Landscaping is a fast-growing industry. And it is quite a challenge to attract and retain clients. This is exactly where SEO can help you get a leg-up over the competitors. It expands your reach beyond the immediate locality and reach out to a broader audience. SEO for landscapers can be the ultimate game-changer that can help you connect with people looking for various types of landscaping services.
Landscaping SEO, when done right can cause traction on the search results . It involves optimizing your website for various SEO parameters that the Search engines scrutinize before ranking the web pages.
Search engine optimization is perhaps the most cost effective marketing tactic for landscapers that can harness manyfold traffic if done right. Not only does it get ample traffic but also establishes a landscaping company as an authoritative source on landscaping services.
Read on till the end of this blog to unlock the various ways on how you can boost SEO for your landscaper’s website.
What is SEO for Landscapers?
Landscaper SEO refers to following SEO best practices by which a landscaping business page can rank well on the search results. It involves SEO techniques like keyword research, crafting niche-specific content, backlink building, social media management, core web vital optimization, and more.
SEO for landscapers elevates the business profile by rendering it more credible for search engines. Resultantly, websites that follow better SEO practices get more organic traffic and higher conversion rates in the long run.
Why Should A Landscaping Business Do SEO?
There are many benefits of doing SEO for landscaping businesses. Let’s take a look at a few of the benefits search engine optimization has for landscapers;
- Higher Ranking on Search Results: SEO for landscapers helps you get traction on the search engines. If you follow best practices, ranking on the first page is a near possibility. It garners you more recognition and brand visibility.
- Gain Edge Over Competitors: Even today, many businesses do not invest in SEO. Hence, laying the foundation of a solid SEO campaign can give you an edge over your competitors.
- More Customers & Profit: As SEO for landscaping business helps you reach a broader audience, the organic footfall of potential customers increases. This automatically increases the conversions, which adds to the ROI.
Best SEO Techniques for Landscapers to Rule Search Results
As a landscaper, if you are new to search engine optimization, fret not. We are here with the best guide on SEO for landscapers to help beginners like you.
Website SEO can be categorized into four broad sections on page, off page, local, and technical SEO. Each of these has various elements under them that you need to take care of in order to gain traction on the search results.
If you want to obtain the DIY route of optimizing your landscaping website for search engines, read on to know more. We shall look at these sections one at a time to help you have a solid grasp over the concepts.
- On-page SEO Tactics for Landscaping Businesses
On page SEO optimization for landscapers refers to all the strategies that amp up the factors that are present right on the website. This technique involves optimizing webpages and content in a way such that these become highly discoverable for the search engine and readable for the readers.
Let’s take a look at some of the vital aspects of on-page SEO for landscapers:
- Keyword Research for Landscaping Companies
Search engine optimization for landscaping companies starts with the keyword research process. It involves finding an array of keywords related to landscaping that potential customers are searching. The search intent for landscapers can be two fold— informative purpose or transactional purpose.
Hence, we can say that potential clients reach out to the landscapers’ websites either to learn more about landscaping or to recruit your landscaping services. Both these can be beneficial for you. We shall talk about this topic more in the following section.
For now let us concern ourselves with ‘landscaping keywords’ and the types. There are three broad categories of keywords, short head, mid-tail, and long tail keywords.
In the first category, short head keywords refer to rather short keywords consisting of one or two words. It has a higher search volume and higher keyword difficulty.
A few examples of short head keywords for landscapers are elite landscaping, backyard landscaping, residential landscaping, commercial landscaping, landscaping ideas, best landscapers, etc.
Mid tail keywords on the other hand means search terms consisting of 3 to 4 words having relatively lower keyword difficulty, while long tail keywords consisting of 3 to 6 words have a lower KD and addresses specific search queries.
Avoid common keyword research mistakes like addressing irrelevant terms or only targeting super competitive keywords for landscaping businesses. It is best to use keyword research tools like Google Keyword planner, SEMrush, etc. to get your hands on the most relevant search terms.
How do you do keyword research for landscaping businesses?
