Moz’s Shepard and Wordstream’s Kim
If you’re a custom integrator or other small to mid sized contractor, how do you find new customers? Despite the recent construction surge, the most profitable projects don’t grow on trees. Search engine marketing for custom electronics integrators and other contractors can be an excellent customer acquisition tool. What it’s not is a cheap and easy way to flood you with new customers. Sorry. It can be a valuable tool for your firm’s marketing arsenal, however. Let’s dig deeper.
Although many will tell you search engine marketing (SEM) is as easy as falling off a log, just as many others say it’s neigh on impossible. The truth is somewhere in the middle. Yes, SEM can be very valuable to get visitors to your website exactly when their commercial intent is the highest; i.e. they’re looking online for exactly what you’re selling.
For example, if someone is searching for “Home theater contractor in Seattle”, you can be pretty damn sure they’ve got designs on hiring a contractor to build or help them design a home theater at some point in the near future. On the other hand, if they’re looking for “Home theater receiver” it’s likely they’re far earlier in the decision making process, and they may only be looking for the lowest price on a unit they’ll install themselves.
Here’s the Thing…..
Research indicates a few important points when it comes to search engine marketing for custom electronics integrators:
1. Successful contractors get a significant percentage of their business from existing customers or word of mouth. Referrals rule, and business from existing customers is usually the most profitable.
2. Search engine marketing requires a significant investment for long term success. It often requires long term refinement to maximize ROI by driving down cost per click (CPC) and increasing conversions.
3. SEM is a complex field, and the best results are rarely achieved by going it alone. In the past, maybe, but those days are long gone. At a minimum you’ll require software tools and a staffer with knowledge and time to get good results. Most integration firms farm it out. Before you think, “Oh, he’s only trying to sell me some SEO services,” we don’t provide them. Put that in your pipe!
The 2 Heads of Search Engine Marketing
SEM is really two distinct disciplines that must work well together if you’re to maximize results. There are two different sections on search results pages:
1. Natural Search Results (Known as “Organic” in the biz) – Use Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to be found here.
2. Paid Search – Paid display ads on search results pages. These are the ads you see above, below, and in the sidebar of the search engine results pages. It is purely pay to play.
Striking the correct balance maximizes your results and ROI.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO):
The art and science of getting your website high search engine rankings for profitable search terms relating to your business. You probably caught one thing right away. Someone has to to determine what those terms (known in the industry as “keywords”) are before you can even begin to rank highly for them.
For businesses such as contractors with local service areas, those terms are typically a geographic descriptor, plus a service or result. Examples would be “Home theater installation Seattle,” “network wiring Kansas City, KS,” “lighting control Boston MA,” and “hang a TV Miami.” It is certainly possible to land great rankings for your desired search terms, especially in smaller markets. The larger the market, the more competition, and more difficult it becomes.
Thankfully, there are tools that can help discover the most popular keywords, although a significant percentage of search terms have never been searched for before. Some are just common sense, while other profitable keywords are less intuitive.
How do you know? By using keyword research tools, of course. We’ll get to that in a sec….
How Do You SEO?
What separates those listing at the top of the search engine results pages (SERPs), and the also-rans on page 4 or 400? Search engines use a mathematical formula called an algorithm. It crunches huge amounts of data, trying to determine what webpages are most relevant to a searcher’s query.
The Search Engine Conundrum
They’re subject to endless criticism from businesses and marketers who are trying to get to the top of the rankings and stay there. The fact is that search engines do try very hard to deliver the best experience for their users, lest they take their searches elsewhere. It’s a balancing act, though. Google, Bing, Yahoo, et al derive most of their revenue from paid search advertising. Their customers are actually their advertisers, NOT you and I trying to find out how to replace the radiator in our ’67 Mustang. That being said, they must deliver the best experience to searchers, or their advertisers are advertising to crickets.
What’s in a search engine algorithm?
Yeah….well, unless you work in the appropriate department at Google or Bing, behind a security apparatus the NSA would envy, it’s likely you don’t know. I don’t, exactly. Smart minds work day and night to discover the secrets, however. The stakes are huge. Billions of dollars are at stake, literally.
