What Should be the Primary Goal of a Contractor Website?

We are trying something new here.

Each week we are going to come to you with a new question that gets answered by one of our experts on the 33 Mile Radius team.

The questions are going to be on a variety of topics around contractor marketing so please send in your hardest hitting questions.

The catch is that each question must be answered within 1 or 2 minutes and try to include actionable advice or thoughts.

How to setup your Home Advisor page to make it work

The last few years have brought a strong rise in the number of websites offering to connect your business with people who are using the internet to shop around for services.

Places like Angie’s List, Yelp, and even Facebook have been catering to this growing need for years. When you’re talking about the home service industry, however, don’t miss the opportunity to include HomeAdvisor in your dialogue.

Your star rating will not show on GMB unless you have 5 reviews

Google has changed the way that they show reviews in the search results. The recent update changes how reviews are shown to searchers. In the past, the star rating of a business was shown to searchers no matter if the company had 1 or 100 reviews in the search view. However now, unless you have more than 5 reviews your stars will not display.

Reviews on third party sites are critical for you to get more business, but you also need to learn how to add a link to Google reviews to your website.

If you are not showcasing reviews on your website, you are doing you and your business a disservice. Getting reviews can be extremely challenging so when you have reviews you should showcase them as much as possible.

There are two simple ways to start getting reviews on your website. Depending on your skill level you might need to call whoever is managing your website. However, if you know a thing or two about websites you should be able to do it yourself.

We talk to growth-minded contractors who want more leads every day, however getting leads is not always easy. The options to get more are limitless – agencies, lead generation, affiliates, referral programs all promise to take you to the next level. Everyone promises everything, but most only leave you disappointed.

It is easy for us to say that our home services lead generation program is different, but proving it is much more difficult.

Yelp reviews are a great way to let everyone know about your business successes. Yelp reviews help millions of people connect to the services they need, and good reviews can definitely result in more sales for your business. When your business has a strong presence on Yelp (and other sites like it), customers are more likely to engage your services. This is because people trust reviews to give them solid advice—in fact, studies have shown that people trust online reviews just as much as they would trust a recommendation from a person they actually know.

Not All SEO Reports Are Truly Honest

As a small business owner, you have no doubt become accustomed to the constant barrage of sales calls from a slew of marketing agencies promising you the world and asking for your money. As you well know many of these companies will use various tactics and technical information to try and trick you into buying their services. Sadly, this type of sales tactic isn’t going away and is used by many of our competitors.

The future of your lead generation relies on you to reach customers on Facebook

Social media platforms have been transforming the way everyone in the world does business. Comedians, makeup artists, wedding photographers, and real estate agents have all seen a shift in their customers wanting to find and interact with them online. But can you get home service leads from it?

A lot of contractors think that social media is not for them because it doesn’t produce the very glamorous photos or hilarious anecdotes we see so many professionals posting on online.

Online Reviews Are Tough To Get

There’s a big difference between doing something and doing something the right way. For example, if you’re cooking a meal from scratch, you (hopefully) don’t just toss all of the ingredients in at the same time and hope for the best.

Instead, you probably follow a predetermined set of instructions that will guide you through the process and leave you with a delicious meal as the end result.

3 Reasons you Need to Start Focusing on your Angie’s List Reviews and Listing

Love it or hate it, Angie’s List has just become a critical part of your home service business’s online marketing strategy. If you haven’t heard, the creators of Angie’s List—the popular online review site—have recently made their first-tier membership free.

It looks like they finally realized that nobody wants to pay for things online, so they’ve given potential new members a way to access their reviews and listings for free.