Brandon Boushy SEO & Marketing LLC

Home Service Growth Systems

Beginner’s Guide to SEO: Building a Growth System (Not Just Tactics)

A man with a beard smiling and gesturing towards the camera, wearing a dark blazer. The background features the text 'Beginner's Guide to SEO' and 'Building a Growth System (Not Just Tactics)' along with graphical elements related to growth and SEO.

SEO can be intimidating, but it doesn’t have to be. In this Beginner’s Guide To SEO we’ll explore:

What is SEO? (And Why Most Contractors Get It Wrong)

Google defines search engine optimization as the practice of helping search engines understand your website’s content so that it can safely recommend your site to users in organic (unpaid) search results.

In other words SEO is about building trust.

Think about your field. How do you build trust? In HVAC trust means the following:

  1. Make it easy to find information about your experience, services, prices, contact information, and how you’ll help people. This includes reviews.
  2. Answer the phone.
  3. Do what you say you’ll do when you say you’ll do it.
  4. Explain what the system is doing in ways the customer can understand.

Notice none of this has to do with your technical knowledge, but basic customer service.

That means SEO is just documentation of what you are already doing in the form of videos, transcripts, reviews, certifications, web pages, before-and-after pictures,  and case studies.

Think about managing your SEO like how you would handle getting in a car accident. You want to document everything so you can prove your case in court if necessary.

Where People Search Is Constantly Evolving

When people think of a search engine they think about Google, and maybe Bing and DuckDuckGo. But the reality is so much more than that. Think about all the places that you use to find information. They all function similar to a search engine. That includes:

That’s why professional marketers realize that people search everywhere. That doesn’t mean you have to post the same information 50 times. You just have to use a good system.

The Difference Between SEO “Tactics” and “Systems”

Most SEO guides are just a checklist of easy steps to follow, but it’s more than that. It’s about the systems you have in place to make everything work together. Yes you can create a checklist to make sure you do everything, but both you and your team need to understand why every part of your system works the way it does so the benefits compound over time.

At a minimum a good SEO system should include:

With the rise of AI there are new tools popping up every day based on each marketing professionals mentality, systems, and strategies so it can be difficult to choose the best one for your mentality and business.

The Google Search Ecosystem Has Changed

Google wants to keep its position as the world’s largest search engine and so far it is doing a decent job. According to MosaicSearch.App Google search page includes the following products regularly:

ProductPurposeRate Of AppearanceVolatility
Organic Search ResultsThese are the traditional results every SEO targets.100%, but low on page.51% to 69%
Map PackShow businesses near you that are for transactional searches. This is where most home service businesses get customers.64%52%
AI OverviewsAI overviews directly answer most questions so that people don’t need to leave Google unless they want to verify resources or buy something.22%38%
Paid AdsThese ads are normally cost per click and target specific keywords, but if you set them up right you can base them on target customer acquisition costs.25%Unknown
Local Service AdsThese ads are for local service businesses only and are based on cost per call.25%Unknown
People Also AskThese are quick answers to other questions people commonly ask and you can rank here. They can be used for guiding your web pages, content creation, and answering people’s questions.100%Unknown
Suggested SearchesThese are always at the bottom and provide other searches people commonly use. That means you should put them in your FAQ sections.100%Unknown

Google is adding more features to the search engine result page regularly and all of them are opportunities for you to appear through SEO or paid ads. Based on a search for SEO I found:

Why Flashy Marketing Loses to Consistent Basics

Flashy marketing can attract attention, but can anyone keep it up every day?

When you stick to the basics, it’s easier to stay consistent and consistency matters because people know what to expect. When you tell a customer you’ll be at their house in 30 minutes and you are, it builds trust. When you don’t show up and don’t call you’ll probably lose the customer.

Same with SEO. Your consistency shows how you approach life and that matters.

Why Should I Believe Brandon Boushy?

Here’s the short version of my resume:

Now I want to help you do the same thing with your revenue. What that means for your business.

Starting RevenueEnding Revenue
$50,000$2,500,000
$100,000$5,000,000
$250,000$12,500,000
$500,000$25,000,000
$1,000,000$50,000,000
$2,000,000$100,000,000
$3,000,000$150,000,000
$4,000,000$200,000,000
$5,000,000$250,000,000

How Do Search Engines Actually Work Today?

