How to Get More Quality Traffic to Your Website

I’m passionate about creating great websites and search engine optimization (SEO), which is the practice of getting websites in tip top shape so they show up in search engine results.  These are things that a lot of people–from CEO’s to small business owners to freelancers–are generally afraid of.  I’ve been building websites and helping others make theirs better for over 10 years now, in companies ranging from large media properties to enterprise software to B2C small businesses.  I’ve learned a lot of important lessons along the way that are especially relevant for field service businesses. Time is tight when you’re running a business, so you need to focus on the tactics that will have the greatest impact.  Here are my top 4 tips for creating an amazing, effective field service company website to get more traffic and customers:

Make sure your URL, or website address, is descriptive.

Some business owners assume that if a prospective customer is interested in their business, they will be able to guess or figure out what your business’s URL is.  That’s just not the case.  And even if you tell people your website address, if it’s not something they can easily relate back to you, chances are they’re going to forget it.  So if your business name (or personal name) is something that is very different from your website URL, it’s time to do some domain name shopping.  There are a lot of helpful domain generator tools out there that can provide suggestions. Securing a new domain is generally inexpensive and can help bring more potential customers to your door.

Invite them and they will come.

How often do you tell people about your website?  Is the URL on your invoices, your email signature, your business card, your HomeAdvisor profile, your Facebook page, and your Yelp profile? Do you mention it to people and other businesses you meet that seem like they might be interested in your services or partnering with you in the future?  People aren’t going to show up to a party they don’t know about, and customers aren’t going to visit a website they’re not aware of.  So do an audit and be sure to add your website address to all of your printed and electronic business-related materials.

Get your site search engine-ready.

More and more people are relying on search engines, from Google to Yahoo to YouTube to Yelp, to navigate to websites, images and videos.  If you haven’t made your site ready for the search engines, you might never show up in those searches.  Visitors from search engines are important because they’re generally very targeted–they’re close to making a decision about hiring a contractor or starting a major project.  Make sure that your site has the search engine optimization (SEO) basics—strong descriptive titles (i.e., “Landscaping Services in Richmond”), text-based content that would make sense to a person who is reading it, and nothing that a search engine would consider to be deceptive to readers (like pages with just links and keywords but no real, valuable content).

Make it a party worth attending.

Let’s say you set up your website when you launched your business 15 years ago (or even 2 years ago) and you haven’t touched it since.  Then ask yourself why anyone who has visited your website would want to come back, even if at one time the information there was helpful to them.  Chances are much of the content is stale or irrelevant, the design is outdated and may not work on smartphones or tablets.  If people do stumble upon an outdated site, they’re certainly not going to tell others about it.  So put it on your calendar to update your site for design and content at least twice a year with new images and your latest products or services–your site visitors will be grateful and will start visiting again. A company’s website is often a key factor when a customer is selecting a field service company that is a good fit for them.  These tips will get you on your way to an effective, high quality field service website that customers and prospective customers alike will find useful and enjoy visiting. A question for you:  are you interested in learning more about building great small business websites?  If so, just leave a message in the comments about the topics that interest you and we’ll start writing about it!