14 Things for Landscape and Pool Contractors to Avoid When Seeking SEO Domination
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The Content Team,
HALSTEAD.
Originally published on October 23, 2014. Updated on July 8, 2022.
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Did you know that over 90% of webpages don’t get even a single visitor from Google? According to a stat shared by the Search Engine Journal, this is true. But why are only 10% of webpages getting organic search traffic?
The main reason is that these 10% are better optimized than the other 90%, which means they’re appearing near the top of the search engine results pages (SERPs). Leading landscape and pool contractors prioritize their website optimization efforts, which helps establish them as leaders in the industry. Optimizing a website can be a daunting task, but it’s essential to ensure the long-term success of your firm.
It’s helpful to have a basic understanding of what website optimization is and how it works. What does it mean when a website is optimized? Web optimization refers to any actions taken to improve a website’s ability to get noticed by search engines. Ultimately, website optimization helps improve your website so that it can become an effective tool to drive business goals.
You may be wondering if optimization is even necessary, and the answer is absolutely yes! You will see better quality leads, better projects, and even attract better recruits. Ultimately, website optimization will save you time in the long run, by working as your front line sales team.
But what is the best way to optimize your website? How should you optimize your website? A good place to start is what you should not do when you are optimizing your website, which will be an effective guide throughout the process.
1. Being Too Thin on Content
Being found online today is harder than ever, which is why successful landscape companies have a content-driven marketing plan. When a potential customer has a question or a problem that needs solving, they are likely to perform a Google search to find an answer or solution. The best way to ensure your prospects are finding you is by regularly posting useful content to your website via a blog. Make sure to offer information that will help potential customers with their research and drive them through the sales process on your site.
When your content is thin, it provides little to no value to the website visitor. Google recognizes thin content and will prioritize websites with useful content. Much of this comes down to keyword optimization or search engine optimization (SEO), which caters to the search engine algorithm so that content appears near the top of the SERPs.
For this example, we’ll say that your business offers residential lawn care services. You could have a blog post that addresses signs and symptoms that a lawn needs fertilization. So you will likely use keywords and keyword phrases such as “how to get rid of brown grass,” “lawn fertilization near me,” or “how to get green grass.” When someone in your area searches similar keywords, your website will appear near the top of their search results. Hopefully, your website will appear at the very top, above your competitors, because it is highly optimized.
2. Failing to Do Keyword Research
One of the biggest mistakes you can make is not doing keyword research and assuming you know what keywords will work best. In fact, keyword research should be one of the first steps you take to optimize your website content.
Keyword research will help you understand what local people are actually searching for, rather than what you think they will be searching for. Often the keywords that you use as an industry expert will not be the same words that a homeowner would use. Tools such as Ubersuggest can be helpful in finding keywords that fit the user’s search intent.
3. Lacking Optimized Titles and Headings
Accurate titles, headings, URL slugs, and meta tags that include local search terms are important for on-page SEO optimization. Primary keywords should be used in the title and in the slug, as well as in at least one heading.
Accurate and descriptive titles and headings that clearly indicate where you are located will help your webpages appear in search results in your service area. Headings also make your content easier to consume as they break up the text, rather than it appearing as one long paragraph or piece of content. Since people tend to scroll and skim rather than read every word in an entire article, these titles and headings will help them easily locate the content they are searching for.
4. Being Too Vague
Being as descriptive as possible helps establish you as an industry expert. According to Buffer, a good length guideline for blog posts is approximately 1,600 words but 2,500-word posts tend to perform the best. This requires that the content you post is high-quality, relevant, and highly detailed. Think long-form, value-rich content.
However, the optimal length can vary depending on the industry and competition. For example, if the leader in the SERPs has an article of 600 words on their blog, all you would need to do is produce content that is better than their blog post. Overall, in a locally focused landscape-specific industry, we see success with fewer words.
5. Not Updating Your Content
A strategy that successful companies follow is to keep website content up to date for current seasons, trends, and any new services offered. While sometimes this means creating new content, other times it simply means updating older blog posts with current information. In the landscape industry, most content won’t quickly become irrelevant, but it would if it features lower quality content that is not up-to-date with current technology.
For example, in 2000 you may have posted a photo of an outdoor kitchen that was of excellent quality at the time, but by 2022’s standards it’s poor quality. This content can be improved simply by replacing the photo with one that will attract today’s customers to your site.
6. Using Low-Quality Photos and Graphics
The best way to decrease the selling impact of your completed projects is to share low-quality photos on your website. It could be your best project ever, but blurry only says one thing: lack of attention to detail. It’s likely that this isn’t true of your work, so don’t allow your website to suggest it.
