Electrician SEO: The Complete Guide to Better Organic Traffic

What is Electrician SEO?

Electrician SEO is the process of optimizing the website of an electrical business so that it ranks higher in search engine results pages for relevant keywords.

When done correctly, search engine optimization can help you get more unpaid, organic traffic from potential customers looking for electricians in your area.

Why is SEO for Electricians Important?

As Ahrefs reveals, most people look for electricians on Google.

Also, according to a study, 97% of people research local companies online more than anywhere else. 

In this active digital landscape, SEO helps electrical contractors boost their visibility on Google and improve their online presence. As a result, contractors can spend less on ads and reinvest their resources in other business areas.

Another way electrical contractors can leverage the power of SEO is to combine it with other digital advertising strategies, like pay-per-click (PPC). A joint approach of SEO and PPC will likely drive better online exposure and provide positive outcomes for each marketing channel. 

Speaking of leveraging powerful marketing tools, ServiceTitan's marketing feature is one of them.

ServiceTitan's marketing automation solution helps electricians monitor and manage campaigns and expand their electrical services with just a few clicks. Other key benefits include:

• Building hyper-targeted audiences and automated email marketing campaigns

• Managing reviews and gaining deeper insights into customers and technicians

• Uncover the true ROI and get more out of online marketing budgeting

Keyword Research

Keywords are words or phrases that users type into search engines to generate results.

In SEO, keywords are foundational.

They are an important part of SEO because they help search engines understand the context of a webpage and determine which pages should appear in search engine results for certain queries. Keywords can be single words, phrases, or even longer strings of words that accurately describe the content on a page.

But how do you know which keywords you should use as an electrical contractor?

To determine the keywords or phrases your target audience types when searching for your services, you need to do keyword research. Two easy ways to do this are:

• Using a keyword research tool

• Using Google autocomplete, PAA (People Also Ask) boxes, and related searches

 A good way to start is with basic keywords that describe your services, such as "electrical panel installation." You can also rely on common keywords that people use, like “electrician near me.”

Another useful tip is to look for related searches, Google autocomplete, and PAA box tools. You'll gain a clearer view of what your potential customers are interested in and what pain points they may have that you can address.

Using a keyword research tool like Semrush will help you go more in-depth and expand your list of relevant keywords. 

Let's look at the following image, which shows related keywords ideas for "electrical contractor." In this thorough analysis, you can see:

• The volume, which is the average number of monthly searches for a given keyword over 12 months.

• The trend, which describes the interest of searchers in a given keyword during those 12 months.

• The Keyword Difficulty (KD)%, which shows how hard it would be for a website to rank organically in the Google top 10 for the analyzed keyword.

These are just some of the tools provided by Semrush to help you find keyword variations people use to find electrical contractors in your local area. This type of research might be slightly time-consuming at first but it will pay off for your SEO efforts in the long run.

Local SEO

Local SEO is a type of search engine optimization that focuses on optimizing your website to rank higher in local search engine results.

The recent growth in mobile internet access has accelerated the importance of local SEO, making it essential for the success of any business providing local services.

To be relevant, electrician SEO strategies must include local SEO as this improves a website's digital footprint in the local search ecosystem. 

ServiceTitan's Local Service Ads feature is a great way to start enhancing your online local presence. With this instant-booking integration, users can show up at the right time: exactly when customers want to book. 

Google Local Services Ads only trigger when people within your area conduct relevant Google searches. To make things even easier for electricians, Local Services Ads bookings automatically populate in ServiceTitan, thus boosting efficiency and speeding transactions.

To further expand your local SEO efforts, let's look at some key steps you need to take.

Create and optimize your Google Business Profile

Creating a business profile for your electrical company on Google is the first step in strengthening your local SEO strategy. This process is free and easy to complete, and it will considerably increase your visibility.

Why do you want to optimize your Google Business Profile?

Because it matters for search engines and for potential customers looking up electrical contractors.

Having an optimized Google Business Profile lets Google know that you are a relevant search result. The more complete and accurate your Google Business Profile is, the more likely you are to feature when people search for electric services.

Here are some components you want to optimize:

• Your business name. Use your actual business name, and avoid adding additional keywords, as you'll be penalized.

• Hours of operation. Check and edit them regularly to ensure they are up to date. You'll lose credibility if customers try to contact you and you're unavailable.