- Take inventory of all landscaping services you offer
- Find search terms relevant to your business
- Target a keyword for each web page
- Target a combination of short head, mid tail and long tail keywords
- Use a premium keyword research tool to find relevant search terms
- High Quality Content is the No.1 Ranking Factor on Search Engines
The content on web pages and blogs should be at par with the top ranking sites. It should target specific keywords and be optimized with secondary keywords and LSI.
Your content should offer value to the audience. Writing informative content establishes you as an authority in the landscaping industry and strengthens the E-E-A-T signals at the same time.
Good quality content is an essential part for integrating seo for landscapers into your website. Whether you have the best website design, backlink profile, or offer the best user experience, without solid website content, everything else will bite the dust.
Craft content that is highly readable by the visitors and the search crawlers. You can check your content readability on tools like Grammarly and Yoast Real-Time Content Analysis. These can give you valuable insights about the nuances of your content and whether it requires optimization.
How to Write High Quality Content
- Craft content keeping target audience in mind
- Website content should be a mix of promotional (landing pages) and informational (blogs)
- The content should display your expertise in the fields
- Optimize website content with target keywords and LSI
- Use keywords in the title tags and meta descriptions
- Content should match the target search query
- Use H Tags for Content Structuring
H tags are HTML elements that are used to decide the content into logical segments. While readers can understand the intended heading if you just bold it or underline it, this is not the case with search engines.
Without H tag placements, the whole content is a chunk of words to it. Hence when a web crawler lands on a page without H tags, it refuses to index it because to it, such contents are not readable as they do not have any structure.
Placing H tags is important, but you cannot casually put any tag in any place you like. You have to understand the H tag hierarchy first. Your heading should be H1, subheads under that should be h2. If you segmentize the h2, follow it up with h3 and so on.
It is not enough to maintain the hierarchy while optimizing the headings. The headings in your content should be relevant and match the content body. These should be clear and concise and offer a real idea of what you would find in the following paragraphs.
How to Optimize H tags for Landscaping Business?
- There should be a single H1 tag on a web page
- H2 tags should follow h1 tags, and so on
- Headings should be creative
- Try incorporating keywords in headings to optimize on page titles
- Optimize Business Pages with Descriptive Images and Infographics
Images are one of the driving factors for on-page optimization. Hence, uploading images along with content is crucial for landscaping businesses to get more customers.
According to statistics, about 67% of people opined that they consider high quality images as one of the deciding factors when considering a business for transactions. Google, along with other search engines, pays importance to images and considers it one of the primary ranking factors on organic search results.
Now, as a landscaper, your service is uplifting the aesthetics of a space. It can be that of a backyard, terrace, or garden. Hence, to show your work, incorporating original images of your work in the service pages and blog posts is one of the best landscaping SEO strategies.
But there is a catch to uploading high quality images. Often these images have a bigger file size. While a few of them do not hurt the website, uploading a hoard of images of bigger size can slow down page loading speed. In this case, you must use gZip compression to check the size of these files and keep an optimum site speed.
See, the point is , seo for landscapers can be an easy task. But you will have to optimize several elements to get to the top. You can consider hiring an SEO agency for the purpose if you wish to.
Checklist for Image Optimization
- Upload images and illustrations of high quality
- The images should match the content of the web page
- Upload high quality images to allure website visitors
- Use image file compression to maintain optimum website speed
- Best Off Page Strategies for Landscaping Site Optimization
Off page SEO optimization involves all the strategies that aim to increase the credibility of the website, resultantly increasing the domain authority in the long run. These consist of activities that are off the webpages but yet favoring the site for ranking on the search engine results.
- Acquire High-Quality Backlinks for More Credibility
Link building is the process of connecting to relevant websites for the purpose of acquiring backlinks that in turn boosts the authoritativeness of your domain.
Of all the SEO strategies, this one can consume a while. This is because Google monitors your activities closely and any spammy business will not be received in kind light by this search engine. Hence, we highly recommend that you take your time with this particular off page technique.
There are two ways you can bring your landscaping website to get a higher domain authority. First, create the best content you can and wait for it to gradually rank on the Google search results.
A high ranking website on search engine results pages naturally attracts backlinks, as many websites link back to your website. This happens because when other landscaping companies try to create high-quality content, they often link to external sources with high authority.