Search engines use three steps that are continually being improved.

  1. Crawling the internet.
  2. Indexing useful pages.
  3. Ranking the indexed pages for each topic.

Bots Crawl The Internet To Discover New Information

Web crawlers go from page to page following links to establish what is on each page and whether it’s useful. Your website cannot be indexed if it is not linked to from outside sources and itself. So when you create a new page make sure to share it to:

You need to make sure that your website allows bots to crawl it based on the robots.txt file and the llms.txt file. While Google says you don’t need to have an llms.txt file I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t want to make it easy for bots to understand your website given they control whether you get seen.

Useful Information Is Added To The Search Engine Database.

The useful information is sent to the world’s largest database (basically a giant spreadsheet).  It’s categorized so that it can be easily retrieved when someone searches. You can check if the information has been indexed by using Google Search Console’s URL Inspection Tool.

Ranking The Information In The Database Is The Final Step

Once information has been added to Google’s index. It uses algorithms (calculations) to rank the pages based on a variety of factors including:

  1. Content Quality: The info on the page is most important.
  2. Backlinks: The websites who link  to you because you are trustworthy. Their reputations impact how much a backlink helps.
  3. Technical SEO: Your site needs to be fast, secure, mobile friendly and crawlable.
  4. Keyword Optimization: The way you use keywords, entities, and topics to answer the users questions is crucial to ranking..
  5. User Experience (UX): When your website is hard to navigate no one will want to use it.
  6. Schema Markup: Schema helps you explain to computers what a page and a site is about.
  7. Social Signals: The more people click to your site, read it, like it, share it, and interact with it the more likely you are to be ranked higher. You can use Google Analytics and share your data with Google to help them understand your interactions better.
  8. Brand Signals: Your brand signals are

You can find the most extensive list of ranking factors on the internet on Backlinko.

The Power of E-E-A-T: Why Your Job Site Experience Matters

Google judges whether the person or company publishing anything has the experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness to be considered a shareable source. This quality framework is included in Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines to evaluate online content.

What E-E-A-T Means

Why It Matters

Google manual raters use EEAT to judge the web page, plus many of the official ranking signals are related to these principles. Any business that impacts your money or life (YMYL) is held to a stricter standard and I would make the argument that most home service businesses do because:

  1. More regulations than other businesses.
  2. You can place liens on homes.
  3. Largest offerings may be $10K to $100K+.
  4. Errors can cause fires, mold, gas leaks, or even death.

Many of Google’s ranking factors align with the EEAT principles and any business or service that falls under YMYL should do everything it can to prove it’s expertise.

What Are The Different Types Of SEO?

The four main types of SEO are:

There are all kinds of specialized SEO like ecommerce SEO, video SEO, image SEO, AI Overview SEO, enterprise SEO, mobile SEO, generative engine optimization (GEO), and answer engine optimization (AEO). They are all subsets of SEO that have similar concepts but have slightly different best practices, strategies, and tools that work for them.

What Are The Benefits Of SEO For Home Service Businesses?

The benefits of SEO to a home service provider include:

Now that we’ve gone into the basic understanding of SEO and why you need it, let’s look at how to actually implement it.

Keyword Strategy: Meet Your Customers Where They Are

People use keywords to help them find the information they need. Keywords normally fall into four categories:

  1. Informational: “What is a transformer?” These are great for content and developing authority on a subject, but unlikely to get clients because most are answered in AI Overviews or AI platforms.
  2. Navigational: When people forget how to access their software they might search for “Netflix login” or “Hubspot forgot password.” These are only useful to you if you have logins on your website and customers will need them to  access information. Unless you provide home service business SaaS you probably won’t need it.
  3. Commercial: These searches are looking to identify who the best provider for their problem is. The solution is a little different for everyone because some people want the lowest cost, some want financing, and others care about the best quality. You’ll want to be included in as many listicles as possible. Start by creating your own and ranking yourself best for your target market.
  4. Transactional: These are the pages where people book your services. They are your most important pages because they are the ones that AI cannot replace yet, but agentic AI will eventually book jobs for people.

