Website

One of the best ways is with a contractors website. Although this may be pretty obvious, not everybody has the know how to create a website that is exciting and functional. You know you need one, but getting one established is another deal. You need a contractor web design that is fresh, functional and inviting. The website is the first time a customer is interacting with your business. It needs to be a positive one that they will feel comfortable navigating.

Advertising and Marketing

Your website is one way to advertise your business. There are plenty of ways to show off what you can do and what you have done in the past. Contractor advertising, especially when done on the internet, requires a specific set of tools designed to maximize your investment. Part of that includes your site actually being seen. Contractor marketing hinges on proper use of SEO tools. Search engine optimization is what gets your site to the top of the search engines.

This is probably a lot of information for somebody who has worked hard to build up a contracting business and has not spent hundreds of hours learning the ins and outs of SEO and things of that nature. Thankfully, there are businesses that can take care of website design and marketing. If you are interested in getting your site to the top in Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines, Happy Contractor can certainly help you.

One way to obtain backlinks is to write articles and get them posted in e-zines.
E-zines are on-line magazines that contain page after page of articles on a variety of subjects. If you search Google for “how to get rid of fleas,” for example, very likely an article on fleas in an e-zine will come up.

Here’s an example of how you can use e-zines to accumulate backlinks. Let’s say you’re a plumber. You or someone you hire could write an article about preventing clogs in household drains. Then, you could submit the article for publication in an e-zine. At the end of the article, the e-zine will allow you to provide a brief description of the author and a link to your website. This can be a valuable backlink to your website because it appears in an article relevant to plumbing.

E-zines vary in quality and, accordingly, their backlinks are granted more or less value by search engines. Among e-zines that cover a wide variety of subjects, EzineArticles.com is considered the most desirable to receive backlinks from. If you type into a search engine a phrase like “best e-zines,” you’ll be able to quickly find a current list of the ones considered highest quality.

Click here to find out more about getting your contractor website to the top of Page 1 of Google with Search Engine Optimization.

Please call 800-990-5811 between 9-5 Pacific Time to discuss getting your contracting company more customers from the Internet. We look forward to talking with you.

Kim Hopkins, CEO
HappyContractor

The customer says, “I won’t be home Monday, but can you come by Tuesday at 11 a.m. to give me an estimate?” The correct answer is “Yes,” but, of course, that’s not always possible. If it’s not possible, propose the earliest time that you have available, preferably within a two-hour window. For example, Tuesday between 1 and 3.

If a customer found you on the Internet, it’s likely that the customer is higher-income, is a busy person, and wants to get things done efficiently. If well-designed, your contractor website has already answered many more questions than a Yellow Pages ad. It distinguishes you from the other tradesmen out there.

The customer may be a little worried though. If you look like a good contractor, you’re probably in high demand. You’re probably very busy. Maybe it’s going to be a total pain dealing with you because you’ll have a hard time getting around to their job.

The customer will be relieved and less worried about getting the work done if you don’t make them wait long for your estimate. When it comes time to do the work, again it’s important to meet the customer’s schedule to the extent possible. Meeting customer schedules will get you more jobs.

Click to find out about contractor websites that appeal to Internet customers or to find out more about getting your contractor website to the top of Page 1 of Google with Search Engine Optimization.

Please call 800-990-5811 between 9-5 Pacific Time to discuss getting your contracting company more customers from the Internet. We look forward to talking with you.

Kim Hopkins, CEO
HappyContractor

Put your website address wherever you put your phone number.

Here are examples:

Advertising

Include your website address in any advertising for your contracting company. This includes print ads like in Yellow Pages or newspapers, and also TV and radio ads.

Stationery

Include your website address on all of your business cards, letterhead, envelopes, invoices, contracts, etc.

Technician Uniforms

Put your website address (and make sure that it’s big enough to easily read) on the back of your company T-shirts or jackets.

Van and Other Signage

Add your website address along with the name of your company on the side of your vans and on any other signage.

Voice Mail Message

Add you website address to your voice mail message for your contracting company. Here’s a sample message that an electrician might use:

Hello, and thank you for calling HighPower Electric. Our office hours are 8 am to 5 pm Monday through Friday. Please leave your name, number and any message you wish at the sound of the tone and we’ll get back to you at the beginning of the next working day. You can also find out more about HighPower Electric or schedule an appointment by going to our website at www.HighPowerElectric.com. Thanks and have a great day!

