Garage Door SEO: The Ultimate Guide

What is Garage Door SEO?

Garage door SEO (search engine optimization) involves implementing strategies so your website ranks close to or at the top of search engine result pages (SERPs).

This digital marketing strategy includes the following strategies:

• Link building

• Internal linking

• Optimizing website content with relevant keywords

• Claiming business listings

• Optimizing website loading speed

• Keyword research

Garage door businesses invest in SEO to build online visibility, attract potential customers, and drive website traffic. This generates garage door leads and, ultimately, revenue.

How Can SEO Benefit Garage Door Businesses?

The top benefit of SEO is the opportunity to rank at the top of search engines such as Google Search. Brandon Doyle, director of marketing for Blue Corona, a digital marketing agency working with service companies, emphasizes this in a recent webinar.

“To maximize your search engine marketing, you absolutely need to be found on the first page of Google results,” he says. 

“If you are not listed on the first page of Google results in any fashion, you are definitely missing qualified leads, sales, and job bookings. You're missing out on all of that to your competitors.”

Other benefits garage door businesses enjoy from SEO include the following:

• High-quality leads: Implementing SEO strategies allows you to appear on search engines for high-intent queries such as “garage door company near me,” meaning the searcher requires your services. This generates high-quality leads.

• Online visibility: SEO can help you build a strong online presence, which can help grow your brand awareness.

• Cost-effective lead source: SEO costs less and has a higher reach and return on ad spend (ROAS) than other marketing channels like PPC advertising. You can implement basic SEO strategies without hiring marketing agencies or SEO companies. This makes it the perfect channel for companies on smaller budgets.

• Generates sales: SEO broadens your reach, which can translate into more sales.

• Continuous lead source: Traditional marketing channels typically require consistent investment to continually generate leads. In contrast, SEO turns your website into a perpetual lead source as long as it ranks. There’s no need to spend another penny to generate leads. Simply make a few tweaks and regularly maintain your website to retain its ranking.

What Types of SEO Should Garage Door Contractors Know?

Generally, SEO stands on five complementary pillars. We’ll give a detailed breakdown of each one later. But for now, let’s briefly get acquainted with them and what they entail.

• Local SEO ensures your website appears for local-intent queries searchers execute from your coverage area.

• On-page SEO refers to optimizing your website with relevant keywords. This includes website content optimization, creating high-quality content, and interlinking between related pages.

• Technical SEO involves tweaking your website’s technical attributes so it’s easily discovered, understood, and crawled by search engine bots. 

• Off-page SEO encompasses all strategies implemented outside a website that affect its search engine ranking. This includes guest blogging and link building.

How Can You Do SEO for a Garage Door Business?

SEO campaigns are composed of multiple moving parts that equally contribute to their success. They include the following:

Let’s go deeper into each one:

1. Local SEO

This SEO strategy helps your business appear for local-intent search queries and rank high on local search results. 

Local SEO is vital for your garage door business as it communicates your proximity to the searcher to search engine bots. These bots then use it to determine your website’s eligibility and ranking for the search query.

Implementing local SEO strategies allows businesses to appear in two sections of local search results. The conventional organic blue links and the local map pack—a search feature consisting of three high-ranking local businesses, their details, and a pinned map insert.

SEO experts highly covet local map pack positions, as they account for 44 percent of the clicks on local result pages. Additionally, they easily capture searchers' attention due to their prominence and placement above organic search results.

The secret sauce to earning a position in the local map pack is increasing your website’s local ranking, which you can achieve by doing the following:

Optimize your Google Business Profile (GBP)

GBP (formerly known as Google My Business) is a free business directory that garage door companies use to determine how they appear in the local map pack. Additionally, search bots use the information in this directory to determine rankings and local map pack eligibility.

Firstly, create or claim your GBP listing. Then, use these strategies to optimize it:

• Ensure your details—particularly your name, address, and phone number (NAP)—are accurate.