Now, suppose your website is not ranking on the first page of the search results, or even on the second page, it is less likely to attract natural backlinks. In this case you resort to guest posting by reaching out to webmasters with websites on landscaping or relevant niche.
Alternatively, you can also take a look at any of the expert guest blogging agency who will patiently build a robust backlink portfolio for you.
How to Build a Backlink Portfolio for Landscaping Companies?
- Link to websites of relevant niches
- Acquire links of high authority websites
- Give some time for natural link building
- Engage in guest posting
- Disavow backlinks that do not add value
- Social Media Optimization Brings You Closer to Target Audience
Social media optimization is the best cost-effective SEO strategy for a landscaping business. In simple words, SMO involves creating business pages on all major social media channels, optimizing it with best practices, and updating it from time to time.
As your business depends on how aesthetically pleasing the landscaping work looks, social media is one of the best channels to leverage. Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube let you exhibit work in the form of images and videos.
To leverage social media, create a business page on all major social media channels. The next step is to optimize these pages with basic details of your business. This involves the name, address, and contact details.
Once you are through with the basic part, start uploading images or videos of your work to attract maximum shares on social platforms. Using hashtags and optimizing captions with target keywords is yet another landscaping SEO best practice to reach maximum audience.
The most important part of SMO is to place your website link on your profiles so as to boost the footfall of referral traffic.
Checklist for Social Media Optimization
- create business pages on all major social handles
- Optimize social media profiles with your landscaping business information
- Upload high quality images, videos, and written content
- Use appropriate hashtags to increase audience reach
- Post frequently to stay relevant in the industry
- Interact with page visitors to foster bonding
- Update business information whenever necessary
- Online Reviews & Ratings Gets More Clients
Online reviews and ratings are immensely important for any business, and a landscaping company is no exception to this norm. Hence, you should try to gather as many reviews as possible.
Statistics say, 75% of customers regularly check online reviews before making any decision.
Positive reviews influence the purchasing decisions of potential customers and are as good as word-of-mouth. Even search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bind pick up on the ratings and reviews while suggesting a business to people.
Make it a practice to ask for website reviews and third party sites like online directories after you are done with a project. You can also employ an automated email system to reach out to customers after the landscaping service. Another great idea to take care of your review profile is to hire a PR agency. They have specialized personnel who reach out to people and get the job right.
Ways to Get More Positive Reviews for a Landscaping Company
- Offer top-notch service to your clients
- Ask for a good review on your website after each project is done
- Employ automation that sends emails and SMS that ask for reviews
- Hire a PR services who do the job
- Local SEO Strategies for Landscaping Companies
As an owner of a landscaping company, which is essentially a local business, your main target should be the people in your area, especially if you are starting off new. This does not mean telling your neighbor about your business in elaborate terms. What we are trying to say is, you have to make yourself popular in the areas where you can reach physically to offer services.
To help you garner more recognition in your immediate locality or serviceable area, you need local SEO for landscapers.
- Claim Google Business Profile To Rank on the Local 3-Pack
Google Business Profile is a free platform developed by Google in the year 2014 to let local businesses take charge of their listings, services, and local search visibility. As a landscaper who wants to get more local customers to your website, GBP optimization is vital.
All you have to do is log into Google Business profile and fill out your business information. This includes your business category, name, address, contact details, business hours, and information if you operate in more than one location.
In the case of a local landscaping business, you have to include ‘landscaper’ as the primary business category. In the secondary category, you can include the specialties you offer, such as backyard landscaping, pruning, landscape maintenance, hedging, fall maintenance, seasonal display, etc.
Many landscaping clients prefer visiting the office at least once before making a final call. This makes Google Maps optimization a must too. It helps potential clients reach your office using google navigation without any hassle.
Once you fully optimize your GBP, you can feature in local searches when someone searches with transactional intent, using keywords like ‘landscapers near me,’ ‘best landscapers’, etc.
A well optimized Google business profile can even help you in Google’s local 3 pack. It is basically Google’s suggestion of the top 3 landscaping services in an area.
Checklist for GBP Optimization
- Write an engaging business description
- Enter the correct business data
- Choose the right business category
- Enter the correct location for Google Maps optimization
- Add images of business and work
- Set up direct messaging
- Technical SEO for Landscapers
Technical search engine optimization involves all elements that help web crawlers index websites and boost up the website speed. It boosts up the user experience and helps with positive on-page behavior of the visitors.
