SEO for Landscapers & Pool Contractors: The Complete Guide
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The Content Team,
HALSTEAD.
Do you know how your business website ranks for applicable keyword searches? For example, if a local prospect were to search “landscapers near me” or “luxury pool builders,” would your business rank high on SERPs?
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Having an online presence with excellent visibility is key for landscape and pool contractors in today’s market. The customer journey often begins with a Google search, and so your website’s ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs) will have a huge impact on whether your business is discovered.
The goal is to have your website rank at the top of the search results. According to studies, almost 40% of users click on the first non-ad search result, with only 18% clicking the second link. The further down the page that the search results appear, the lower the clickthrough rate (CTR), which means a user is less likely to click it.
So, how can you rank higher on SERPs? One of the best ways is to implement search engine optimization (SEO) on your website. SEO is an essential part of marketing, and if you are not including this in your marketing strategy, now is the time to start. Getting familiar with this complete guide about SEO for landscapers and pool contractors is a great place to begin.
What Is SEO?
According to Moz, “SEO is a set of practices designed to improve the appearance and positioning of webpages in organic search results,” organic meaning the search result is a non-paid, non-ad result. In simple terms, SEO is a practice used to increase online visibility within search engines.
Google defines SEO as “the process of improving the quality and quantity of website traffic to a website or a webpage from search engines.” That’s pretty technical. A better definition—one that relates to landscapers and pool builders—might be this:
“SEO is what landscape contractors and pool builders do to make themselves more visible and more available to local potential customers online.”
While keywords may be the first thing that comes to mind when you think of SEO, there is much more to SEO than that. There are also technical ways to optimize SEO for your site.
Effective landscaper SEO and pool builder SEO will make your respective business more visible online to local customers. This means that more prospects will be discovering your business and potentially hiring you for that big outdoor living space project or inground pool project. You definitely don’t want these projects to be going to your competitors simply because they rank higher on SERPs, not because their work is of higher quality.
For almost all landscape and pool contractors, you don’t need to rank well 15 states away or at the national level; you just need to rank well in your ideal service areas. This is an important element to truly understand when planning your landscaper SEO strategy—the more laser-targeted you can be with the search keywords and the locations, the faster and deeper you will penetrate your service market.
How Does SEO for Landscapers Work?
SEO is utilized to cater to the search engine’s algorithm in order to rank higher on SERPs. While many search engines are out there, we will focus on Google since it’s the most popular one—although the concept is similar for all search engines.
Google’s ranking systems are designed to sort through billions of websites to find the results that are most relevant and useful to the user. Numerous algorithms are used, including keywords used, the relevance and usability of the webpage, source expertise, and location. The freshness and quality of the content also play a role.
Through a three-step process, the search engine will then display the best search results. First, search engines send out web crawlers that scour the internet for webpages and recent updates. Next, the information will be indexed if it has been deemed worthy by the search engine—meaning that it deems that the content is of high value, is original, can be crawled, and has inbound links. The final step is ranking, which is where the three pillars of SEO come in: technical optimization, on-site optimization, and off-site optimization.
Why Is SEO Important for Landscapers and Pool Contractors?
As a landscape or pool contractor, local engagement is everything. Your success as a business depends entirely on your local market. The same is true for SEO. According to SEO Tribunal, 92% of people who search for business listings on Google select only those results that are on the first page of local search results.
That means that if, for example, you’re not ranking on the first page of search results for “pool builders,” then you’re missing out on 92% of people using Google to search for a pool builder in your area. And remember, 97% of people learn about local companies through the internet, so any marketing effort that is not heavily invested in the digital realm is dead on arrival.
If done well, your SEO efforts will lead to higher rankings on Google searches, drawing in more prospects who click around your site. Eventually, you can re-target those same prospects with content that is oriented to their shown interests, further nurturing those prospects into becoming leads for your sales team.
When it comes to mapping out your SEO strategy, your ultimate goal is for the following:
In Google results, show up as close to first as possible when potential customers in your area search for landscape or pool contractors.
Rank highly in search results for terms covering earlier stages in the consumer research journey, such as “best pavers around a pool” or “how big should my pool be?”