• Briefly describe the services you offer—the more specific, the better. Optimize your description with appropriate keywords.

• Include high-resolution images and videos to capture people’s attention and give them a graphical overview of your physical location.

• Frequently share Google posts related to your garage door services so the algorithm knows your profile is active.

• Add Q&As that answer common customer objections.

• Monitor your performance using the GBP manager.

Get reviews for your business

Reviews significantly determine local rankings, as Google views them as proof of a company’s credibility and authority. Generally, profiles with many positive reviews rank higher than others.

Reviews also play a major role in customers’ buying decisions, as 76 percent say they read them before picking a local business.

Here’s how you can collect multiple online reviews from customers:

• Actively request reviews. Technicians should request feedback from customers and, if it’s positive, guide them through leaving reviews on your GBP.

• Remind customers to leave reviews. Send review requests with a link to your GBP immediately after a job is completed and as a follow-up email a few days later. Add the requests to your invoices, too.

• Respond to reviews to show you value customer feedback and encourage them to keep dropping reviews.

You can use ServiceTitan’s Reputation Management platform to automatically send review requests to customers once the service is rendered. The platform also allows you to respond to reviews from multiple listings from one dashboard and tie each to the specific job or technician.

ServiceTitan’s Reputation Management platform streamlines the entire review management and collection process so you respond easily to each review.

Build citations

Citations refer to every mention of your business online, including websites, directories, social media handles, and review platforms. They typically contain your NAP details.

Here are some best practices for building citations:

• Ensure your NAP information is consistent across all citations. This makes your business appear credible to Google, increasing your local ranking.

• Report citations with inaccurate information. You can contact the website publisher to submit the accurate information.

• Claim your local business listings.

• Add your website URL to listings.

Optimize your pages

Your website plays a major role in your search ranking since it contains information about your company and its services. Therefore, optimize your website content—meta description, meta titles, and copy—with relevant keywords.

Provide in-depth information about your company on your garage door website. The Home and About pages should reflect your services and key information. Consider including a Google map insert with a pinned location on your website.

Lastly, create location- and service-specific pages to help Google understand your website better. Optimize each page with an appropriate keyword you discover during research (more about this in the next section).

2. Keyword Research

Keyword research is finding the search terms your target audience uses whenever they require garage door services. It’s the cornerstone of SEO since search engines rely on the keywords a website is optimized for to determine its relevance to a specific search query.

It's vital only to use keywords that align with your services and target audience search behavior. For example, let's say you operate from Maryland. Potential keywords you can use to optimize your website include the following:

• Garage door installation Maryland

• Garage door Maryland

• Maryland garage door services

• Best garage door company Maryland

Here are different ways to find the right keywords to optimize your website’s content:

Use Google autocomplete

Input a seed phrase related to your services into Google's search bar and wait a few seconds for the predictive algorithm to suggest a few keywords.

Repeat this process using different seed phrases until you have a solid keyword list.

Check Related searches

Search using your target keyword and scroll down to the related searches or the “people also search for” section.

Use paid SEO tools

The tools listed above are ideal for finding keywords. However, they don’t display essential metrics that help pick the right keywords. That’s where specialized SEO tools come in.

Some SEO tools to consider are Semrush, Ahrefs, SE Ranking, and Mangools.

When using keyword research tools, pay attention to the following metrics:

• Monthly search volume: The average number of times people searched a specific keyword.

• Keyword difficulty: An estimation of how hard it is for your website to rank for a specific keyword.

• Search intent: What an internet user expects to find when searching with a keyword.

Use Keyword Planner

Create a Google Keyword Planner account and click Tools > Planning > Discover new keywords. Then, enter your seed phrase and website URL (if you already have a website) to filter out unrelated keywords. The system will automatically generate a keyword list in a few seconds

Alternatively, you can input a popular competitor’s website so the system shows the keywords they’re ranking with and use them to optimize yours. Click ‘Start with a website’ and enter the website’s URL. Then, choose between ‘Use the entire site’ and ‘Use only this page’ and click on ‘Get Results’ to retrieve a list of the keywords the website ranks for.