If you take a look at websites for leaders in the industry, you will see crisp, clear, high-quality photos of lush lawns and landscapes, luxurious pools, happy team members, and more. Investing in professional photography (and videography) will make your business appear more professional and your work more impressive.
7. Not Considering the User Experience (UX)
Perhaps one of the most important things to consider is the UX. Leading firms have websites that are designed specifically with their target audience in mind. The content should speak to their demographic and the website should be easy to navigate. Website conversions are a result of having a clearly defined target audience and an understanding of the user experience.
For example, an excellent website design that is user friendly will include a navigation bar or menu that takes the user to the appropriate page. Each service page should include information specific to that service, rather than list every single service that you offer. A page about lawn mowing services should talk about the benefits of professional lawn mowing. While it may link out to a page about fertilization services, highly detailed information about fertilization will not be included on the lawn mowing page.
User behavior tools and UX analytics tools are excellent for analyzing your website to see what needs to be improved based on real data. Smartlook allows you to gain clear insights into the UX by watching users’ recordings of their experience on your website. In addition, it provides data on drop-offs and a heat map that shows where users are clicking on each webpage. This information is invaluable.
8. Not Having Referrals or Backlinks
Google recommends having your website mentioned in useful places online. For example, you could have photos of the gorgeous planting beds you installed at a new community hospital featured on a local news website. When the news website includes a link back to your site, this is called a backlink and it works as a referral.
Another example is to have your content or work featured by an online industry resource such as Lawn & Landscape or the National Association of Landscape Professionals. These would be considered high-quality backlinks that establish your credibility and thought leadership.
9. Having Unclear Call To Actions (CTA)
Industry leaders include a clear CTA on every page. These are meant to guide the prospect through the customer journey and if they are not clear, they may not know what to do next. Examples of CTAs that can be used include: contact us, learn more, get a quote, call us, email us, etc.
10. Poor or Outdated Website Design
Because no one calls a company to learn more about them right away anymore, landscape and pool contractor websites are very often making the first impression. Investing in an easy-to-use, attractive, well-organized website is a must for any business owner. The majority of new business opportunity leads should be coming from your site. Don’t mess that up by having an early 2000’s style presence.
11. Not Optimizing Your Website for Mobile
Many first visits to your site are from a mobile phone or tablet. One of the first actions a visitor takes on a mobile site should be similar to those actions you’d want them to take on a desktop version (e.g. browse around, call). Requiring zooming in or limiting information isn’t acceptable. Search engines like Google are now penalizing websites for being non-mobile friendly.
12. Having a Slow Site Speed
The faster a website loads, the better. In fact, the bounce rate increases with every second it takes for a page to load. Kinsta reports that for every one-second delay in page load, customer satisfaction decreases by 16%. Google’s PageSpeed Insights allows you to enter a URL and test the website speed. A slow website can negatively affect SEO. Please be careful to understand the measuring tool for speeds. Each platform can vary. For instance, Squarespace websites often have skewed speed results from major speed tools—depicting them as slow where it's not actually true.
13. Over-Optimizing Your Website
Believe it or not, it is possible to over-optimize your website. Oftentimes this is done via keyword stuffing, which involves “stuffing” a website with lots of keywords, whether relevant or not.
Good SEO is achieved naturally with good copywriting that seeks to educate and inform the consumer. Trying to play the system by stuffing keywords simply won’t cut it these days. Plus, isn’t the point of your website to serve your target audience? This can be done with relevant content, so stop with the “landscaping, landscaping, landscaping” 49 times on a single page!
For example, if you are a pool builder you may post a blog titled “8 Luxurious Features to Include in Your Pool Design.” This listicle-style blog post could include sections for adding fire features, a tanning ledge, waterfalls, ambient lighting, and more. This is helpful information for the reader and will naturally include keywords.
14. Not Seeking the Help of Experts
It’s likely that you have a full schedule with barely enough time to see your family or complete the projects on your plate. Relying on professionals to optimize your website is a good strategy. Not only do they know what strategies work best, but they can get the work done efficiently. However, it’s important to remember that SEO is a long game and it takes consistently building content to make it effective.
You may be tempted to think, “how can I optimize my website for free?” Just remember that you get what you pay for, and what is it saying when something is free? Many optimization tools out there will promote their services as being free, and then once you have your site up and running you have to pay to continue using the service. Time is money, and your time may be better spent on what you know best—landscaping or pool building. Let web experts do the web optimization work so that you can focus on your business.