Conversations

Make sure you and all your staff know what your company website address is, and be ready to invite any new or existing customers to visit it.

Just as you put your phone number within easy reach of potential customers, do the same with your website address. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, your website will give people a chance to find out about your contracting company and consider it when they next need your services.

Click to find out about contractor websites that appeal to Internet customers or to find out more about getting your contractor website to the top of Page 1 of Google with Search Engine Optimization.

Please call 800-990-5811 between 9-5 Pacific Time to discuss getting your contracting company more customers from the Internet. We look forward to talking with you.

Kim Hopkins, CEO

HappyContractor.com

             Answer: It depends on the type of customer that you’re looking for.

CraigsList is available in many areas of the country. The rules for users and the fees vary depending on your area. In Los Angeles, CraigsList allows businesses to post free ads with links to their websites. The ad runs for a day and then needs to be re-posted, which, fortunately, is quick and simple.

However, the results from CraigsList may be minimal. You might also find that the calls from CraigsList are from customers who are doing a lot of bargain hunting for the best price rather than for high quality. When you’re starting out as a contractor, this might work fine for you. Larger companies with more overhead may not find this to be a profitable approach, however.

Even if CraigsList doesn’t turn out to be a good source of customers for your contracting company, it may be an excellent way to find new employees. In L.A. help wanted ads cost a small fee. However, it’s an advantage that they can be posted immediately, and we find that the ads generate many calls from potential employees.

One way to generate customer calls from Internet customers is by boosting your website to the top of Google with Search Engine Optimization. Call us at 800-990-5811 between 9-5 Pacific Time to discuss boosting your website to the top of Page 1 of Google. We look forward to talking with you.

This is the first cut — does the website show the contractor to be honest, friendly, and competent? Most upscale Internet customers won’t bother with issues of price until they are attracted to the contractor by quality. A good website of a quality contractor will show customers that he is —

1) Honest – Customers must feel that they can trust the contractor to do the promised job at the promised price. The contractor’s website can’t make him look like a rip-off artist who promises Low Low Prices and disappears in the night.

2) Friendly – the customer must feel that the contractor is going to be helpful, like a neighbor or friend. The contractor’s website must use cheerful colors and friendly language rather than seek to impress or intimidate with “black and steel” High Tech graphics and technical jargon. Home Improvement tips also create a friendly and helpful feel.

3) Competent – The customer must feel that the contractor will do the job right the first time and enhance rather than damage their home or business. The website makes the contractor look competent if all parts are working, all the photos display correctly, the text is clear and grammatical (but informal and friendly), and everything seems logical.

A key aspect of a logical website is that similar parts are grouped together. For example, descriptions of services offered are grouped in one easily-found location and the home improvement tips in another.

Once an upscale customer is persuaded by the website to call the contractor, the customer will often be focused on the quality of the job and the convenience of scheduling. The customer will likely to be willing to pay a slightly higher price for these. This allows quality contractors on the Internet to operate with a higher profit margin. A website that shows that the contractor will do quality work can attract the kind of customers that help to create a profitable company.

Click here for more information about websites designed by HappyContractor and here for how we boost contractor websites to the top of Page 1 of Google.

Please call 800-990-5811 between 9-5 Pacific Time to discuss your website. We look forward to talking with you.

When I built our first contracting website in 1996, it got lost in the back pages of Google. In those days, the term “Search Engine Optimization” hadn’t even been invented. So, in the early years, the website got very few visits from searchers on search engines.

However, from the beginning the website paid off. One of the first ways that I got visitors to the website was by referrals from other websites. Here’s an example of how this works. A realty company with which we’ve had a longtime relationship has a page on their website for referring their customers to home improvement contractors. They list us as one of their recommended electricians. We get a few visits to our website every month from this referral page, which means a job for us now and then.

This was pretty simple to set up. We checked out their website, saw the referral page and asked to be listed. We filled out a profile of our company and provided a link. We provide customers with high quality service and good value and keep our company name bright and shiny with the realty company and their customers.