Technical optimization is one of the fundamental pillars of landscaping SEO as it helps retain page visitors, increases page time, boosts crawl depth, and enhances website performance.
Here are some of the most vital aspects of technical optimization for landscaping websites;
- Website Audit Highlights Crucial Aspects of Website Optimization
Running a 360 degree audit is a must for any successful SEO campaign. An audit means to check all the aspects of a website. It offers valuable information about the present level of optimization and points out the lacunas.
If you run a complete website audit for your landscaping site using any tool like SEMrush, it will give you a comprehensive idea about various aspects like organic traffic volume, traffic source, ranking keywords, non-indexed pages, broken links, lost links, core web vitals and more.
If you wish, run a website audit of your competitors. It helps you understand their strengths that you need to emulate and weaknesses where you can find opportunities.
A website audit will give you valuable insights into the kind of optimization your landscaper website currently has. You can analyze the data and form a solid SEO campaign based on it.
Benefits of Running a Website Audit
- Compare your website against your competitors
- Gain valuable insights of the current website optimization level
- Formulate a data-driven SEO campaign that helps you rank higher on search engine results page
- Mobile Optimization is Imperative for Landscaping SEO
Optimizing a landscaping company website for mobile devices means to ensure that people can access the website from mobiles with ease and comfort. It deters any choppiness or loading issues when accessed from devices other than mobiles.
Data show that 96.5% of people access the internet via mobiles. Hence, mobile optimization is imperative if you want to gain a higher ranking in search results.
Now, there are two ways to optimize websites for mobiles. The first is to opt for a responsive design. This type of website layout automatically adjusts all website elements like text, fonts, images, and videos to suit the smaller screen. However, the drawback is, you get a limited scope for customization.
If you are a landscaper who is yet to be initiated with website SEO, then this is perhaps the most suitable option for you.
For business persons who hold some technical knowledge about website optimization, an adaptive layout is perhaps better. This type of layout offers detailed customization options, but is time consuming.
If you are too busy dealing with your core business, you can choose a good website designing company to do mobile optimization for your website. Don’t worry, these are affordable and won’t pack a punch to the pocket.
Mobile Optimization Checklist
- Ensure that all website elements are visible on mobile
- Use image compression
- Opt for a responsive design
- Utilize menus and breadcrumbs for better navigation
- Optimize Core Web Vitals for Faster Loading Speed
When someone visits your landscaping website and sees it buffering, they will wait for a maximum of 3 seconds before tapping their way back to Google’s home page. If we go by statistics, a load time above 2 seconds elevates the page abandonment rate to 87%!
Hence, to remain in the game, you have to build a super fast speed that loads within 0.5 to 1 second to retain all the prospective clients.
If you have load time issues, then check the core web vitals of the page. There are three distinct elements in the core web vitals. They are namely CLS, INP and LCP. These measure the page loading performance, visual stability and ease of interaction between the visitor and the website.
Do note that the CWVs are different for desktop and mobile devices. Hence, keep a tab on it by running a website audit from time to time. Ensure that your website has top-notch core web vitals optimization for both mobile and desktops.
A good CWV earns the trust of the search engines as they do promise a good user experience. A website with poor core web vitals, on the other hand might face hurdles to secure a good position on the search engine results page.
How to Optimize Website Core Web Vitals?
- Use a content delivery network
- Prioritize mobile optimization
- Enable file compression
- Leverage browser caching
- Reduce the number of redirects
Conclusion
SEO for landscapers can be quite easy if you know the right ways and have the right SEO tools at disposal. If you are still uninitiated in this arena, we hope that our guide has been helpful in giving you a comprehensive idea on how to optimize SEO for landscaping business.
While you can learn the ropes easily, it requires some time, and patience. If you have both at hand, that’s great. You shall be a maestro soon. If you are too busy handling clients, you might want to Consider a professional SEO company to work on your website SEO.
Whichever way you go, remember to stick to ethical SEO practices for sustainable results. This helps your rank on SERPs and hold on to it for a long time.