Make sure your website is carefully tuned and curated. A high Google ranking means more traffic to your website, so you need to make sure your site’s content and design capture visitors’ attention while answering their questions.
In order to accomplish any of this, you simply have to play by Google’s rules. It’s non-negotiable.
Local SEO vs. National SEO for Landscape Contractors and Pool Builders
Organic SEO is a term referring to methods used to obtain a high search ranking via non-paid, algorithm-driven results. Those algorithms catalog, search, and rank websites based on five basic parameters: intent, relevance, content quality, website usability, and context. The primary difference between organic SEO and local SEO is that local SEO has a location-based focus while organic SEO has a focus on content optimization.
Context is where local SEO comes into play. Search engines like Google want to provide search results that are relevant to searchers—including their current location, past search history, search settings, and other details.
Landscapers and pool builders will likely want to have a larger focus on local SEO. In fact, HubSpot reports that 46% of all Google searches are looking for local information. Having a high number of website visitors will mean nothing if the visitors are not from your service area. It doesn’t do you much good to have someone in California read about your landscaping services if your business is in New York.
Local SEO Strategies
Since local SEO is so important for companies in the landscape industry, implementing a variety of strategies will provide the best results. Local SEO refers to the practice of optimizing your company’s website and Google My Business to rank for searches by searchers in specific cities and towns and states.
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GOOGLE MY BUSINESS
Creating a Google Business Profile will increase your company’s visibility on Google search results. Google Business Profiles will feature images, a map, and information about your business. However, simply creating a business profile will not allow you to be in control of its content or to use it as an effective SEO tool.
This is why creating a free Google My Business account for the business profile is essential. With this account, you can take ownership of the profile to implement keywords into the description to make it SEO friendly. You can use it as a local marketing tool, engage with customers, and gain insights into your audience and local search performance stats.
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OPTIMIZE ONLINE DIRECTORIES & LISTINGS
There are three companies in the United States that provide a large amount of map data to Apple, Yelp, Google, Bing, and others. Your business will likely already be listed. These companies include:
Making sure that your company information is up to date and consistent across all of these data aggregators is important. Ensure that there are no misspellings, wrong phone numbers, or any other errors that could lead to lost sales.
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REVIEWS
Encouraging customers to review your business on Google, Yelp, Angi, Facebook, etc. will help provide the social proof that your potential customers need to establish trust. Positive reviews can boost visibility in local searches, but authenticity is key.
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HOW DO LOCAL SEARCH ALGORITHMS WORK?
Search engines use different algorithms for local and organic searches. Only Google knows how those algorithmic differences precisely break down, but for landscape contractors and pool builders, all you need to know is that there are three key drivers behind a local SERP.
Proximity: How close is the business’s address to the searcher’s computer or mobile device?
Competition: Google measures and ranks the prominence of businesses based on online mentions, references, local business listings, backlinks from other sites, physical foot traffic, number of user reviews, and some other factors.
Relevance: Through on-page content, reviews, and social media, Google develops a sense of content relevance to the searcher, including the terms or keywords used in the search.
As you can tell, some of these factors are more controllable than others. The goal of your local SEO strategy should be ongoing and continuous—an incremental process of improvement that aims to achieve better reviews, more mentions, more references, more backlinks, more press hits, better-written content, more targeted keywords, and so on.
On-Site Optimization.
On-site SEO, also known as on-page SEO for landscapers, involves optimizing the content of a website as well as the source code. The goal of on-site optimization is to improve the user experience and site rankings. Some of the elements of on-page SEO include keywords and keyphrases in content, HTML code for title tags, meta descriptions, internal links, URL optimization, and the overall user experience (UX).
Keywords & Keyphrases
A keyword is a single word that describes the content on a webpage, while a keyphrase is made up of a few words. These are important because when users perform a Google search, and if your website features the keyword or keyphrases that they have searched for, your website will appear on the SERPs.
These are the different types of keywords that you should be familiar with as someone in the landscape industry:
Short-tail keywords: These are broad search terms that usually consist of one or two words. Because of their short length, they are usually not very specific and will result in a large number of search results. Example: “lawn service.”
