threads worth viewing. It is only a PR3, but if there is on thing the algorithim loves it is a niche site, the more dedicated the better, this is much more important than pagerank in most cases, except where the pagerank is below 2 (just my opinion, this last point of the 2 PR).

Picture Sharing For Roofing Jobs

Contractors actually have a few nice things going for them that another company may have a harder time pulling off. They are often well situated to take very scenic pictures, resulting in a great social media reach. Leverage your photos for all of the above properties, and embed them into your sites. You can also take advantage of platforms that really only work for pics, like:

  • Pinterest – tons of traffic, great site
  • Instagram
  • flickr
  • shutterfly
  • photobucket

In closing, these are some of the basics for Roofers. I actually recommend doing this before onsite optimization. The harshest site penalties seem to be incurred when sufficient social media and branding has not already been done, and conversely the benefits of optimization seem to multiply on a social, branded site.

One last tip – use your company name for your profile urls, not keywords or anything else! An example would be http://www.facebook.com/myfavoritewebdesigns.

Hope This Helps,
Joshua Jacoby
My Favorite Web Designs
1006 N. 92nd Circle
Mesa, Arizona 85207
Office: 480-335-1330
Website: https://store.myfavoritewebdesigns.com

Facebook: http://facebook.com/myfavoritewebdesigns
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