Tag Archives: Digital Marketing

We’re Bringing SEO Back | Roofing SEO Podcast

Does SEO really mean what you think it does? Jason and Nolen explain how ignorance and misinformation lead many roofing companies astray during online marketing. If any of these real-world stories sound familiar, it might be time to reconsider how you search for marketing services!

Key Takeaways For Roofing Professionals

Inaccurate preconceptions prevent businesses from finding SEO services they really need.
The amount of money spent on a poorly-performing website template does not make it better.
Pretty websites don’t always make successful (sales-driving) sites.

What is Real SEO?

Marketing is an ever-shifting, bustling industry. As much of the consumer world transitions into online search for their day-to-day needs, roofing companies look to Google to find their customers. Most savvy business owners understand a few basic facts:

They need a website,
They need to advertise online, and
They need to optimize for Google.

If you’ve already grasped these marketing truths, your business is already doing better than many roofing companies out there. Unless you have years of search marketing research under that tool belt however, there’s still a long road between your company and a successful online marketing strategy. That’s why the vast majority of roofing firms turn to agencies to guide their progress. The only problem is:

How do you find a real SEO company that actually knows their stuff?

Real SEO (search engine optimization) focuses on crafting a website that blends superior keyword rankings with a smooth visitor experience. Numerous elements go into this process, including web design, keyword research, schema coding, and citation management. Even a quick Google search of “roofing SEO” however, reveals that dozens of businesses offer SEO services for the industry.

An Example of a Balanced Roofing Website — Quality SEO Balances Custom Web Design With Extensive Keyword Strategy and Coding.

A Dangerous Truth About Most “SEO Companies”

Unfortunately, most roofing SEO companies have no idea what they’re doing. Still more claim to provide search engine optimization but provide little in the way of actual SEO. What you’ll find instead are…

PPC Campaign Management Firms
Cheap Website Developers (without search experience)
Expensive Website Developers (also without search experience)
Social Media Marketing Agencies
Lead Sellers
Marketing Software Companies

Some of these agencies truly offer valuable solutions for earning roofing sales. Others have no clue what they’re doing, but can easily talk their way through sales calls. Again, very few provide real solutions in the way of SEO. From an outside perspective, that might not seem like a big deal. However, the difference could end up costing your business years of setbacks and thousands of wasted marketing dollars.

Why Does SEO Even Matter?

Quality SEO solutions tend to take time (usually a few months) to produce results, but the results last. These solutions generate a steady stream of local consumers coming into your website and contacting your business. Consumers also tend to return with greater frequency, at a significantly lower cost than if you tried to buy them through a lead seller. Revenue opportunities only grow over time as both Google and consumers learn to recognize your company brand.

In short: SEO offers cheaper leads, more sales, and more sustained revenue over time.

Roofing contractors with a real SEO company will happily share their success stories (unless you’re a local competitor, of course). In fact, it’s a wise practice to look up high-ranking roofing companies outside of your service area and see who their marketing company is. You’ll find their brands listed in the top of local map packs and organic search results!

Google Analytics Traffic Data — A Productive SEO Company Will Happily Share Your Site Analytics Data!

Getting Sidetracked

Once you find a capable SEO service provider, don’t let go. We’ve witnessed too many businesses jump into marketing with great enthusiasm, only to bail out a month or two later. They usually fall into one of two tragic stories:

The roofers attributed their success to their own abilities.
A competing marketer talked the roofer into switching.

If your company enjoys sweet success from a certain SEO marketing company, why leave? Thankfully, there are ways to confirm whether or not your company is providing worthwhile results. Chart the number of leads you earn each month. Compare your numbers with those from last year and the year before. Examine your Google Analytics dashboard and see how many site visitors originate from Google Search!

At Roofing Webmasters, we’re always happy to walk through your Analytics and chart your progress. Is your company willing to prove their worth? If not, we’d love to talk with you about your company SEO needs! Give our team a call at (800) 353-5758 for a free consultation.

Roofing SEO Conference 2020

Search marketing is an ever-changing landscape of Google policy changes, established practices, newly-minted tactics, and revolutionary software. Put simply, the rules and strategies that guide roofing SEO (search engine optimization) change from year to year. Even our seasoned team of search marketing professionals has to actively test and research new methods to keep up with the shifting industry.

That’s why we go to conferences!