• Local phone number. Listing a local phone number signals to Google that you are a legitimate local business.

• Description. This is your chance to clearly show people who you are and what services you offer. Keep it concise and don't worry about keywords, as they don't have any effect on your search rankings.

• Videos. Videos get, on average, 1,200% more shares than text and images combined. You can optimize your Google Business Profile with a short video that describes your services.

After creating and optimizing your Google Business Profile, another tool worth taking a look at is the Google Local Map Pack. 

The Google Map Pack is a feature that shows up on the search engine results page when someone searches for a local service. It displays three businesses that match the query, along with their ratings and contact information.

To get your business listed in the Local Map Pack, you must ensure your Google Business Profile is complete and accurate. You also need to have positive reviews and ratings, as this is a key factor in determining who gets listed. 

The Map Pack, if used correctly, can drive significant organic traffic for electrical business owners.

Build citations

Generally, when SEO experts talk about citations, they refer to online listings of a business that includes the business name, address, and phone number.

The main types of local citations are:

• Online directories and platforms. Key local business listings can appear on highly influential social and review-oriented websites.

• Search engines. Local citations are also listed on Google, Bing, or Safari.

• Industry-specific platforms. You can leverage these additional platforms to build high-value citations (discover some citations for electricians here).

• Primary data aggregators. These are large databases that record, distribute, and share data about local businesses.

• Your digital assets. Your website is probably the most authoritative place to share your business data online. 

So, why are citations important for SEO?

Google gets signals from trusted online directories in which your business gets listed, thus enhancing your credibility. 

Another benefit of getting listed in citation directories is earning referral traffic. This will contribute to increased visibility and higher organic traffic rates.

Get positive reviews

90% of people use reviews to choose who they're doing business with so having a strong review page can help you reach more potential customers.

Moreover, Google Business Profile reviews are a key local search ranking factor. Thus, the more positive reviews a local business receives, the better it is for its organic visibility.

Google pays attention to the following types of reviews:

• Google-based reviews. Left by people directly on your Google Business Profile.

• Testimonials published on your site. Publish reviews left by existing customers to increase your local business credibility.

• Third-party review sites. Some popular sites for reviewing electricians are TrustATrader or Trustpilot.

As we can observe, staying on top of the local SEO game requires some work on your business ratings. We are going to look at three ways you can get more Google reviews for your local electrical company:

1. Ask the latest customers you've worked with. This is the most straightforward way to get more reviews.

2. Send out emails. Send emails to past customers asking them to leave a review on Google.

3. Use automated review requests. You can use automated tools to send out review requests to customers after your business has completed a job for them.

Such automated tools, like ServiceTitan's Reputation feature, can help contractors boost their online reputation with more 5-star reviews and consistent listings. 

By leveraging this service, electrical business owners will have access to:

• Review templates to send to their customers

• Automated review requests

• Robust insights into how reviews are impacting their business

Co-owner of ProSkill Services, Travis Ringe, talks about how ServiceTitan has helped the company go the extra mile with its review management, and attract more than 3,000 Google reviews: “If you want to drive reviews, you have to deliver a full experience worthy of writing a review,” he says.

Using ServiceTitan’s built-in messaging tool, ProSkill customizes messages to ask customers for Google reviews.

“Google really rules the roost, and I want all my reviews on Google,” Ringe says.

Ensure NAP consistency

NAP is an acronym for Name, Address, and Phone Number. NAP is important for customer contact as it allows users to easily access your contact details. Not having your NAP clearly displayed and easily accessible on your website can be really annoying and cost you potential customers.

But besides being a link between you and your users, NAP can help you rank well in organic search results. 

We talked earlier about citations and NAP also represents an essential factor for high rankings in the local search results. This happens because Google algorithms use NAP to verify the accuracy of your business information.

Therefore, it's essential to ensure that all your citations have consistent NAP details. This means that all the listings you create should have the same name, address, and phone number as your website.

To ensure NAP consistency, you can use a tool like BrightLocal or Moz Local to scan for any discrepancies in your business information.

The following are some more tips for good NAP consistency.

• Don't use abbreviations. Although you might be tempted to use abbreviations if you are well-known locally, it's not the wisest thing to do. That's because search engines register your official business name and give you extra visibility points for keeping it uniform across NAP.