Long-tail keywords: These are more specific and will yield fewer search results than short-tail keywords. The conversion rate for long-tail keywords tends to be high, making them an essential part of any SEO strategy. Example: “what services do commercial lawn care companies offer?”
Geo-targeting keywords: This is an extremely important category for landscapers, hardscapers, and pool builders because it ties a specific service to a specific location. Example: “lawn mowing services Rochester, NY.”
Product and service keywords: These keywords describe a specific product or service offering. Example: “paver patio builder” or “lawn mowing services.”
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KEYWORD RESEARCH
Keyword research is an essential part of SEO for landscapers that involves identifying popular search terms that your target customer may be using. This will help you determine what content needs to be created while also giving you insight into marketing trends.
These are the three elements to consider when doing keywords research:
Relevance: While stuffing your content with keywords may have worked in the past, today the entirety of the content must be relevant to the keywords. Depth of expertise plays an important role in relevancy and ranking high on SERPs. The content that is on your website must be high-quality.
Authority: The more comprehensive the content on your website is on a specific topic, the more likely your website will rank well in topical authority. You want your business to be the landscape industry authority in your local area.
Volume: This refers to the monthly search volume for a specific keyword. There will be more clickthroughs on keywords that have a higher volume since this means that the keywords are searched for more often.
There are various tools that you can use for keyword research, including the following:
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KEYWORD PLACEMENT
Once you have identified what your target keywords are, knowing where and how to use them is important. Strategic keyword placement will help search engines index your site and attract visitors. Some of the places where keywords should be used are in titles, meta descriptions, subheadings, throughout the body of the copy, image titles, URLs, and link anchor text.
High-quality content may be the most effective tool that you have to rank in search engines. Having a professional copywriter produce content for your website or blog will increase your chances of earning that number-one spot on SERPs, especially when keywords are used in H1 and H2 tags. Using keywords and keyphrases within the content is part of any SEO for landscapers strategy.
Title Tags
The title tag refers to the HTML tag that is located in the head section of a webpage. It provides context as to what information is within the content of that webpage. The title tag is generally what is shown in SERPs as the clickable link.
Creating a hierarchy of content and mapping out your website is critical. With each webpage on different levels of a website, the content should get more specific. An example of this is a pillar page versus a cluster. When it comes to SEO for pool builders, here is an example of that hierarchy:
Pillar Page: Swimming Pools—The pillar page summarizes a basic overview of an umbrella topic. In this example, this pillar page would list all of the swimming pool services that your company offers. This page would feature links to all of these services for more detailed information. Each pillar would feature links to multiple cluster pages.
Cluster Page: Fiberglass Pools—A cluster page features in-depth information about a specific topic. In this case, the content would show only fiberglass pools and any relevant information. There could be cluster pages within the swimming pools pillar page such as gunite pools, vinyl pools, or any other type of pool that your business will build.
A title tag should be a concise description of the content of the page. Generally, title tags display best at 50 to 60 characters. Since this is what the user will see on the SERPs, it is important that the titles accurately convey what content can be found on the page, but also that the title features target keywords that the user is likely to search for.
Meta Descriptions
The meta description is a brief summary of the content of a page and is longer than the title. Generally, meta descriptions should be kept between 150 to 154 characters and should contain keywords. These descriptions should inspire the reader to want to learn more by clicking on the link. This is a great place to use relevant keywords so that your content can be easily found.
For example, a meta description for a swimming pools page could be something like this: “Transform your outdoor space into a backyard resort that includes an in-ground pool. Enjoy the life of luxury with a beautifully designed custom pool.”
Internal Links
Internal links are hyperlinks that direct to another page on your website. In order for a search engine to crawl a website, it needs links to do so. Think of internal linking as a way to guide your visitors and search engines throughout related content. This helps the search engine determine the relevance of each page, their relationships, and the overall value.
To further the example with the pillar and cluster content for a pool builder website, the swimming pools pillar page would feature a link to fiberglass pools, gunite pools, vinyl pools, and vice versa. These are considered internal links and provide structure to your site.
URL Optimization
The URL, also known as the website address, can be valuable to SEO for landscapers. Optimizing the URL will make it easy for both users and search engines to identify what the topic of that particular page is.