Pro tip: Use only keywords that generate unique SERPs to protect your search rankings. If, for example, Keyword 1 generates identical SERPs with Keyword 2, then they will cannibalize each other, and you will sabotage your website's rankings.

3. On-page SEO

This encompasses all strategies for optimizing individual pages and content using relevant keywords. The goal is to ensure search bots understand your pages, categorize them as valuable, and rank them for the appropriate queries. This ultimately generates website organic traffic and revenue.

Here are some excellent on-page optimization strategies:

• Optimize meta titles and descriptions using keywords. They should be 51–60 and 50–160 characters long so Google doesn’t truncate them and distort your message. 

• Use SEO-friendly URLs. They should be short and precisely describe the page’s content. For example, a page on garage door repair should have a URL that reads www.example.com/garage-door-repair.

• Strategically place keywords in your website content. Include them in headers and subheaders, the first sentence of each paragraph, and every visual’s alternative text (alt text).

• Create a clear hierarchical content structure using headers. Use H1s for the page’s main topic, H2s for subtopics, and other header tiers (H3 to H6) when providing detailed information.

• Link between pages (aka internal links) that have related content. This helps Google understand your page’s architecture, discover new pages, and recognize your website’s value to users.

• Link to authoritative sources where necessary. This will help readers find additional information. Always use anchor text that accurately reflects the content linked to.

4. Technical SEO

While important, creating and optimizing your website for relevant keywords is insufficient to increase your rankings. Google’s bots still need to find and understand each page to rank them. That’s the role of technical SEO.

Technical SEO is optimizing your website’s source code and architecture so that search engines can discover, crawl, and rank each page. It begins with performing a website health check using tools like Screaming Frog, Semrush, and Sitebulb to identify technical issues holding your website back from ranking higher in search results.

Technical SEO encompasses five key aspects:

• Robots.txt is a code snippet directing search engine bots to the specific pages to crawl. Learn more about it from this Google guide. 

• Sitemaps are HTML files containing a list of all pages on your website. The file must be accurate and up to date so that all your pages are indexed.

• Page speed, as the name suggests, is how long it takes for your page to load. Google uses it as a ranking factor, and website visitors may not have the patience to wait for a slow-loading website.

• Mobile-friendliness measures the responsiveness of your website to mobile devices, which account for most online searches. Use Google’s Mobile Test tool to see how your website looks on mobile devices.

• HTTPS is a secure website protocol that encrypts data as it moves between your server and the searcher’s browser. This protects sensitive data such as passwords, personal information, and credit card numbers. Google ranks websites with HTTPS higher than those without, which is in line with its policy of ensuring a positive user experience.

5. Off-Page SEO

This encompasses strategies for acquiring backlinks—links from other websites. This is vital since Google perceives quality backlinks as an endorsement of your website’s value to searchers.

To build backlinks for your garage door business website, follow these tips:

• Discover unlinked mentions: Use Google Search and SEO tools to find where your brand was mentioned without linking to your website. You can contact the website publisher to link to you.

• Write guest blogs: Search for garage door industry blogs and write free, expert-based articles for them in exchange for a link to your site.

• Partner with local journalists: Share newsworthy company updates, sponsorships, events, and other community engagements with local journalists. Encourage them to write about them and link back to your website.

• Build your authority: Position yourself as an industry authority by speaking at events and organizing seminars. This can prompt journalists to reach out to you for quotes and links to your site.

• List in local directories: Create listings in local directories and include your website URL as part of your contact information. 

Pro tip: Avoid buying backlinks to avoid being penalized by Google.

Website UX

In addition to a website’s technical aspects and content, search engine ranking algorithms consider the experience visitors have when interacting with it. 