You can check out whether realtors or contractors that you work with have a website that refers visitors to home improvement websites like yours. Or you might find that you can create a listing on a referral page of a website for your local chamber of commerce or other local business directory.

Referrals from other websites can provide a trickle of customers to your company and are not to be laughed at. However, you can generate a much larger stream of visitors by boosting your website to the top of Google with Search Engine Optimization.

Call us at 800-990-5811 between 9-5 Pacific Time to discuss boosting your website to the top of Page 1 of Google. We look forward to talking with you.

Kim Hopkins, CEO
HappyContractor

Search Engines look kindly on contractor websites with lots of relevant, informative articles. For example, an electrician who posts articles on his website about the energy-efficiency benefits of ceiling fans or the possible causes of a power outage is not only showing visitors that he’s a helpful guy, he’s also likely boosting his rankings in search engines.

Landing Pages

Creating landing pages is an excellent way to add useful pages to a website. Here’s how it works. Let’s say that you’re a general contractor who finds bathroom remodels profitable. You can create a special page for bathroom remodels. It can show off photos of your jobs or photos of the types of designs customers can choose from.

If text includes words that people often type into search engines, “keywords” like “bathroom remodel,” this page can become an important landing page for your website. A landing page is the first page that visitors land on.

Usually, of course, the first page that visitors land on is your homepage. This is likely to happen if the searcher types in “general contractor.” However, if you create specific pages for keywords that people often search on, these can become important landing pages.

General contractors can create special pages devoted to each of a series of topics — bathroom remodels, kitchen remodels, room additions, and so on. If well designed, these pages can each become important landing pages and can each rank high in Google but for different search terms. Different pages of the same website can show at the top of Google depending on whether the searcher types in “kitchen remodels,” “bathroom remodels,” “room additions,” or also, of course, “general contractors.”

Electricians might want a landing page for “house rewires.” Plumbers might want a landing page for “copper re-piping.” These are big ticket jobs that customers need a lot of information on before they choose a contractor.

Search engines want to provide the best possible websites for searchers. Many searchers prefer a single website that answers a lot of questions. As the goal of search engines is to please searchers so that they’ll search again another day, search engines prefer large, comprehensive sites.

Search Engine Optimization for Contractors

In addition to creating a large, informative site, in metro areas with a lot of competition among contractors, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is also necessary. For example, with SEO you can properly label photos so that search engines understand their value to visitors despite the inability of search engines to see the actual content of photos. SEO both makes the website more accessible to visitors and communicates to search engines the value of the website.

However, the first step of both appealing to customers and ranking high in search engines is to create a website with pages that provide helpful and informative information about your trade and designing these to be landing pages for keywords that searchers frequently type into search engines.

Click here for information about websites designed by HappyContractor and here for how we boost contractor websites to the top of Page 1 of Google.

Please call 800-990-5811 between 9-5 Pacific Time to discuss your website. We look forward to talking with you.

Kim Hopkins, CEO
HappyContractor

Backlinks can come from business directory websites like YellowPages.com and MerchantCircle, the website of your local chamber of commerce, the website of a general contractor that you work for, and so on. Another source of backlinks is from forums.

 Forums are websites where people with similar interests can join in discussions. For example, on ElectricianTalk.com, electricians can discuss the best ways to lay wire or get new customers. They type in messages that are posted on the forum website for other electricians to read and reply to.

Each time you post a message in a forum, you’ll leave a “signature” at the end of your post which can include a User Name of your choice and a link to your company website. Many forums set their programming so that these are “no-follow” links. This directs the search engines not to count them as backlinks. This is done to discourage participants from “spamming” — writing useless forum posts solely to obtain the value of the backlinks to their websites. However, no one knows if search engines fail to count no-follow links. In any event, you can also participate in forums which allow “follow” links.

Participating in forums on your trade about subjects that you’d like to know more about has value in itself. If you can also obtain backlinks for your website, that’s icing on the cake.

Click to find out more about getting your contractor website to the top of Page 1 of Google with Search Engine Optimization.

 Please call 800-990-5811 between 9-5 Pacific Time to discuss getting your contracting company more customers from the Internet. We look forward to talking with you.