Brainstorm Your Core Services

Think about the services you offer as a business.

Example

When an AC needs to be replaced, the customer doesn’t normally go straight to “HVAC service near me.” They notice it’s hot. They go check the thermostat it’s on, ac is running, but hot air is coming out of the ducts. So they search something like:

“Why is my ac blowing hot air?.”

That term gets 3400 searches every month and the cost per click of ads is $1.80. These are people who are going to try and fix it themselves if they can. That will be difficult unless it’s a capacitor, which is what they find out. So then they search for “AC repair.” or “ac repair near me.” The local one is $18 per click with 101k searches per month. If you’re reading this I’m guessing you don’t have $1.9 million laying around to spend on ads each month.

You can target AC repair which everyone is targeting and you should too, but if you know which ones searched for “Why is my ac blowing hot air?” there’s a much higher chance of getting a unit sale with a retargeting ad (Requires LSA and Google Ads running).

This effectively reduces your ad costs from $1.9m monthly to capture the entire search term to $67,320 per month. That’s a 96.4% savings because you did keyword research and targeted your ads properly since you were doing SEO. Plus they’ll now have 6-10 times in 2 searches to potentially see your brand.

Map Search Intent to the Buyer’s Journey

You’ll want to consider the intent of each type of search and where it falls in the buyer’s journey.

You might hear the terms top of funnel(TOFU), middle of funnel(MOFU), and bottom of the funnel (BOFU).

Top Of Funnel (TOFU) Searches

The top of the funnel searches like “how long do water heaters last?” are normally people just beginning their research. These searches can be helpful for building trust but they are unlikely to create an immediate purchase.

People whose water heater started leaking out the bottom don’t care how long a water heater is supposed to last. They care how they can stop it.

Middle Of Funnel (MOFU) Searches

Middle of funnel searches are searches like “best plumber in Las Vegas” or A.O. Smith Vs Rheem. Appearing in these searches is helpful because it short lists who the person will call. The more of the lists you get in the better off you are, but they aren’t guaranteed to lead to a customer immediately.

Bottom Of Funnel (BOFU) Searches

When someone searches for “hot water heater burst” they have an emergency. They’ll either call and hire the first person who picks up or go to a website to see what to do. When you have a page addressing this issue you want to have your landing page to look something like the page below. Notice how it includes everything they need to make a decision fast. Check out the full page about what to do when a water heater bursts.

You have keywords and the intent of the page, but each search has something different that the user will find useful. You need to identify what that is and provide it to them.

Once they understand the answer for informational questions, they will want to understand their options so you can send them to a vs page, best providers page, or use a download that helps them complete the process.

On a commercial MOFU page you might want to provide them with a pdf of questions to ask contractors, while on a transactional page you provide the ability to book the job with a “Call Now” or “Book Now” button.

Local SEO: The Secret Weapon for Service Businesses

Every local service business should focus on Local SEO fist. Local SEO focuses on ranking higher in local searches and in the first three spots of the map pack. The best way to do this is:

  1. Create your Google Business Profile.
  2. Complete all sections of the profile but especially pictures, services, and pricing.
  3. Create matching webpages for every service.
  4. Add the Google Map to your website footer.
  5. Make the name, address, and phone number consistent on every website that you include information about your business.
  6. Answer every phone call either with a person or an AI Assist from Callrail.
  7. Provide excellent customer service because it doesn’t matter how good your SEO is if you don’t do a good job.
  8. Ask every customer for a review in person and by text message. You can automate the process with Housecall Pro.
  9. Focus your content around the local area. (You’ll notice most of my content mentions Henderson or Las Vegas because I want to be treated like a local marketing company even though I believe in helping anyone who helps themselves).

Google Business Profile Is The Cornerstone Of Local SEO.

A worker carrying a ladder walks through a stone archway, with a sign that reads 'Google Business Profile - The Foundation of Local SEO' on the wall.

According to SQ Magazine, approximately half of all appointments and quote requests start from a Google Business Profile within 24 hours. That means half of the jobs you’ll get should originate with your Google Business Profile.