Here are some tips for optimizing URLs:
Remove extra words (i.e., and, that, your).
Keep it short and simple.
Use keywords and make it readable.
Use hyphens between words.
Make each URL unique.
User Experience
Utilizing all of the SEO best practices that we’ve already mentioned will make the user experience better. The great news is that UX is a major factor in the Google algorithm. A website that is fast, easy to navigate, mobile responsive, well-organized, aesthetically pleasing, and has easily consumable content will rank higher on SERPs.
Off-Site Optimization.
Off-site SEO, also referred to as off-page SEO, is the work done outside of your website that helps signal the legitimacy and value of the content on your website. This can be done with numerous techniques and tactics, including backlinks, social media, content marketing, and public relations.
Backlinks
Backlinks, also called inbound links, are any links from another website that link back to your website. The backlinks should come from topically relevant sources. You could think of backlinks as votes for your website, which help establish your business as an authority in the landscape industry.
It is important to note that not all backlinks are created equal. Search engines measure the quality and the quantity of the backlinks that lead to your site. Domain diversity is a factor, meaning that the more authoritative websites that link to your website, the better. Domain diversity is even more influential than the overall total of backlinks that your site has.
Social Media
When your content is shared on social media, it sends social signals to search engines that indicate that your content is valuable. While Google does not officially use social signals for SERP rankings, the backlinks count.
Using an SEO strategy for the content that you post on social media is also an effective tactic. Not only does this create more backlinks, but it increases brand awareness and trust.
Public Relations
Press releases and interviews can help you gain more local authority in the industry and set you apart from your competitors. If your company has completed hardscape work at a local community park, speaking with a local news outlet can increase brand awareness. In addition, the news outlet will likely create a news story that will be published on their social media pages and on their website, resulting in more backlinks for your business.
Content for SEO.
Content truly is the most important element of SEO. But what do you think of when you think of content? Blog posts? YouTube videos? News articles? Landing pages? An About Us page? A Facebook feed? Instagram photos? If you answered, “All of the above,” then you’re on the right track. Content is the fuel that feeds that SEO marketing engine—the bigger or more ambitious your operation, the more content you’re going to need.
As you start to produce content, even if it’s just an update to a landing page, you really have to be thinking about all of the SEO elements mentioned above. Remember, SEO for landscapers is all about optimizing your content, so each bit of fuel you feed into the machine needs to be in accord with your SEO strategy. That includes the titles, headings, and subheadings you write; the keywords you choose; the URLs you select; the tags you enter; and the hashtags you use.
Equally important is how you maintain and update your content and corresponding metadata. For it to perform well, Google needs to believe it’s relevant. And relevant content is content that is useful.
Make sure your About Us, Contact, and other landing pages are well-written, copyedited, and keyword-optimized. Next, start writing some blog posts. Draft some ideas for posts, then set an easy target, such as one post per week. Over time, raise the bar and aim to do two or three posts per week. Don’t neglect other forms of content—you need to be engaged on all fronts: professional photography, video, and social media.
Having a blog as part of your website is a great way to implement content marketing into your SEO strategy. In fact, according to Demand Metric, companies with blogs generate 67% more leads than those without.
While the blog itself is on-site, when you share this high-quality content on social media or when a niche-specific authoritative website links to your content, you will generate those valuable off-site backlinks that will improve your ranking on SERPs. Content will only be effective when it is optimized for SEO. As you can see, all of the strategies work together to get results. SEO builds upon itself.
Technical Optimization.
Certain website technical factors can influence the ranking that it receives. Technical SEO affects the search engine’s crawling process and can either positively or negatively impact it. Some of these technical factors include security protocol, website speed, mobile-friendliness, sitemaps, site registration, and whether the site is crawlable and indexable.
Security Protocol & Certificates
Search engines place more value on websites that are secure. For landscapers and pool builders, this is especially important if your website has forms where customers can submit their contact information and personal data, and make payments. Obtaining an SSL certificate for your website is proof that you value the online security of your customers.
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SECURITY SOCETS LAYER (SSL)
SSL is a technology that keeps an internet connection secure and protected. SSL utilizes encryption to scramble data so that bad actors are unable to see the information that is transferred. When a website has an SSL certificate, it will rank higher on SERPs. Even if the security protocol is not actually SSL, it is still referred to as an SSL certificate since this was the original security protocol.