While few mere mortals know exactly what drives search engine results, the aforementioned smart minds have made plenty of progress. The myriad SEO firms around the globe have distilled what seems to help your listing rise to the top. It’s about 70% science / 30% art, but here are some of the primary factors most experts agree help determine search engine rankings:
On Page Factors – Web page elements affecting search rankings
Title Tag & Page URL – Include your desired keyword in the web page’s title tag and URL, preferably close to the beginning.
Images with Keywords and Related in the .alt Tag – Visitors and search engines love relevant, compelling images. Fortunately, systems integrators have all kinds of cool things to take pictures of. Include your desired keyword in the images’ .alt tag and description. Make sense, please.
Keyword Density in Body – Include the desired keyword in your page’s body text. A ratio of 3% – 5% is thought to be the desirable range. Include variations in addition to the primary keyword. IMPORTANT KEYWORD NOTE: Write for your human audience, not the search engines. You want them to keep coming back, and besides, search engines don’t buy home theaters, lighting control, or whole house audio systems. Search engines can tell who you’re writing for, and they rank you accordingly.
Internal Linking – What supporting content on your website do YOU think is relevant to your page? If you don’t think it’s relevant, why would anyone else, including a search engine? Link out to it. That creates a strong signal to search engines, and builds a web of interconnected, relevant content on your site. It also keeps visitors on your site longer, gives them a better experience, and increases the chances they’ll discover something that really resonates.
XML Site Map – This helps the search engines crawl your website to discover what you have. Make it easier with a regularly updated site map. For WordPress based sites, there are plugins that make building an XML site map and keeping it updated blitherin easy.
Duplicate Content – This one’s been bandied about in SEO and online marketer circles forever; the dreaded duplicate content penalty. Misunderstood, this one is. The problem with having identical content multiple places on your website is that it divides your ranking for a specific keyword, instead of keeping it all on one page. EXAMPLE: If you have two pages for the keyword “Residential Lighting Control Systems” with identical content,but different URLs, search engines won’t focus their efforts on one, but split things up (just an analogy, but you get the point). The most common way this happens is having a www and a non www version of the same page. Search engines treat them as two separate pages, which in fact, they are.
Page Load Speed – Visitors hate slow loading web pages, and in fact surveys show they’re likely to leave them if they take more than about 3 seconds to load. Google is all about delivering the best results experience to their users. Page load speed is a major contributor to user experience, and Google recently started using it as a ranking signal.
To help make sure your pages load quickly: optimize your images, employ page caching to minimize loading requirements, optimize your database, and make sure your webhosting provider is up to par. One other tip; disable hotlinking. This prevents people from using your image on their site, but keeping it hosted on ours. Basically, hotlinking means people embed one of your cool home theater images on their website, but keep it stored on your web server. That robs your bandwidth. Adding insult to injury, they give you no credit for the pic.
Off Page Factors – External forces driving search rankings
Backlinks – Links pointing to your site from other websites. Quality matters here far more than quantity, and in fact too many links from what Google deems poor quality websites can actually hurt your search rankings. They are looking for authority sites in your or closely related industries. Again, it’s all about relevance. Directory listings, blog comments (relevant, informative, comments only), and guest posts or articles you’ve written can all be excellent backlink sources. Ditto when you post something great on your website and it’s referenced and linked to by other websites.
BACKLINK TIP for Custom Electronics Integrators: Get links to your site from all manufacturers who you’re authorized dealers for, and associations who you’re members of. It’s an excellent way to get a number of relevant, high quality backlinks.
Social Signals – Here’s one that’s kicked off more than a few arguments. No one knows exactly to what extent social media affects search rankings, but the consensus is that it does play some role.
WordPress SEO Plugins
If your website / blog is WordPress based, as are about 100 million others, there are some excellent plugins to help you nail the SEO basics without being an SEO alchemist. Tow of the best are:
All-In-One SEO Pack
SEO by Yoast (we use that one)
Paid Search:
The next time you use a search engine, pay special attention to those areas above, below, and adjacent to the search results. They’re paid search ads, and you can be there too…..for a price. Although you can rank well for certain keywords simply by happenstance, it’s not bloody likely. More likely, you’ll need a significant SEO investment.