It needs to stand out against the competition. I’ll use the pictures below to help you understand what to include.

Screenshot of a Google My Business profile showing various management tools and information for a marketing agency called Brandon Boushy SEO & Marketing LLC, including customer reviews, contact details, and location on a map.

When you have created a Google Business Profile you will be able to edit it, read reviews, add photos, create posts, monitor performance, edit products, edit services, connect bookings, ask for reviews, and more. The red AI tools everywhere is an extension I use.

You’ll see recommendations below the icons for the main functions. You want to complete as many of these as you can justify. In most scenarios, you’ll want to add exterior photos, but I run a home-based business and either go to people’s offices or work with them remotely.

To the left you see the knowledge panel which includes:

Screenshot of a Google business ad setup page showing a message that the ad is not set up, with a 5.0-star rating and reviews.
User interface displaying social media profiles for TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube, and a section for products including a business idea generator, home service profit assessment, and a CMO service, along with a contact section for appointments.

You may need to get the Google Business Profile verified by:

I’ve had to do the video, text, email, and postcard verifications before. For the best results make sure that you apply for the Google Business Profile from the @companyname.com email and  be near the official phone number. Home based businesses often have trouble with the video verification because of the signage requirements. When this occurs you need to make sure to:

  1. Capture an identifiable street sign
  2. Walk to your address from it
  3. Unlock the premises or a work truck.
  4. Show them a branded truck, marketing materials, or computer screen with recognizable software, and your company name in it.
  5. Provide proof of business licensing in the video.

Build Location-Specific Service Pages

Create a unique service page for each of the services you list in Google Business Profile for each location. Make sure that all content matches the Google Business Profile, includes reviews from the GBP, and provides additional information to help people make a good decision.

For every service make sure to include information about:

You’ll also want to perform the process I discuss for on-page SEO.

Add Google Maps To Your Website

Google Maps allows you to embed the map on your website to indicate your location. You should add it in your footer so it shows up on every page and on your contact page. To do this follow the steps below.

  1. Go to Google Maps.
  2. Search for your business.
  3. Scroll down until you see the share button and click it.
  4. Choose embed
  5. Go to your website footer and add it in a custom HTML block.
  6. Do the same on your contact page.

Keep Your NAP Consistent

Your business name, address, and phone number need to be consistent on every website that you include information about your business.The more consistent you keep your web assets the less confusion search engines will have about what you do and how to recommend you.

Answer Every Phone Call

Unanswered phone calls are lost revenue. A business that only answers one out of every three calls is effectively giving 2/3rds of it’s potential revenue to another business.

People prefer to talk with people so it’s better to have a dispatcher or call center, but if you can’t afford the monthly costs, you can use software like AI Assist from Callrail. You can customize the way it works and send a text message after the call for the client to book a visit if it’s not urgent.For urgent calls, like a broken HVAC system, you better call back fast because they are already calling another company.

Provide Excellent Customer Service

This isn’t technically focused on local SEO, but no matter how good your digital web presence is, bad customer service can wreck it. A string of bad reviews could effectively kill a new business and will still hurt a long standing company. You need to give every customer your best and when something goes wrong, make it right.

Write Local Content

Focus your content around the local area. You’ll notice most of my content mentions Henderson or Las Vegas because I want to be treated like a local marketing company even though I believe in helping anyone who helps themselves.

This includes discussing unique factors in your city. For an HVAC company it might be discussing the air quality issues caused by all the dust or the damage that 120 degree days do to capacitors in the Vegas heat. For plumbing companies it might be the importance of a water softener to protect all your toilets, faucets, and appliances that use water.

Reviews Turn Search Traffic into Booked Jobs

Reviews are one of the ranking factors for Google Business Profiles so the more consistently you get reviews the better you’ll rank. You don’t have to have perfect reviews either. It’s common for companies with a 4.5 star rating to get in the map pack if they average 4 to 5 reviews monthly. Competitive industries and locations may need more.

You simply have to ask and make it easy for your customers to review you. Many review platforms make it real easy to review. For instance Google Business Profiles provide links and QR codes. If you are finding this guide useful go provide me a review that says my SEO guide was super helpful.