Another way UX impacts ranking is by determining the number of repeat visits—traffic from people returning to a website for the second time—that a website enjoys. For example, a user who had a bad experience on a website is less likely to return to it, lowering its organic traffic and search ranking.

Having a great website UX starts with optimizing your loading speed. That is, the first input delay (FID) must be at most 100 milliseconds, and the largest asset on the page must load within 2.5 seconds. You can achieve this by doing the following:

• Compress images to a size that minimizes their impact on loading speed without sacrificing quality.

• Minimize your website’s CSS, JavaScript, and HTML codes.

• Implement lazy loading so elements below the fold load only when the user scrolls down.

Here are other strategies for optimizing your website’s UX:

• Implement responsive web design so your website scales up or down to fit different screen sizes.

• Adhere to Google’s image and video content guidelines.

• Have a clear layout and navigation that allows visitors to find whatever they are looking for quickly.

• Write clear copy using short sentences and paragraphs. Use an active voice and avoid technical jargon and complex words.

Pro Tip: Add ServiceTitan’s Online Booking Widget to your website to allow customers to book appointments seamlessly and independently from your employees. This will allow you to keep generating leads outside working hours.

What SEO Practices Should Garage Door Businesses Avoid?

Because SEO takes time to yield results, some companies try to cut corners using black hat SEO practices—search engine optimization tactics that violate Google’s terms of service. 

While we agree that black hat SEO tactics can yield results in the short term, they ultimately lead to low rankings, Google penalties, and an eventual ban from search engines.

Here are examples of black hat SEO practices to avoid:

• Using keywords in GBP name: Avoid spamming your GBP with keywords, unless they are part of your company name. Stuffing your name with unnecessary keywords can attract listing suspensions.

• Buying or exchanging backlinks: Paying for backlinks or engaging in link exchange schemes violates Google’s guidelines. Such practices can cause Google to discount your backlinks or ban the offending page or entire website from search results.

• Keyword stuffing: This is unnaturally using keywords in content to manipulate ranking algorithms. It leads to poor user experience and attracts a ban from search engines.

• Setting sneaky redirects: This involves redirecting website visitors to a URL different from the one they searched for. The goal is to show search engines a certain page to crawl and then serve searchers a completely different one. Google can ban websites that use this practice.

You can consult Google’s spam policies to discover other black hat SEO techniques to avoid.

How Can a Garage Door Business Hire an SEO Agency?

While some aspects of SEO are easy to implement, much of the technical and content strategy aspects demand deep expertise. That’s where SEO agencies come in.

Here is a checklist for hiring the perfect agency for your needs:

• Ask for case studies: Request agency heads to submit case studies detailing how their SEO services have delivered results for companies like yours. Focus on the key performance indicators they use to gauge success and how they relate to revenue.

• Check reviews: Read reviews on their Google Business Profile. You can also ask other business owners directly or through online forums.

• Ensure the agency doesn’t do black hat SEO: Get a guarantee from the agency that they avoid black hat SEO tactics. Even better, include it in the contract so you can seek legal recourse if they fail to abide by the agreement.

• Ensure they have experience working with garage door companies: If possible, pick only agencies with experience in your industry. They have a better understanding of how to achieve results for your company.

• Understand pricing: Compare prices with the results they promise to achieve and their expertise.

Pro tip: Read ways to measure the performance of SEO agencies using ServiceTitan’s marketing tools.

Now It's Your Turn

Applying SEO strategies can attract leads and generate revenue at significantly lower rates than other marketing channels. Even better, they can attract high-quality traffic, leading to high conversion rates.

Remember to implement only legal SEO practices and consider using ServiceTitan to enhance marketing and other critical business operations.

ServiceTitan is an all-in-one cloud-based garage door software solution that helps trade companies streamline operations, improve customer service, and grow their business. Trusted by over 100,000 contractors, our comprehensive software helps garage door businesses track customer interactions and manage their marketing efforts.