That’s where paid search comes in. With paid search, all it takes is money. Pump in enough, and you’re virtually assured of top rankings.
It can be quite difficult to show up on the search results pages (known as “organic rankings” in the SEO biz) for competitive, profitable keywords. Try ranking near the top of page 1 for “auto accident attorney, Los Angeles” or “cosmetic surgeon Miami, FL” and you’ll discover that in a hurry. Using paid search ads, anyone can be there. You guessed it, the higher you want your ad to appear, the more it’ll cost you.
Important Aspect of Paid Search
Paid search ads are pay per click (PPC). You only pay when someone clicks on them. How much you pay is largely determined by other advertisers and your landing page’s relevance to the search term. It’s a bidding system. Those willing to pay the most for a specific keyword rise to the top for searches on that keyword.
Complicating matters somewhat are the search engine companies themselves. They use an algorithm to determine landing page relevance. How relevant is your landing page to your ad? It’s important to search engine companies because they’re trying to deliver the highest experience for their users. The more relevant the destination, the more likely search engine users are to have a better experience.
How Landing Page Relevance Helps You and Your Visitor
Google uses what they call “Quality Score” to measure landing page relevance. QS and your keyword bid determine how high on the search results page your paid ad appears for a given query.
IMPORTANT: If you are bidding on the keyword “home theater installations Chicago” you’ll be better served with a landing page that’s home theater installation focused, rather than simply sending ad clickers to your website’s home page. This is vital to prevent dumping money down a SEM black hole.
Using a highly relevant page means your visitor finds a page more relevant to their search query, and you receive a better Google Quality Score for that keyword. Higher quality scores mean it costs less to appear near the top of the paid search ads for a given keyword. Result: you can bid less for the keyword “home theater installations Chicago”, and still find yourself at the top of the search results paid ads. Your competitor who doesn’t know this ends up paying far more for the same keyword placement, and wonders why they’re getting killed with paid search fees.
Not only will you pay less per click, but they will be more likely to convert to a customer contact, and then a sale. Again, it all comes down to delivering a page more relevant to the visitor’s search query. The more closely you match your page to what they are looking for, the more likely they are to find it.
Fortunately, using SEO to rank highly for integrator-related keywords is far easier (and less expensive) than those for insurance, attorneys, or cosmetic surgery. There’s less competition, and a home theater brings less profit than a boob job, rhinoplasty, and tummy tuck from Miami’s finest knife artist. If your website says the right things and has plenty of well-optimized images, you may already rank well in some markets for choice custom electronics related keywords.
Keyword Competition Can Kill You
There are certain popular and profitable keywords that everyone wants to rank highly for. It only makes sense. Like many things in business, it’s a money game. Because it can get expensive to consistently rank for the best keywords, larger players with resources can dominate.
For example, if you’re installing home theaters in Dallas, ranking at the top when people search for the keyword phrase “home theater installations Dallas, TX” is kind of a no-brainer. Unfortunately, it’s such a no-brainer that every Tom, Dick, and Harry’s Custom Installation company near Dallas is aiming to rank well for it. That makes your ranking job more difficult. Your SEO contractor, if you use one, does more work getting you near the top of the search results pages.
Simple Keyword Competition Trick – Here’s a really simple way to determine how much competition you face for a given keyword. I’ve used this one for years, and it still works.
1) Log out of your Google account. If you don’t, it will shape the data for you.
2) Do a Google search for your desired keyword, preceded by the operator allintitle:”desired keyword” where desired keyword is replaced by the actual keyword you’re checking. This gives you the websites in Google’s index that have your chosen keyword in their title. You can do the same search for the keyword in quotes, but performing the search with the allintitle: operator shows you competitors who are actually trying to rank for the keyword.
What about other profitable keywords that could be much easier to rank for, yet still yield profitable, new business? That’s the challenge search marketers face. It’s about boosting ROI by discovering profitable keywords that are easier (read “less expensive”) to rank for using search engine optimization and less expensive for paid search ads.