I specifically prefer Housecall Pro as a way for home service providers to easily request Google Reviews after a completed job.

On-Page SEO: Get Your Digital House in Order

You have a target keyword which is the service you are offering. It needs to be included in the URL, Title or Heading 1, in subheadings, and throughout the content. You’ll want to use some SEO tools like ahrefs and SurferSEO.

Use Ahrefs To Understand The Pages.

This is a screenshot of ahrefs keyword tool for “roof repair Las Vegas. When you look at the page type (second column) there are 4 main types the pages fall under:

  1. Home page
  2. Listicle
  3. Service page
  4. Social media post”
SERP overview for 'roof repair las vegas' showing search results, search volume, and website metrics.

In the third column it shows the sweet spot is between 1500 and 2000 words which means you want your page to be around that range.

There’s also Domain Rank and URL Rank which are ahrefs guesses at the authority of the site. Then it shows how many backlinks the page has and from how many domains. The traffic and value are estimates of how much traffic and revenue each page gets a month.

The next column is the number of keywords the page ranks for. You want to right click the 3 with the highest number of keywords and open them in a new tab. It will open a page like the one below.

Screenshot of organic keywords data showing a graph and keyword metrics for roofing services, including search volume, keyword difficulty, and traffic statistics.

You can filter by:

Apply your filters and then sort by volume and you’ll get a table like the one below. Repeat for each page, Select the first column then use the Google Sheets Data tab>Data Cleanup>Remove Duplicates. You’ll want to copy this list of Keywords and then add them into Surfer’s keywords section using ctrl+shift+V to make them show properly.

KeywordLanguageEntitiesIntentsSFVolumeKDCPCTrafficChangePaidPositionChange
professional roofing servicesEnglishI, C, TLocal3500513.052203
4		1
professional roofingEnglishI, C, TLocal4500685.679909New
professional roofing companyEnglishI, C, TLocal4500662.261414030
10		20
roofing las vegasEnglishLas VegasI, C, TLocal3250641.31905
roofing companies las vegasEnglishLas VegasI, C, TLocal3200612.590−1405Lost
professional roofing contractorsEnglishI, C, T, Local2200614.44609
professional roofing serviceEnglishI, C, T, Local3200691.54281203
2		1
roof repair las vegasEnglishLas VegasI, C, T, Local3200563.51904
professional rooferEnglishI, C, T, Local6150556.845506New
roofing company las vegasEnglishLas VegasI, C, T, Local3150692.0211−2002
5		3
prs roofingEnglishPRS Roofing CorpI, C, T, Branded, Local215053.1344401
roofers las vegasEnglishLas VegasI, C, T, Local3100434.86905
commercial roofing las vegasEnglishLas VegasI, C, T, Local2100375.636−504
6		2
las vegas roofing contractorsEnglishLas VegasI, C, T, Local3100632.15409
roofing companies in las vegasEnglishLas VegasI, C, Local3100571.721204
roofing contractors las vegasEnglishLas VegasI, C, T, Local380642.3652011
6		5
roofing services las vegasEnglishLas VegasI, C, T, Local2805613.511004
las vegas roofing contractorEnglishLas VegasI, C, T, Local480612.433010
las vegas roofersEnglishLas VegasI, C, T, Local370677.69506
5		1
roofer las vegasEnglishLas VegasI, C, T, Local260464.860−505Lost
las vegas rooferEnglishLas VegasI, C, T, Local560576.142207New
roof repairs las vegasEnglishLas VegasI, C, T, Local26056N/A208
las vegas roof repairEnglishLas VegasI, C, T, Local360597408
6		2
roof replacement las vegasEnglishLas VegasI, C, T, Local25062N/A5505New
las vegas roofing companyEnglishLas VegasI, C, T, Local550676.3315−402
1		1

Use Surfer To Grade Your Pages

Surfer let’s you start content from scratch, help with topic maps, and edit existing content, plus track AI visibility. Their content editor is the primary tool I use because the topic maps sometimes suggest topics I wouldn’t touch because they are such low volume. When I edit existing content I just add it into the content editor and improve it because I like it better.

