BUSINESS
TOO MUCH BAD “SEO”.
We’ve all wandered across a website like this.
The website that has what appears as randomly
inject keyword in the middle of a web page. If
you don’t know what I’m talking about, here is
an example.
“Bobs Carpet Cleaning is the best Denver,
Colorado carpet cleaner in the world. Bobs
Carpet Cleaner offers the number 1 carpet
cleaning service in Denver, Colorado.”
So, there are problems with this text. First off,
it doesn’t appear to be written by a human being.
While, what is written on the page may or may
not help with your SEO, it definitely hinders
the human experience on your website. Many
of today’s internet user are going to spot poorly
written text a mile away. They may even leave
your website and never look back.
Another problem with this text is that it appears
to be littered with keyword stuffing. This give an
impression that your website is poorly run and all
you care about is your search rankings. Not only
does this practice make it extremely difficult to
read, it could also get your website blacklisted.
The best practice is to use everything in
moderation. Write true and meaningful text that
can help to educate your customers and avoid
magic marketing tricks that could potentially get
your website blacklisted in the future.
MARKET TO YOUR CUSTOMERS.
The vast majority of online customers are, for
the most part, quite similar. They are looking for
information, reviews and prices. In the carpet
cleaning industry and other service related
industries, this holds especially true. If they are
new customers, they are likely trying to assess
whether or not they want to do business with
you. They are determining if you are a capable
company that stands behind your work. They do
this through online reviews at sites like Yelp and
Google.
They are not generally impressed with things
like a fleet of 20 cleaning vans, rotary tools or
certain brands of chemicals. Most customers
don’t care about how awesome your truckmount
is or if you have a the latest and greatest wand.
Heck, most don’t even know what a wand is.
They are simply result driven. Do you do a great
job? Are you accountable? Are you offering a
fair, competitive price? Is your service safe for
them and their family? Granted, you may have
a few clients who actually care if your cleaning
van has a giant flaming dragon warrior of
cleanness on the side of it, but at the end of the
day, all that matters is if you cleaned the carpet
well and didn’t slay the customer’s pocketbook.
The information your site is conveying to your
customers should be geared toward their needs.
They want to know wha t other people are saying
about you. So embrace connecting your website
to your social media accounts and online review
pages.
Make it public. People like to see that
the business owner is actively engaging
the community even after the job has been
completed. If you happen to have a few bad
reviews, so be it. You can likely smooth things
over with a direct reply to the customer or
hopefully you’ve already tried to address the
issue and you can put it behind you.
Another thing you can do to help the customers,
as well as your vetting process, is adding a
pricing calculator to your website. There are
several pre-built calculators that can be added
to your website, either for free or for little cost
out of the box. What this will do is allow the
customer to input how many rooms they have,
cross referencing it with the services you offer
and come up with a price, all while never having
to call and bother you with a quote, leaving you
free to do other things, like clean more carpet.
While I did say, we don’t really need to tout
on about how amazing our carpet cleaning
products are, we should let the customer know
how safe they are. As all of you know, the
general consumer is very concerned with safety
involving chemicals, especially in their home.
With the rise of organic fruits, organic cloth
and non-GMO’s, this modern consumer is
well versed in the good’s and bad’s of various
chemicals within their homes and environments.
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