Jason and Nolen arrive back on the scene, fresh on the cusp of one of the most influential search conferences in the nation (maybe the world). As usual, they have some helpful insights to steer your business towards sweet success! Whether you’re just now entering the online search scene or you’ve competed for years, be sure to listen in.

Key Marketing Lessons for Roofing Companies

Roofing SEO is a step-by-step process, not a single fix-it solution.
PPC is good by itself. With SEO, it can be fantastic.
SEO “basics” are requirements for your business to show up in search, but businesses need to go beyond the basics to earn premium rankings.

What Hasn’t Changed in SEO

With all the flashy revelations that fly across our attention span, it’s easy to lose sight of the core principles that haven’t changed. Search engines continue to dominate marketing as a primary source of revenue. That means roofing SEO is even more essential than it was just a few years ago. If you aren’t competing for leads through this digital channel, you are probably missing out on tens of thousands of dollars every year, minimum.

With that being said, opportunities to get your company up and running online are still very accessible. Even if you don’t have the necessary expertise to market online, somebody else does.

If you’re eager to reap the substantial rewards of search marketing, now is the time to get active. To help you, we’ll re-touch on the basics of SEO and local search. Then we’ll get into the more advanced tactics you’ll need to go from entry-level competitor to front page material.

Let’s dig in!

A Roofing Company That Engages in Search Marketing

Your SEO Baseline Requirements

Anyone can start a social media profile or run an ad, but what are the bare essentials to start building your online brand presence? First, you’ll need a website!

Newly-minted roofing companies aren’t always flush with funds, so we understand if you need to begin with a free template design. If you have the financial capacity however, we highly recommend you find a seasoned firm that offers search-optimized web design. The enormous difference in lead potential will quickly help you recoup the costs.

The SEO Bare Essentials List

Company website, with optimized service pages
Google My Business (GMB) listing, claimed and verified
Citations from BBB, Yelp, Manta, and other established brands
Client reviews and recommendations
Facebook Business profile

Getting your business information listed across multiple reputable platforms is also a crucial part of growing the brand online. Not only does this create additional exposure and review potential for your company, it also creates a stronger sense of accountability and trustworthiness. The more places Google’s search engine detects your brand, the more likely it will recommend it through higher rankings.

Keep in mind, these are just the basics your company needs to accomplish in order to show up in search. In recent years, we’ve seen more and more roofing companies manage to achieve these requirements. If you really want to succeed and earn premium rankings (and the resulting leads), you’ll need to go above and beyond what other businesses are doing.

As we say at the Webmasters, “You don’t have to be perfect. You just have to be the best!”

Above and Beyond

What sort of tactics allows a fledgling brand to rise above the rest in local search marketing? Again, quality web design plays a huge role here. A capable site incorporates simple navigation with keyword-rich service pages. This enables the site to rank for a much wider variety of phrases!

If you want to go above and beyond, start infusing your site with schema code. Schema code helps communicate the purpose and meaning of different page elements in a way that Google’s search crawlers – picture little bots scouting and indexing new site content – can easily understand. It takes some dedicated research and effort to update your website with schema, but it’s worth the effort!

Supercharged Client Reviews

As we mentioned before, client feedback plays a key role in establishing your brand reputation online. The more positive reviews come in, the more likely Google’s algorithm is to recognize your company as a reputable and reliable choice for local consumers. Of course, anyone can gather reviews.

If you really want your brand to stand out, try supercharging your client reviews with geotagging software. Geotagging adds GPS data to reviews, the kind of data that Google absolutely craves! The search engine sorts through countless contracting companies every year. Roofers with geotagged jobsite check-ins and reviews, however, provide undeniable evidence of their service area.

In simple terms, Google sees actionable evidence of where you work and directs more traffic from those communities to your website.

At Roofing Webmasters, we use integrated software called DataPins to provide geotagged check-ins and reviews for your website. That’s just one reason why our roofing clients enjoy front-page rankings and exceptional lead quality. We’d love to talk with you about your growth goals.

The Impending Recession for Roofers (Podcast)

In a healthy roofing industry, it may seem wise to drop all of your low-dollar services in favor of more extensive profit services. Don’t throw away that roof repair page just yet, though! Nolen and Jason discuss the current market and how contractors can protect their business during the recession with SEO for roofers. So if you’ve got concerns about the future of your roofing company, be sure to listen in carefully!