• Update NAP. You likely know this already, but we'll mention it anyway — you must keep your NAP information updated. How else can potential customers contact you?

• Add your website. A useful addition to your NAP information is your website URL. 

Search for local keywords

Another step in enhancing your electrician SEO campaign is to optimize your website pages for local keywords.

Local keywords are terms that include the city, state, or region you serve. For example, if you're an electrician in Austin, some local keywords could be “electrician Austin” or “electrical services Austin.”

See this example from Ahrefs:

By optimizing your web pages with location-specific phrases, you are much more likely to attract people in your area to your business.

Content Creation

Content creation is an essential part of any successful SEO strategy. If done correctly, it can boost your electrician marketing outcomes and grow your business.

It involves creating content that is both informative and engaging to your target audience. By sharing valuable content with your audience (on social media and other platforms) you gain their trust and position yourself as an authority in the industry. 

To start implementing an SEO content strategy, an electrical company needs to have a blog. 

How to create a blog? One way is to have a marketing agency do it for you. 

If you want to do it yourself, start by choosing a platform that best suits your needs. WordPress is one of the most popular blogging platforms, but there are other options available such as Blogger or Wix.

Here are two essential steps of every successful content creation strategy:

Step #1: Find topics for an electrical website’s blog

Content is king, but only if you manage to address your reader's needs. To know what the topics of interest for your customers are, you need to discover what they are searching for. 

As shown above, you can find the most popular keywords for a certain topic by using specialized software or by looking at Google's filling suggestions.

Let's discuss an example so you can better understand the process. Let's say you are an electrician in Austin, and you want to create content about electrical safety.

You can start by searching for “electrical safety” on Google and see what comes up. You will notice that some of the most popular related searches include “electrical safety tips” and “electrical safety checklist.” 

Also, to create highly informational pieces of content, use specialized keyword software to identify "how to" or "what is" keywords. If you discover that your audience is interested in learning about electrical safety, you can choose the topic "How to Improve Electrical Safety" or something similar. 

Step #2: Write SEO-friendly copy

Once you have identified the topics your target audience is interested in, it's time to start writing.

When creating content for SEO purposes, there are a few things to keep in mind:

• Use headings and subheadings to break up the text and make it easier to read. In our example above, you could use headers like "Electrical Safety at Home" or "Electrical Safety at Work." The subheadings could be actual steps and tips on how to improve electrical safety.

• Write a catchy and informative title. If your audience is looking for fast, easy, or cheap ways to improve electrical safety, make sure to include those words in your title.

• Address your audience's needs. If people are interested in how-to guides or checklists, write about those things. Your blog will gain trust and authority if you provide helpful information.

• Keep your URL short. A descriptive, brief URL performs better in the search results, thus increasing your SERP rankings.

These are the basics of creating SEO-optimized content for an electrical blog. By following these steps, you can create content that will help your website rank higher in the search engine results pages and build customer loyalty.

On-Page SEO

On-page (or on-site) SEO is an important element of any digital marketing strategy. It involves optimizing your website's content and structure to make it easier for search engines to understand.

The ultimate goal of on-site SEO is to make it as easy as possible for search engines and users to:

• Understand the topic of a webpage

• Categorize that page as beneficial, so it ranks highly on search engine results pages  

• Determine if that page is relevant to any search queries

Here are some key page optimization practices to consider.

Write title tags and meta descriptions

Title tags and meta descriptions are HTML elements that provide a brief summary of the content on a webpage. Search engines use them to determine what the page is about and how it should be ranked in the search engine results pages.

When writing title tags and meta descriptions, the simpler, the better. 

For title tags, it's enough to write your service and business name in title case, separated by a pipe. Such as:

New Electrical Installations | [Business Name]

For location services, write your main service and the location + business name.

Electrician in Austin | [Business Name]

When writing meta descriptions, it's also best to keep it simple. For example:

Need a new electrical installation? Jack's Electrics provides high-quality and secure electrical installations at your earliest convenience. 

Remember to stick to no more than 50-120 characters for your meta descriptions or Google may truncate them. 

Use SEO-friendly URLs

SEO-friendly URLs are important for improving your website's visibility in search engine rankings. They should be descriptive and include relevant keywords that accurately describe the content on the page.