Your (or your SEO contractor’s) job is to discover these profitable keywords. It will significantly increase your targeted web traffic. If your website is designed correctly, prospective customer contacts rise along with them. As an added bonus, your resources spent on search engine optimization will be lower.
I spoke with Larry Kim, co-founder and CTO of keyword tool Wordstream for some valuable perspective here.
“Keyword research for search engine marketing used to be pretty difficult but now it’s much easier with tools like the Google Keyword Planner. To get started, try typing in a few search phrases that you think a prospective customers might be searching for and the Google Keyword Planner will suggest hundreds of other related keyword ideas for you to review.
In search engine marketing you have to pay for clicks on the keywords you pick, so it helps to be a but picky. The best keywords are ones with high commercial intent – where you believe that the person doing the keyword search is ready to buy right now. Try to avoid informational keywords like ‘do it yourself audio visual installation’ because the person doing the search isn’t looking to hire a contractor – they’re trying to learn how to do it themselves and are much less likely to be a great customer. Another way to eliminate these types of informational keywords is to use words like “learn” or “job” or “diy” as negative keywords.”
SEM Tools
You’ll be able to guess some keywords, but leave plenty of great ones on the table that way. The difficult in finding, tracking, and managing the best keywords and paid search campaigns using guesswork and spreadsheets led to the keyword tool. There are some excellent keyword tools available. One place to start is Google’s own free Keyword Planner.
Yeah, free is good, but there are several other free and paid keyword search and management tools available that bear looking at too:
Wordstream – They’re an industry favorite. In addition to their full suite of keyword research and organization tools (both free and paid), they have a cool, free AdWords grader application that helps you find mistakes in your adwords campaigns. It’s definitely worth running your campaigns through this.
Wordtracker – They’ve been around forever and have a massive index. They also have a free keyword suggestion tool available, and easy to use interface, and give you competition info so you’ll have an idea how much competition there is for a given keyword.
MOZ – An front-runner in the SEO space, they began life as a highly regarded SEO firm, so they definitely know the search business. Part of their offering was excellent SEO/SEM software. A few years back, they left SEO and transitioned purely into the software space. In addition to their keyword research tools, they have MOZ site explorer, which gives information about who is linking to your website and your competitors. This is invaluable when discovering new backlinking opportunities for your website. They also have one of the Internet’s most active and informative SEO communities; a great place for getting ideas and info. I found their advanced site ranking functionality very useful. It lets you see where your site ranks for specific keywords, if it’s going up or down relative to your competition, and by how much.
SEMRush – Used by Fortune 500 firms such as GE and Wells Fargo Bank, they help you discover missed opportunities by checking out what your competition is doing with their paid search campaigns. They also have excellent keyword research tools available. Many SEO firms use SEMRush due to their keyword research and PPC campaign monitoring effectiveness.
Majestic SEO – Majestic has a huge link database, and an excellent web crawler, which discovers site links. This is the backbone of their site explorer and backlink history checker. Many SEO firms use Majestic for their massive index database, even if they use other tools as well. While an excellent product, the main criticism of Majestic is it’s UI, which some find not as user friendly as some other solutions.
ahrefs – AHrefs’ site explorer (wish I would have copyrighted that term) has a massive backlink index; updated every 15 minutes, so it’s likely the most current of all the SEO tools. No, I don’t have hard data to support that. They also use their own crawler, while many others use the search engine’s crawlers and data.
The Best Keyword / SEO Tool
Should you use an SEO tool? Which one’s best? Determining the “best” SEO tool would not only be a truly massive undertaking, but would come with a plethora of qualifiers. I’m just not up for it. However, SEO tools are like any other tool; there better fits for each specific situation. In addition to the Google keyword tool have used Wordtracker, MOZ (paid), and ahrefs. I was happy with each and would not want to embark on any serious SEO effort without at least one.
The $64,000 question: Do you need a serious SEO effort?
Recent Google Adwords Changes
Google just announced many changes and updates to their paid search platform, Adwords. Leading SEM tool provider Wordstream has a webinar detailing the changes. It’s certainly worth a look if you’re jumping into the paid search pond. Watch the video recording of the webinar here.