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HYPERTEXT TRANSFER PROTOCOL SECURE (HTTPS)
You have likely seen HTTP and HTTPS in website addresses. When the website address includes the “S” (HTTPS), this means that the website is secure with an SSL certificate. This is an indication to the search engine crawler that the website is safe, and therefore will rank higher.
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TRANSPORT LAYER SECURITY (TLS)
TLS is simply an updated and more secure version of SSL. It encrypts data sent over the internet so that it is securely delivered and hackers or other bad actors do not have access to sensitive data.
Website Speed
SEO aside, the data shows that website speed is incredibly important. In fact, Google’s research shows that the probability of a user clicking off of a website increases by 32% when a website does not load within 3 seconds. Imagine if you lose a big project simply because your website doesn’t load fast enough. You certainly don’t want that to happen.
Since the user values site speed, search engines use this factor when ranking search results. You can check the speed of a specific web page on your site for all devices with PageSpeed Insights, or for your entire website with Ahrefs, to see if your site measures up.
Mobile Friendliness
The truth is, most people will probably access your website from a mobile device such as a smartphone or tablet. According to Oberlo, over 57% of internet traffic comes from mobile devices. Having a responsive website design that automatically adjusts to the device is important, especially because it has a big impact on ranking.
Sitemaps
A sitemap is simply a file where information about all of the pages and content of your site is provided, which makes it easier for search engines to crawl your site. For example, your site map will include every section of your website such as an about section, landscape services offered, and more– every piece of content is listed on this sitemap. There are two types of sitemaps that are generally used: HTML and XML. Oftentimes, both are used in SEO strategy.
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HTML SITEMAPS
HTML sitemaps are generally located at the bottom of a webpage as a list of formatted links, which makes user navigation easier. There is some debate on whether or not HTML improves SEO, but at the very least it makes the website more user-friendly.
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XML SITEMAPS
XML sitemaps are especially effective when it comes to search engine crawling and SEO. This file lists all of the links to a website’s important pages to speed up content discovery. The XML sitemaps should be kept up to date with only indexable pages included.
Site Registration
Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools allow you to register your website so that it can be indexed. These are both free services where you can submit your sitemap to improve your website’s search engine ranking.
Crawlability & Indexability
It is essential that your website has no crawlability issues that will interfere with the search engine crawling content. Here are some of the factors that could prevent crawling on your website:
Technology such as Javascript or Ajax
Errors in code
Broken links
URL errors
Pages with denied access (403 status code)
A search engine may be able to crawl your site, but if there are indexability issues it will not be able to index all of the pages. Here are some of the factors that could prevent indexing:
Duplicate content
Errors in code
301 redirects
Thin content (not enough content on the page)
How Long Does It Take for SEO to Work?
Once you’ve implemented your SEO strategy, it’s important to understand that it’s an investment that will take time for results to be seen. Generally, you can expect to see ROI-impacting results within six to twelve months depending on your website’s age and the efforts that your local competitors have put into their SEO strategy that may cause them to rank higher.
This is not to say that your SEO agency, if doing things properly, won’t be tracking, measuring, and reporting on the advancements in your website’s performance. They certainly will be. But a lot of contractors don't understand the roadmap of a new SEO effort. See, moving a keyword from the fifth page of search results to the fourth (which is what is happening during the first few months) doesn't have a big impact on your website traffic and conversions because most searchers aren’t going beyond the second page.
Out of the gates, there should be some quick wins that come from optimizing your Google My Business and local citations. We see this drive a quick burst in local searches. From there, it’s about the consistency and quality of your SEO work in Google’s eyes. Google doesn’t reward over time for one-time efforts. The search giant wants to see ongoing new content, high-quality information for searches that answers questions, high-quality backlinks, and new articles every month. When you keep this up, Google rewards the site with higher placements in search. These rewards typically come in months 6 through 12. Another big reward period comes between 16 and 24 months. This is when a large number of critical keywords have been pushed to the top of page one. One thing is for certain, if you stick with your SEO efforts, you will see your ROI grow.
