Figuring out how to most effectively spend your time and money to create a successful digital marketing strategy can be overwhelming for a local business owner.
You know that local audiences are using the internet to help them make purchase decisions and find local services. You’ve also probably heard that good content is a big deal when it comes to anything from search engine optimization to social media marketing and overall user experience. But what are marketers really talking about when they say “content”? Is it blog articles, social media posts, your services pages, monthly newsletters? What do you people mean!? In this post my goal is to help you understand why you need good content for your business and what types of content you should focus on first.
Evergreen Content
If this is an unfamiliar term for you, not to worry, it’s pretty simple. Evergreen content refers to the content on your website that is always relevant. It never becomes outdated and for the average contractor business this is the content that delivers the most value for your users and gets the most visibility. I’m talking about things like your about page, contact page, service pages, and faq pages etc.. Sure they might get updated over time but your core business probably doesn’t change all that much. If you can’t effectively tell potential customers who you are, what you do, and why they should bother to do business with you then you have a problem that no blog article or social media post is going to fix.
You will be rewarded if you can build content that anticipates what people are looking for and then deliver on it. For example, do you have pages on your website that clearly explain your services, in detail? Do they answer common questions that people have about those services? Do they have testimonials from previous clients you’ve delivered those services too? Do you have photos or videos of your work? Do they tell the visitor how much your services cost or how to contact you? I think you get the point. If you have content that leaves your visitors in the dark it could very well be costing you money. One page to overview all of your services isn’t enough, you need a page for every individual service to adequately cover all that information.
Reviews
You can and should include reviews within your website content as I mentioned above. However, having reviews on platforms like Google is just as important. I’m emphasizing Google reviews in particular because of they impact they have for service businesses. The local pack is displayed in over 90% of searches that have local intent, and that local 3 pack gets a whole lot of attention from the people searching for your services ( see below example for “Basement Renovations Edmonton” ). Not only are reviews a ranking factor for the local pack results but they’re also essential for getting your phone to ring. I wrote an entire article on why your local business needs reviews if you still need to be convinced. For many service businesses their Google Business Profile is a top lead generator, and great reviews are what make it tick!
Blog Content
If you have good evergreen content you’re off to a great start but that’s likely just covering the fundamentals of what your customers are interested in or want to know. You can build up even more Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness for your brand by creating content that helps your web visitors answer questions, solve problems, or learn new things. If you were a local plumber for example you might have evergreen content like this:
- About Us
- Drain Cleaning
- Sewer Line Installation
- Water Heaters
- Etc..
But you might have blog content that looks this:
- The pros and cons of tankless water heaters
- When to call a professional plumbing contractor
- Top 5 Causes Of Leaky Faucets
Writing high quality content to address these questions asserts you as the professional, brings value to your web visitors, and helps you rank for additional queries in search engines. This type of content is also perfect to share on your social channels and include in your monthly newsletters.
Sure, we could probably make content more complicated than this but for the average service business this is a really good place to start