Key Points to Listen For:

Economic indicators point towards a potential recession in the next few years.
Lower dollar services offer invaluable revenue during a recession.
Few marketing activities will provide as dependable results as SEO for roofers.

SEO For Roofers: Recession Preparations

While there’s no exact timeline predicted for the next recession (we’re hoping for never), it pays to prepare your business against potential economic downturns. That’s especially true for roofing contractors, who live and die by the whims of the housing market. We can easily predict what would happen for the average roofing professional in the event of a recession.

The Traditional Slowing of the Roofing Industry:

Phase #1: Home sales start to decline.
Phase #2: The average homeowner grows stricter with their budget.
Phase #3: Non-essential projects (i.e., roofing upgrades) slow dramatically.
Phase #4: As budgets tighten, even more, homeowners wait longer for repairs.
Phase #5: Underprepared contracting companies go out of business.
Phase #6: The market starts to recover.

It’s a sad but recurring process that many roofing companies don’t survive. Companies go into the stricter economic period unprepared for the surge in competition. While storm seasons and the odd hail market may provide relief, a company can’t count on random storms.

So what should your business do to prepare for the next recession? Start diving into SEO for roofers, and establish your presence online now! A year or two years from now could be too late to start preparing. Below, we’ll explain why developing your organic search program currently could save you in the next few years.

Reason #1: Saving a Lot of Money

So business is booming, and for the first time in a while, you have some company cash saved up. That’s where you come to a fork in the road. Do you spend the money on traditional marketing, paid search campaigns, or organic development? We’ll explain in a bit why the typical advertising (including door knocking) might not work so well shortly. For now, we’ll focus on PPC vs. Organic SEO!

Pay-per-click campaigns offer more control and customization than ever before. For one, you can target the precise geographic radius that you want your ads to appear in. You can also refine your target audience on platforms like Google Ads and Facebook Ads. These solutions work so effectively that many roofing contractors forgo continued website development and double down on PPC.

Focussing exclusively on PPC is generally a bad idea, but it could hurt your business even more during a recession.

Why? Because ads cost money. Thanks to a healthy housing market, most roofers do well enough to avoid using paid ads (even when they shouldn’t). However, when the housing market starts to dry up, businesses without an established organic presence flock to Google Ads and other ad platforms in desperation. The surge in competition leads to incredible spikes in costs-per-click (CPCs), which could quickly eat up your marketing budget!

You could try to buy these leads from a lead selling company. If the numerous complaints we hear from roofing contractors are any indication, however, that’s a sticky and expensive situation you’d be better off avoiding. So that leaves SEO for roofers.

SEO for Roofers in a Paid Google Ads Platform

How Organic SEO Saves Money

Ranking #1 in Google Search is a dream many contractors share, but it’s not one many know how to pursue. The most effective SEO strategies begin with website optimization because most curious readers turn into actual leads. Once your roofing company website is up, running, and ranking up in Google local map results, however, you’ll notice something unique:

Organic search generates higher quality leads than PPC and is cheaper!

While search engine optimization certainly takes a concentrated effort during website development and content marketing, you won’t have to spend all your time managing the site. A well-crafted company portal will naturally generate leads with only moderate updates required every so often. Cheap, high-quality, and relatively easy leads. What’s not to like?

Reason #2: Maintaining a Broader Spectrum of Services

In healthy roofing industries, homeowners call in for a variety of services. Unfortunately, with so much business to choose from, many contractors turn down low-dollar jobs to favor high-profit installations and replacements. At the Roofing Webmasters, we even have clients who think about taking off their “Roof Repair” pages so they can focus exclusively on installs. We strongly advise against that strategy, however, especially when it comes to recession markets.

During recessions, installation numbers plummet to the point that mostly repair jobs remain.

If only roof repair projects remain in the market, will contractors compete for those leads? You better believe it! Unfortunately, too many ride the wave of healthy-market projects without ever investing in their long-term online performance. Even a little effort here and there can reap huge dividends once your brand earns more experience online.

What sort of activities can you complete now to become an established contractor?

Complete your Google My Business listing.
Optimize your company website pages with a diverse keyword strategy.
Create profiles in BBB and other helpful citation sources.
Ask for reviews consistently! Please.

Even if you don’t have the resources to create a fully optimized website, you can efficiently perform these actions without breaking the bank. If you complete the work now, you can reap the rewards down the road when other unprepared contractors (who neglected their SEO for roofers) are struggling for business. Make it easier to earn leads and reinforce your business against a likely recession; that’s two birds hit with one stone.