Mobile Matters to Google Now (and to Your Audience)
There’s a big shift underway. More people than ever before are viewing your website from mobile devices. In many markets the mobile browsing percentage is over 50 now, and rising. There are 2 big reasons not to ignore this trend.
The first, and it should be the underlying reason behind nearly everything you do in business, is that mobile demands a different viewing experience. Delivering the best experience possible to all those interacting with your business isn’t a sure path to success, but it’s damn smart nonetheless.
The second, and SEO driven, reason to ensure a good mobile browsing experience? Google’s watching, and as of April 21st, 2015, your website’s mobile readiness impacts search rankings. Exactly how much is open to debate, but why take the chance? Here’s an excellent post in Search Engine Land if you want more info on what’s being called “Mobilegeddon” by search marketers.
I asked Cyrus Shepard, Audience Development Director of MOZ for some insight on the new Google mobile changes and their impact on local businesses. He pointed to the need for a ROI calculation when determining how local businesses address it:
“Google recently changed its mobile search algorithm to favor mobile-friendly sites. This means websites that don’t deliver a mobile-friendly experience could see a drop in their mobile traffic from Google search. This mobile update is particularly important to local and brick and mortar businesses, because a much larger percentage of mobile searches have local intent. The difference is likely only a few percentage points, but you need to do a cost analysis and ask yourself if you really can afford to lose this traffic.”
Well, can you?
How to Make Your Site Mobile Ready
There are two common ways to ensure mobile readiness:
1) A “responsive” website – Such a site automatically reconfigures to more optimize itself for mobile devices. Many websites running on WordPress (it’s not just a blogging platform anymore) use a responsive design. If you’re building a new website or updating your old WordPress site, select a responsive template.
2) A separate, mobile-optimized website – Specialized mobile websites are typically used by business that get foot traffic and benefit from displaying different information on their mobile site than their main site. They display the info most mobile visitors want to see right on the main page, and have far fewer pages than the company’s standard website.
Mobile websites can be much “lighter”, meaning they have far less code and smaller images, so they load much quicker. That’s a massive advantage to sketchy mobile connections, and overtaxed data plans.
Businesses such as restaurants, retail stores, auto care facilities, nail salons, coffee shops, and the like are prime candidates for separate mobile websites. System integrators, AV contractors, interior designers, and building contractors are probably better off going the responsive route. There’s really no reason to incur the added cost of a specialized mobile site, when a responsive site does the job as well or better for these businesses.
It’s all in knowing your customer and what they’re looking for. A custom electronics integrator’s customers are looking for what you do, how to contact you, and examples of your work. That’s the same whether they’re looking from their desktop or mobile device.
Is Your Website Mobile Ready Now?
From a search engine perspective, what matters is that your website displays correctly on a mobile device. To see if yours does, use Google’s handy mobile ready check tool here. You may be covered already. Then again, maybe not. It’s best to be sure.
Look Inside for Profitable Keywords
Finally, there is one more place to check when looking for profitable keywords; your own website analytics. What? You aren’t using them? Mein Gott Im Himmel! Install Google analytics post haste. Then, you’ll discover all sorts of info that can make or break your SEO/SEM.
What queries are people using to find your site? Is there a page for them directly relating to those keywords? You can be missing a big fat boat here, so run through your analytics regularly for missed opportunities. There could be a new media room project out there with your name on it, right under your nose.
IMPORTANT: While you’re scrambling around for new customers, don’t neglect your old ones. Historically, they are proven to be your most profitable, and fastest from meeting to completion (and final payment). Contact them regularly to keep your company’s name in front of them, and pop interesting ideas in their heads. Of course, that’s what we do for you at WELD2.
SEO and SEM can be an excellent marketing channel for custom electronics integrators to find new customers. It all comes down to finding and using the best keywords, optimizing your website for them (but not at the expense of your human visitors), consistently creating new content around desirable keywords, and carefully optimizing your paid search activities. You can do this internally or contract it out. Tally Ho!