With 93% of consumers using the internet to find local businesses, painting contractors with websites that show up high on Google’s search engine results pages are highly likely to receive lots of calls from potential customers. But how can your website consistently achieve strong performance in search?
We recently wrote a blog highlighting the Top 10 Organic Search Ranking Factors for Painting Contractor Websites in 2022. This is part two of that blog, covering ranking factors 11 through 20. To begin, let’s take another look at the chart of the top 20:
A big thank you goes out to Whitespark for their 2021 Local Search Ranking Factors Survey. Now let’s look at each of the factors ranked 11 through 20 and how they apply to painting contractors.
#11 Quantity of Inbound Links to Domain from Industry-Relevant Domains
This is the number of links you have coming into your website from other painting industry websites. Websites that would qualify and help you here include the PCA (Painting Contractors Association) and American Painting Contractor, as well as other website platforms that you may have established a profile on including Porch, Houzz, Angi, HomeAdvisor, etc.
How to Improve
Create profiles with links to your website on any of the web platforms that are free. Do what you can to get more links to your website from these sources and additional industry websites. Ask for links from all industry-related organizations you are a part of.
#12 Mobile-friendly/Responsive Website
The only reason this factor isn’t higher is because it’s been a factor for long enough that almost every website is built with responsive design. That means that your website will adjust to look good on (almost) all devices that somebody might use to access it.
How to Improve
If you are unsure about your website, use your phone to access it. If it looks different than desktop and you can read the words easily because the font is bigger you should be good to go. If it looks like a miniature version of the website you see on your computer and the words are tiny then you want to get it fixed as soon as possible. The penalty for not having a responsive design/mobile-friendly website is that you likely won’t show up in any searches.
#13 Volume of Quality Content on Service Pages
This is another emphasis on the importance of having a website that is well built out with rich, relevant content and lots of well written pages.
How to Improve
Make sure you have individual web pages for all the services that you provide. Make sure you’ve got good, quality content on each of those pages that describes the service in as much detail as possible, along with the experience that the customer can expect when they choose to work with your painting company.
#14 Diversity of Inbound Links to Domain
This is part of proving your credibility to Google. The more websites that have links to your website, the more Google sees you as a credible expert in your field. Think of it a little like reviews. The more strongly positive reviews you see from more people for a business, service or product, the more likely you are to decide that business, service or product is high quality. Google looks at links to your website the same way.
How to Improve
Get more links to your website from other quality websites. Similar to #9 and #11, ask all of the businesses and organizations you are involved with to post links to your website. Don’t try to take a shortcut and pay somebody who tells you they can get you hundreds of links in a matter of days or weeks. Those will be very low quality links. They may even be considered “toxic” by Google and then your website is at risk of a significant penalty.
#15 Keywords in GMB Landing Page H1/H2 Tags
This one is a little bit technical. Your GMB landing page is the page that the website link on your Google Business Profile goes to. H1 and H2 tags are the headlines that you have on that page. You want to have relevant keywords in those headlines.
How to Improve
Take a look at the H1 and H2 text you have on the page linked to your Google Business Profile. If needed, edit them to include your one or two most important keywords.
#16 Quantity of Inbound Links to Domain
Pretty simple here – this is the number of links to your website from other websites.
How to Improve
The same thing that helps you on #14 helps you with this one – get more links to your website from other quality websites.
#17 Click-Through Rate from Search Results (General)
Google does factor in user interactions to determine future search results. When Google sees that users are clicking on a specific website in the organic search results it will move that website up. Google is seeing that as a very good answer to the search the user is conducting.
If users are not clicking on a specific website in the search results then Google sees that as a sign that the website is not what users are looking for when they conduct that search. That website will fall in the search results.
How to Improve
Pay attention to your title tags and descriptions. These are your opportunities to get users to click on your website in the search results. You want these to include marketing language, but you don’t want to mislead users. If you do mislead users you are much more likely to get an immediate bounce, meaning they’ll click on your website but then almost instantly hit the back bar. That’s a big negative in Google’s eyes.
#18 Keywords in Domain
In this instance your domain refers to what is before the .com, .net, .biz or whatever other extension you may use for your website. So, for example our domain is propainterwebsites.com.
How to Improve
At this point you likely have what you are going to have. But, if you are able to include topical and location-based keywords in your domain it could definitely benefit you. Something like atlantahousepainters.com would absolutely help. If you haven’t already, take a look at what domains are currently available that could help you here.
#19 Quantity of Inbound Links to Landing Page URL from Industry-Relevant Domains
For this one, take #11 and specifically apply it to the web page that your Google Business Profile links to.
How to Improve
Most painting contractors will have their home page linked on their Google Business Profile. They’ll also have their home page linked to from their business profiles on industry web platforms and other websites. In those instances, this will take care of itself. However, depending on the nature of your business, you may want to have your Google Business Profile link to a different page on your website. If that is the case, you’ll want to work to get industry links to that same page, as well as your home page.
#20 Keywords in Text Surrounding Links to Domain
You have no real control over this one – this is the text before and after the link on another website to your website.
How to Improve
While you can’t control it, you can help your chances of doing well on this by getting links from the types of websites that have been mentioned earlier in the article.
There is a lot of information contained in these two blogs and it could definitely be overwhelming. One of the best things you can do is to chop it into small chunks, prioritize based on the rankings, create a project plan and then start chipping away at it little by little.
If you want to hit the easy button and work with a provider that can take care of most of these things for you, we can help! Please call us at 919-424-6121 or schedule a meeting for a day and time that is convenient for you.