Add your primary keyword and create a content editor, and choose the type of content you want to create. Once the editor opens go to settings and add the keywords you want to use to both the keyword section and the notes. Then update the length based on the midpoint of the words from ahrefs (1750 in our case). Hit the button at the bottom of the page and start writing or use the ai to generate it for you.

You want to make sure to hit all the topics, all the headings, and the semantic inputs. Based on my experience when you go for a score that is at least 80 or 1-3 points better than the best competitor the content does the best. Pages with 95 to 100 are over-optimized and either don’t do well or lose their position quickly because the keyword is highly competitive. Surfer will also tell you the number of pictures you should include. I suggest listening, but don’t like pics on my website.

Add Title Tags

Websites have title tags which are metadata that tells search engines what the title of the webpage is. Either the title tag or the H1 will show in Google Search and other places. It will look like this:

<title>Roof Repair Las Vegas | Company Name</title>

The title tag works best when it is under 50 characters long and includes your primary keyword front loaded. Most people say 60, but it often cuts off between 50 and 54 characters with title case formatting.

Meta Descriptions

Meta descriptions are also metadata that appear in search results. They are the curb appeal that tells someone why they want to go to your page.

It might be something like:

<meta name=”description” content=”Need reliable roof repair in Las Vegas? Our expert team fixes leaks, broken tiles, and storm damage quickly. Get your free, honest estimate today!”>

Notice how it tells what the company does, services they offer, and has a call to action.

Structure Content with Headers (H1, H2, H3)

Your single H1 should be an alternative to your Title and will be visible on the page. All your H2s should include additional keywords and should support your H1. H3s support H2s and so on.

It works similar to an outline:

Notice how these headings match the basic outline I provided in the location specific service pages.

Use Image And Video SEO To Increase Places You Show Up

The more ways people have to find your business the more likely they are to eventually become customers. Images and videos play a huge part in this.

Image SEO

For pictures and graphics you want to:

Video SEO

It’s really easy to repurpose content now. You should create YouTube videos that include:

This gives you a chance to show up in YouTube searches as well as additional spots in Google.

Build a Connected Content Architecture

Service pages are the pages that are used to turn website visitors into customers. They act as Pillar pages. They should provide links to the other content but not until after the proof and the second call to action. Each H2 or H3 after the second call to action should have a link to a supporting piece. The supporting piece should also link to the service page and relevant questions that are at the same level of the funnel.

For instance a commercial blog titled “7 Most Common HVAC Problems” would have links to:

An informational blog explaining how an HVAC system works would feed into all the previously mentioned pieces and the “7 Most Common HVAC Problems.” This way you’re pushing people closer and closer to the service that they need.

At UpFlip, the goal was to get them into courses, while for home service businesses it’s to get them to trust you and book a call for an estimate.

Off-page SEO Increases Your Brand Authority

Off-page SEO focuses on strategies like:

I help businesses set up directories and will help them pursue backlinks, but honestly creating good content can drive backlinks for far less cost than outreach campaigns.

Technical SEO Needs To Be Checked

You can have great content, but if your website doesn’t have good technical SEO the content may not help you. You need to check:

Measure What Actually Matters

Most home service businesses don’t make money by selling ad space, affiliate marketing, or social media views so clicks don’t matter for most people. What really matters is calls, leads, customers, and revenue.

Track Calls

You want to track calls to know where the leads are coming from, how many you’re missing, and how well you’re converting the ones you answer. CallRail is considered the industry leader, but there are a number of other options.

As you can see, just tracking calls can show where your company needs to improve. If your phone is ringing but you only answer 1/3rd of calls, you have the potential to make 3 times more revenue.

Track Estimates and Revenue By Service (Not Just Clicks)

When you track estimates, you can tell whether your phone call or your home visit failed to convert. You can also tell which services convert best and which convert worst which gives you an opportunity for improvement. For some services like a compressor replacement or new condensing unit you can compare whether people are more likely to repair or replace.

Then when you track revenue by service you can see which services actually create the most revenue and gross profits for you. This data can be used to drive your marketing and advertising campaigns to provide greater profitability.