For example, if you're writing a blog post about electrical safety tips, your URL should look something like this:

www.example.com/electrical-safety-tips

Include keywords in your page

Where is the best place to place your target keywords at this point? In the areas that Google and readers first scan when opening your blog post or service page:

• Heading and subheading elements

• First paragraph

By doing so, you'll help Google understand the topic of your page more accurately. Also, you'll speed up your audience's decision-making process on whether they should continue reading or not.

You can use specialized software like Moz's On-Page Grader to analyze and optimize your content. After entering your details, you'll get an analysis that looks like this:

You'll get insights into which on-site factors are hurting your score, learn why they're an issue, and get recommendations on how to fix them. 

After completing these on-page SEO steps, you're ready to move on to the more technical aspects of SEO.

Technical SEO

Technical SEO is the process of optimizing your website's code and structure to improve its visibility in search engine results pages.

It involves making sure that your website is properly indexed, crawlable, and free from any technical issues that could be preventing it from ranking highly.

Website architecture

An organized website will help your visitors easily navigate it and allow Google to find all your pages. A site structure for an electrical website that provides a good user experience could look something like this:

Use HTTPS

HTTPS is a secure protocol that encrypts data between the server and the user's browser. It's an important factor for SEO, as Google has stated that it will give preference to websites that use HTTPS over those that don't.

If you're not sure how to set up HTTPS on your website, you can consult with a web developer or use a service like Let's Encrypt to get started.

Website speed

The average human attention span is 8.25 seconds.

If your website takes more than that to load, you risk losing potential customers.

Google has also stated that it prefers websites that load quickly and it may penalize those that don't.

To get an idea of your website speed, you can use PageSpeed Insights. This tool will analyze your website and give you a score based on how quickly it loads.

How can I improve my website's speed? Here are four quick ways to improve page loading speed:

• Optimize and compress your images

• Minify HTML, CSS, and JavaScript

• Enable browser caching

• Use a high-quality hosting solution 

Mobile-friendliness

Today, there are around 6.8 billion smartphone users worldwide. Building a mobile-friendly website is not optional anymore, it's mandatory if you want to improve your conversion rates.

Moreover, Google considers mobile-friendliness a ranking factor on SERPs. That's plenty of reasons to ensure your website loads well on mobile devices, and it's easy to navigate. 

Google's mobile-friendly test helps you identify any issues with your website's mobile version.

After you've optimized your website for mobile devices, you can start handling your off-page SEO. 

Off-Page SEO

Off-page SEO is the process of optimizing your website's presence on external websites and platforms. It involves building relationships with other websites, creating content that will be shared, and increasing your visibility in search engine result pages.

Backlinks are links from other websites that point to your website. They are a major factor in SEO, as they help search engines understand how popular and authoritative your website is.

Take a look at some of the most common ways to get backlinks:

• Find guest blogging opportunities. Writing posts for other websites in your industry will not only get you backlinks but will also help you build business relationships.  

• Build backlinks through testimonials. This form of link building is all about delivering real value to the website owner in return for a link from their site.

• Claim unlinked brand mentions. If someone mentions your brand on their website but doesn't link to you, reach out and ask them to add a link. To find relevant linked mentions, you can use Ahrefs’ Content Explorer tool.

There are some link-building strategies that you must avoid as they are against Google's guidelines. 

For example, buying backlinks is a popular practice to boost rankings online, but Google will penalize you for doing it. 

Link exchange (reciprocal link building) is another tactic that is against Google's guidelines. Reciprocal linking is when two or more websites agree to exchange links with each other. This is an agreement between website owners, whereby each demands that the other links to their respective site in exchange for a reciprocal link.

While this practice may seem tempting, it can risk you getting a Google penalty and negatively impact your website's rankings. 

Now Over to You

SEO is a great way to attract customers and improve your online presence, at a significantly lower cost than traditional marketing channels.

By implementing the tips above, you're more likely to rank in the first page of Google and grow your electrical business.

Electrical companies also use ServiceTitan as a trusted partner for expanding their customer outreach, automating their marketing efforts, and transforming their business.

ServiceTitan's cloud-based electrical contractor software can help home service providers simplify and streamline their electrical business operations. ServiceTitan's electrical contractor software offers access to an all-in-one field management solution for scheduling, dispatching, invoicing, marketing, and more, for your residential, commercial, or construction business.