Right Up-Front While most home improvement contractors still derive comparatively few leads from a company Web site, sites are growing increasingly more sophisticated and, long term, hold solid potential for lead generation.
How do you steer interested consumers to yours? This is where search engine optimization (SEO) comes in.
Search engine optimization means creating content incorporating those key words that will bring users searching for certain products or services right to your site.
“When you get into Web site promotion, a lot of people think you just register your Web site in the search engines and you’ll be found,” says Cindy McMahen, principal of Nexus Interactive (www.nexusinteractive.com) in Riverside, Calif. “That’s really not the case. You have to understand how search engines work and how people search online for information.”
Most people searching the Internet don’t go beyond the third screen of search results. At that point, they’ll change their query or switch search engines, McMahen says. Her objective is to ensure that her clients’ Web sites appear in the search results before users do that.
SEO levels the playing field, too. “A small business can have just as good a result using selected words and phrases as a large business can,” McMahen says.
In addition to having the most productive keywords embedded in your site, it’s important that other sites link to you, McMahen says. This helps increase the popularity of your site and is among the factors search engines consider in assigning priority to your site during a search.
Take, for instance, Appleby Systems, of York, Pa., parent of Appleby Windows. Appleby buys leads from Internet lead providers. These leads are part of a mix that includes warm and cold calling, print, broadcast, shows and events, and in-store marketing. But the company also uses search engine optimization to lead searchers to its site (www.applebywindows.com).
“We’re in full growth mode in the Internet market,” says Appleby’s marketing director Chris Wood.