 Step 1. Design website content that attracts your type of customers and jobs.

I’m going to assume that as a contractor, the purpose of your website is to attract customers who (1) find your website, (2) look at it, (3) contact your company, (4) hire you to do the work, and (5) pay you. Your website should be designed with all five criteria in mind.

If your website does its job properly, by the time customers have looked at your website and contacted you, they already are 90% sold on hiring your company. When they call, they are checking that you will deliver on what your website promises and will want to discuss their job.

What kind of customer do you want? A properly designed website should attract the kind of customer that you want and should also be designed to repel customers that you don’t want. I’ve written an entire article on repelling the contracting customers that you don’t want. If your website is honest, friendly, and competent, it’s more likely to attract quality customers that will be easier to work with and who will pay their bill.

What kind of work do you want? Only commercial work, or only residential work, or both? What about industrial? Do you like to work with general contractors or only work directly with owners? What about property management companies? Do you do residential service calls, provide 24 hour service, work on weekends?

If you’re a plumber, are re-pipes more profitable than service calls? If you’re an HVAC contractor, do you profit more from central air installations than repairs? If you’re an electrician, do you make more profit on service upgrades?

Whatever kind of customers and work you are looking for, design your website to attract them.

Step 2. Construct a technically sound website.

This is where all kinds of programming issues, such as HTML, FLASH, etc. would be discussed. But guess what? I’m going to do everyone a favor and not go into all that stuff. Instead I’ll just say that if your website isn’t set up well technically, your visitors are not going to stick around.

Major technical problems are more common that you might think. For example, websites can be designed for a major browser like Internet Explorer but not show up properly in less-used browsers like Chrome. If you and your website builder use Internet Explorer, this problem might go unnoticed. A knowledgeable website builder will check that the website works properly in all major browsers. There are many other technical issues like broken links, photos not showing properly, and so on, that your website needs to avoid.

Step 3. Design the user experience to meet customer needs and wants.

Your website must look good and convey a warm, friendly feeling. It also must be organized logically with lots of written information available for those people who will want to read in detail before they decide to contact you. Click here for an entire article on designing the user experience for three types of contracting customers.

Step 4. Do on-site SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to push your website to the top of the search engines.

This is another area where I’m not going to go into a lot of detail, but here’s the basic deal. Search engines like Google want to provide their users with a good searching experience. When someone types in “electrical contractor San Diego,” Google wants to provide that person with “relevant” websites. They list 10 websites on the first page, and another 10 on the second page, etc. But how does Google decide where to list your contractor website?

Google sends out “spiders” (computer programs) that crawl all over your website and see what it’s like. If the spiders find original, informative articles about your trade, it will consider your website to be highly relevant to searches for your trade. On-site SEO is a large and detailed subject, but the basics can be learned fairly quickly. One way to do this is to read Search Engine Optimization for Dummies.

Step 5. Do off-site SEO to push your website to the top of the search engines.

Search engines like Google also look at other factors in determining which websites are listed first. Most of these factors boil down to links from other websites to your website. Each link from another website counts as a “vote” for your website.

But all votes are not created equal. A vote from a highly regarded website can count much more than a vote from a lesser website. Exactly how Google decides the relative value of each vote is an endlessly discussed and changing area of study. Off-site SEO is an even larger and more detailed subject then on-site SEO, but the basics can be learned fairly quickly and, again, is covered in Search Engine Optimization for Dummies.

Final Thoughts

If your website is designed to attract the type of customers and type of work that are most profitable for your company, it is aligned with your company goals. If it works without technical glitches and is attractive and organized in its design, your customers will have a good website experience and will be more likely to call you. If the website includes a lot of original, informative articles and is linked to by other, authoritative websites, the search engines will push it to the top of their pages so that it will be visible to searchers. These are the key steps for creating an excellent website that rises to the top of the search engines and gets you calls from your type of customer.

Click to find out about contractor websites that appeal to Internet customers or to find out more about getting your contractor website to the top of Page 1 of Google with Search Engine Optimization.

 Please call 800-990-5811 between 9-5 Pacific Time to discuss getting your contracting company more customers from the Internet. We look forward to talking with you.

Kim Hopkins, CEO

HappyContractor