6 Ways to Improve Your Painting Company's SEO

SEO -- otherwise known as search engine optimization, or site ranking -- is one of the most important things to consider when fine-tuning your marketing strategy. Where you show up (and if you show up) in search results has a sizeable impact on the amount of web traffic you receive, which greatly affects the likeliness that your company will attract new business. Better SEO means a better chances of being noticed. 

How, then, can you improve your company's SEO to the extent of building a more pronounced web presence? Accomplishing this requires a certain degree of knowledge about how internet searches work. Put simply, search engines contain a pre-organized database of links, all of which are arranged according to their content and popularity. When a user searches for something, they are provided with a list of results that are both relevant to the search query and popular among other web users, under the assumption that links which are visited often are probably more valuable. 

While the process of ordering results is a complicated one, there are ways to build your website so that it ranks more highly in search results. Below are a few tricks for improving your visibility and web traffic.

Ensure your content is relevant.

One of the best ways to boost your search engine ranking is by publishing content that is pertinent to your desired audience. As a rule, you should be able to identify one or two main keywords for your page -- say, for instance, "Michigan painter" or "painting contractor" -- and use these throughout your website. This increases your prospects of showing up in related search results. 

While search-optimized content is ideal, it's crucial that this doesn't interfere with the quality of your writing. If you've used so many keywords that your content is hardly readable, you may increase your search relevance, but your site won't be very popular. Always write primarily for the user, rather than for SEO.

Avoid duplicated content.

This goes along with producing high-quality, user-focused material. Content that is the same as or overwhelmingly similar to other areas of your site is difficult for search engines to rank, as they can't determine which version to include in their database. Likewise, readers will quickly recognize that your site is focused more on increasing web visibility than promoting user engagement and satisfaction.

Pay attention to structural hierarchy.

How you tag and order your content makes a difference in your search result rankings. Heading tags (h1, h2, h3, etc.) are especially vital to a high-ranking page, as these tags tell the search engine how relevant your content is to the search query. When search engine crawlers move through headers, they are able to see how consistent your heading keywords are with the rest of the material, lending a better description of the information that your page offers. 

Header tags are typically organized as follows: 

<h1>Main Heading</h1>
<h2>Subheading 1</h2>
<h3>Subsection 1 of Subheading 1</h3>

 ...and so forth, until all subheadings and subsections are formatted. 

Heading tags should not be used out of order, as this breaks the heading structure, making for a less optimized page. Also, remember that heading tags are not for styling purposes, but for presenting your content in a clear and organized fashion.

Prioritize cross-linking.

Your pages and blog posts will get a lot more recognition if there are links to them in other areas of your site. If your services page says that you do business in cities X, Y, and Z, create pages for each location and add a link wherever the name of that city is mentioned. Similarly, look through your blog content and see if there are any words or phrases that can be linked to other blog posts. Cross-linking has the potential to enhance link popularity and, hence, optimization.

Update your content frequently.

It's not enough to have a web presence -- you've also got to maintain it. A website that hasn't been updated for a while may not seem as legitimate as a site that was just modified this week. Keep users in the loop by posting about your latest project or company events, and try to publish at least one new blog post a week. Updated content indicates to search engines (and to clients) that the information on your site is relevant and worth being found.

Utilize social media.

Whether you like it or not, sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn have become essential to link-building. In fact, they've taken link-building to a new level. Not only do they allow you to share your own content to increase popularity and relevance; your fan base can also share your posts with their followers, thereby virtually "crowdsourcing" your material. And the more active you are on social media, the more people you'll reach, giving you the opportunity to market your services to a larger audience than ever before. Between the SEO benefits and the improved marketing presence, social media should be your best friend.

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