You can also use this information to improve your processes by finding ways to get people to go for the higher price solution. For instance, replacing a condensing unit might cost more, but it comes with a much better warranty.

How Often Should I Update My Content For SEO?

You should update your content for SEO when any of the following occurs:

Does My Site Need To Be ADA Compliant?

Yes your site should be ADA compliant to make it where people with disabilities can easily use it. Review the ADA guidelines.

How Long Does SEO Take To Create Compounding Results?

I have not used any paid strategies, only SEO and social media marketing for my website, and these are the monthly results since I started it at the end of April 2026.

No leads came from SEO in the first 3 months, 1 in August, and 3 in September. 2 of them were fake and 2 were good opportunities but not the right fit based on the work needed. I will update this routinely.

MonthImpressionsMonthly Impression % IncreaseClicksMonthly Clicks % Change
May551–5–
June2871420%13160%
July10483265%1515.4%
August2049895.5%14-6.7%
September3490970.3%2150%
First 4 days of October*889797.5%*447.7%*

*I multiplied the current values of October by 7.75 to get the estimated change.

What Are Common SEO Mistakes To Avoid?

Common mistakes people make while working on SEO include:

Rankings Don’t Mean Success

Unless you make money strictly from ads rankings and clicks aren’t success but the bare minimum to start getting clients. From there you still have to collect their information, get them to call, answer the phone, schedule a house call, provide an estimate, win the job, complete it successfully, request a review, and turn them into a repeat customer.

Slow Websites Kill Conversions

If a website doesn’t load basically instantly, it’s too slow. At 2 seconds you’ll start having meaningful drops in the people who stay on the site. In 6 seconds you own a ghost town.

The Wrong Keywords Won’t Pay The Bills

While informational keywords can help brand recognition, they won’t book clients. Transactional keywords that show up in the map pack, AI overviews, Google Ads, and organic search are the ones that will win. You want to dominate the entire search engine results page.

Empty Title Tags And Meta Descriptions

You need properly formatted title tags and meta descriptions to help web crawlers and people to understand what a web page is about before going to it. When they are empty or formatted improperly it’s hard to understand what a page is about. Why would you click on a page you have no idea what it does?

ReelMetrics is a B2B casino vendor focused on helping companies improve the selection and placement of their slot machines. Two years ago one of their board members asked me to audit their website.

They were using non-standard versions of title tags and meta descriptions that was causing crawlers not to understand their website properly. I encouraged them to implement wordpress for public facing sites and their Health Score in ahrefs increased from 1 to 89 and it is starting to

impact how search engines understand its website.

Don’t Bore Your Users To Death

The average person has an attention span of 40 to 47 seconds. That means they are going to scan your page to see what interests them and then dig deeper or leave. That’s why it’s helpful to include useful headings, meaningful pictures, videos, and interactive content.

Use Easy To Remember URLS

A website and urls that are easy to remember are useful for people who see your website or product names in passing. For instance, this is the link for the Amazon Fire TV Stick. The part at the end is the model number.

Could you imagine the first time you go to a site and links look like:

https://yourcrazycompanyname.com/B0C6W3D4RM

Fix Response Codes

When a search engine gets a response code it’s an indication that there is a problem with the page. Some won’t prevent it from being indexed or ranked. I’ve even seen 404 pages rank on the first page of Google, but it’s frustrating when you want to see a page and then it doesn’t work. It reduces trust.

Make Sure Your Website Is Mobile Friendly

According to StatCounter 60% of web traffic comes from mobile devices. Your website needs to:

Make Sure Your Pages Can Be Indexed

Search engines can’t show what they aren’t allowed to crawl or index. Your default settings for your website should allow crawls in the robots.txt and allow indexing. Both of these will prevent web pages from showing. You should only block them on sensitive pages like the payment processing page and pages only available to admins. You may also want to block pages with thin content, but always do it intentionally by the page.

Don’t Hire A Bad SEO Company

Hiring a bad SEO company can be horrible for your company. They can wreck your rankings, add a bunch of AI slop, and potentially hold your web assets hostage. Discover questions to ask SEO companies.