An SEO Company for Roofers

At Roofing Webmasters, we support contractors from all around the United States. Our dedicated team of web designers, content writers, social media analysts, and strategists work together to deliver outstanding SEO for roofers. As a result, clients regularly enjoy front-page rankings, higher site traffic, and better quality leads.

Digital Marketing Excellence (Podcast)

Finding an efficient yet customer-driven SEO company seems impossible. But that’s why Nolen created his own. We dive deep into the Roofing Webmasters‘ company history with Jason and Nolen in our latest podcast. We’ll discuss how our past experiences molded the business and allowed us to produce outstanding results for our customers.

Key Points in Our Podcast:

Company size significantly impacts both service quality and efficiency.
Our management software allows us to produce faster results for our clients.
The right team makes all the difference.

Our History at Roofing Webmasters

Like many company origin stories, our company was born out of discontentment. Discontentment with the way digital marketing companies treated their clients and disappointment with their lack of results. Our founder, Nolen, initially worked in the security industry. However, after recognizing the profound gap in quality digital marketing for roofers and other service businesses, he seized the opportunity and founded what would later become the Webmasters.

While his journey took many twists and turns, Nolen created a tight-knit group of graphic designers, marketing strategists, content writers, software developers, and social media specialists. Through our regularly improved, in-house management software, our team continually produces outstanding products for roofing SEO.

Finding the Right Management Strategy

While it might surprise our current clients, our offices at the Roofing Webmasters used to be a chaotic mess! Our management team struggled with the creative talent that honored time results and diligence above personal convenience, as with many digital marketing businesses. But, unfortunately, lax standards in the industry had produced all too many complacent would-be web experts.

Our team certainly felt the effects. Almost we had to transform virtually the entire writing department. To better manage our new staff, we designed brand new project management software, incorporated check-ins for accountability, and dialed down our employee training process. As a result, we experienced a dramatic shift in productivity that we’re still very proud of!

Why Company Size Matters

In our experience with the industry, plus the horror stories that our clients have conveyed to us, dependable digital marketing companies are rare. However, when it comes to managing employees effectively, there’s a sweet spot for workforce size. Let’s look at industry trends and the problems with companies that are either too small or too large.

When Digital Marketing Gets Too Small

Client capacity shrinks.
Rapid updates may not be possible.
Solutions become more challenging.
It takes multiple services to deliver a (somewhat) cohesive website.

When Digital Marketing Gets Too Big

Services become overly streamlined or cookie cutter.
The gap between service rep and production widens.
Customer service (usually) suffers.

The Goldilocks Size for Digital Marketing

Cookie-cutter web design and mediocre results aren’t our speed. So we custom-build powerful websites with schema coding, original content, and over 200 points of roofing SEO! With just under 20 talented and experienced professionals, Roofing Webmasters supports hundreds of roofing contractors and other industry professionals from across the United States.

Particular roofing SEO experts can’t pull off the number of clients we support, and larger companies (generally) don’t provide such outstanding customer service. That’s why so many contractors rely on our team for their digital marketing needs. Our size and skilled staff allow us to continually deliver premium results in better rankings, higher site traffic, deeper engagement, and fantastic lead generation. These results come from years of refining our management program and organizing our talent for maximum client value.

Why Full-Service Makes More Sense

Perhaps you already have a small digital marketing service running part of your online presence. Maybe you have two or three! So what happens when a roofing company (or another industry contractor) outsources its digital to-dos to multiple businesses? Unless you’re a very, very good judge of marketing talent, a hodge-podge mess is almost always the result. That’s because separate companies will struggle with creating a cohesive SEO strategy, especially when it comes to website creation!

When you choose a full-service digital marketing company for your roofing SEO needs, however, each aspect of your marketing is bond together by design. Content nestles into a custom website already optimized for search. PPC campaigns align with the existing keyword strategy from your organic search results. Blog posts and videos enjoy more substantial distribution through your Google My Business account and social media platforms! All in all, you’ll witness better results and spend far less time having to check your company’s progress.

Team Up With Roofing Webmasters

Want more robust performance for your roofing SEO efforts? Our dedicated staff at the Roofing Webmasters would love to help! We support numerous businesses across the country, providing premium rankings in local search, faster lead development, and outstanding website performance.