Websites are often an afterthought for many metal roofing contractors. If you are not investing in your website you are missing one of the best ways to attract new prospects as well as to build credibility with them.
A well-built website can help generate leads to keep contractors (and their crews!) busy. But even if you're not interested in gaining more leads, a current website is also important to build your credibility. Simply put, website visitors want to see a modern, up to date website. If they see one built 17 years ago that looks really tiny on a mobile phone this will hurt your credibility. Yes, referrals are your lifeblood but even referrals often check out a website before picking up the phone. Why would you want to leave them with a negative impression of your business?
Things a Successful Website Includes
A good website that builds credibility for your business includes many of these key characteristics:
- Easy to find information like phone number and address
- Clear statement of what you do and who you help the most
- Proves that you're a real company with local connections (no stock photos please)
- Current content with photos and videos of recent jobs
- Correct spelling, punctuation, and grammar
- Helpful information and not a sales pitch - answer the questions your prospects ask you in the content on your site
- Testimonials, reviews, and other feedback from your happy customers
- Fast load speeds - make sure your site is hosted on a reputable service
- Secure - your site must be https and not one that pops up a security warning
The Best Content For Your Website
In our last article in this series we explained how to set up and optimize your Google My Business listing. If you have claimed your listing and set it up correctly you should start to show up in the local search results. But your website will also play a role in your organic rankings.
When you enter a search term into Google or another search engine the results returned are either organic or paid results. Organic search results are the web pages that most closely match the searcher's request based on relevance. These are the natural search results. Paid results are the ones people buy using Google Adwords and other paid search tools.
The best content to add to your website is content that informs and educates your target audience. People search for answers online and your website should answer the questions people are asking.
Your content should address the following:
- Markets you serve
- Products/services offered
- Answers to their questions
- How you can help them solve their problems
- Why they should pick you instead of one of your many competitors
An unfocused website means an uninteresting experience for visitors. No interest means no engagement. No engagement leads to no connection.
You know your audience. Talk to them on your website about their issues, concerns, and priorities and how you can address them and deliver the results they need.
Types of content include:
- Videos (people love to see you and your team in action in real situations)
- Blog posts or how-to articles
- eBooks
- Webinars
- Podcasts
- Case studies and testimonials (these are critical to building online credibility)
Creating interesting content on your site helps you to see the best possible ranking when your prospects are searching locally and engages them giving you a better chance that they will call or reach out.
One of our favorite contractor websites is this one by Exterior Pro Roofing.
What if You Need to Build a Website From Scratch
If you do not have a website there are a number of ways to build one that do not cost a lot of money. The basic steps include:
- Register your domain which is the name you want to use as the website address. Using a service like GoDaddy or Cloudfare make this an easy process.
- Choose a website hosting platform. This is the tool you will use to actually build the website pages and update the content. There are many options to choose from including Bluehost, Wix, Wordpress, GoDaddy, and HubSpot.
- Find someone on your team who will dig in and learn the tools or find a local firm or freelancer that builds websites. There are tons of local firms that build and manage websites so ask around and see who has a partner they recommend. Or search for a freelancer that does this for a living. Two options for finding website building freelancers are Fiverr and Upwork.
Optimizing For Local Search
The following factors are key to constructing and optimizing your website for local search:
- Website construction. A few basic must-haves for your site are an XML map, descriptive title tags, compelling meta descriptions, and descriptive keywords in the URL's.
- Mobile-friendliness. Mostly likely, your audience is using their mobile phone to find contractors so your website must be built on a platform that is mobile friendly and allows your site to be responsive to the device being used.
- Listings in local directories. In our last article in this series we listed several places to list your business in local directories. The more listings you complete the more inbound links to your site you'll receive. These links are the signal to the search engines that you are a trusted local source.
- Social media. Make sure your social media accounts are updated with same name, phone, address and other information you added to your Google My Business profile.
The above steps all make it easier for your site to be crawled by search engines which results in improved rankings and more visibility when people search for your services in your area.
Learn More
Read our first post in this series "Marketing for Metal Roofing Contractors".
Read the second post "Marketing for Metal Roofing Contractors - Local Optimization"