SEO Is Not A Magic Bullet

Thinking you can just do SEO and ignore everything else is unlikely to work. You need a combination of social media, search engine optimization, ads, and traditional marketing to get the best results.

Some of the most popular SEO tools include:

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a free analytics tool that tracks website visitors actions on your website including pages viewed, time spent on page and in a session, web clicks, and other actions taken. It’s crucial for understanding what goes on with your website traffic.

Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a free analytics tool that lets you submit your sitemaps and webpages to Google to be indexed, monitors the number of searches for terms you rank for, and shows where you rank.

Microsoft Clarity

Microsoft Clarity is a free heat map that helps you identify what people do on your website and where they leave. This can help you improve your web pages.

Moz

Moz is one of the major players in SEO software. They offer solutions for:

Plans range from $99 to $299 monthly. They have some free tools that are useful but provide limited information.

SEMRush

SEMrush is a Moz alternative that was recently acquired by Adobe and includes::

SEMRush pricing is complex. It has a basic plan that starts at $139 a month, a Starter plan at $199, and the Pro+ is $299, but with additional add-ons the basic plan can go up to $885/month while the the highest level of each add-on can bring you up to $1,776. In addition, they have custom and enterprise plans.

Ahrefs

I personally prefer ahrefs, but like SEMrush they are starting to charge for every add-on they can. The software includes:

Plans range from $129 monthly to $1499 plus they have add-ons that cost up to $647 per month extra, plus project add-ons that can be up to $220 per month per project.

Similar Web

Similar Web provides the following services ordered based on which are most useful to home service businesses.:

The primary thing I use this website for is understanding who competitors are assuming that the company has the presence to be listed on their site.

Similar Web pricing for Web Intelligence ranges from $129 to $542 for marketing purposes. Some businesses may benefit from the other analytics offerings but it will depend on your revenue generating strategies.

Mangools

Mangools is a more affordable alternative to ahrefs, SEMrush, and Moz that includes

At a price of $54.90 to $126.90, it’s a great value if you just want to do basic SEO without spending as much as many of the other SEO research tools. I particularly like the pricing because it includes tracking for 500 AEO prompts.

SE Ranking

SE Ranking is similar provides similar services to ahrefs, SEMrush, Moz, and Mangools. It’s more expensive than Mangools, but is far more generous than the other platforms with their entry level plans. Plans start at $129.

Positive Surfer (Surfer SEO)

Surfer SEO offers topic ideas, content creation, AI search visibility tracking, and content audits. It’s phenomenal for ranking content, but I don’t find it’s other features as useful. I use it in combination with ahrefs. Plans range from $49 to $299 monthly but unless you are creating massive amounts of content I  wouldn’t expect you to $182 monthly.

SearchAtlasContent Research

SearchAtlas seeks to replace Surfer and the other tools by offering an AI powered tool called OTTO that fixes website issues for you, LLM tracking, AI writing tools, and the traditional SEO tools. I have not tested this tool, but many people like it.

seoClarity

I would skip SEO Clarity unless you are an Enterprise level organization. Their pricing starts at $1200 monthly. Most small businesses won’t need this.

Clearscope

Clearscope offers products to discover important topics,write and optimize content,  expand brand awareness, monitor content, improve localized targeting, and improve internal linking.

Like many SEO packages the pricing starts at $129 per month. They also have a $399 package and an enterprise package. Each plan can add additional pages or drafts based on your needs.

BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo is part SEO and part public relations software. It includes::

BuzzSumo pricing starts at $199 monthly and has plans up to $999 per month depending on the number of users, alerts, and features you need.

AnswerThePublic

AnswerThePublic is a keyword research and AI content generator. It’s particularly good for finding specific types of long tail keywords. They offer a limited free plan and paid plans start at $20 per month and goes up to $199 monthly.

SE Ranking

SE Ranking is another tool that offers:

Like many of the other SEO tools their pricing starts at $129 and goes up to $279. There are additional add-ons that can push the pricing up another $415 per month.

Screaming Frog SEO Spider

Screaming Frog focuses on technical SEO audits including:

There’s a free version that crawls up to 500 urls and a $199/year paid version that offers a lot more functionality.