How SEO Can Benefit Your Business

When Eric Swiatek started Green Leaf Home Inspections in 2018, he’d been working for HUD for more than 17 years. He was looking for a change of career, and while he’d never really considered going into business for himself, he saw an opportunity to start home inspecting and went for it. “Initially I performed inspections as a side business, but things grew so quickly I resigned from my federal position at the start of 2020 and was fortunate enough to perform 410 inspections last year,” he said.

Today Swiatek serves the greater Cleveland area, but starting his own business was not without a learning curve—especially when getting his web presence off the ground. “Building a website was one of the first pieces of my business I began planning when I was starting out. As a new business entering a market with several established inspection companies, including a few franchises, I considered a functional website a must,” he said.

He started with WordPress—watching free YouTube tutorials and digging into the user-friendly WordPress format. One-third of websites are built with WordPress, according to Search Engine Journal.

While Swiatek said he knew a little bit about SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, starting out, he also turned to online resources and relied on IT people in his own network for education.

He used WordPress for two years before turning to a professional at Marvelous Web Media to update his site’s appearance and improve its functionality/user experience. “The difference is palpable. I often get comments on how great my current site looks, and it is so much easier to use on mobile devices than my original site. Obviously, in our current culture, the majority of people are using mobile devices to access my site, so that improvement cannot be overstated,” he said.

“Like everyone else, the majority of my business comes from direct referrals, but I do have people who find me through organic searches online. Having an attractive and functional site lends credibility to my business’ online presence, and there is no question that it leads to booking inspections.”

6 SEO Tips for Your Website

1. What is SEO?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, which is the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results, according to Moz, an SEO software company. Organic search results are those that show up in your list of Google results that aren’t marked as ads.

You can get a crash course in trying your hand at SEO as easily as starting with WordPress, which comes with a user-friendly SEO plug-in called Yoast. Yoast helps you make sure your post will be found and rewarded by the gods at Google, with a helpful SEO analysis that includes recommendations for what not to do, too (complete with red or green frowny or smiley faces).

2. Build Something That Can Grow With Time.

When asked for the three biggest lessons he learned regarding SEO, Swiatek said, “It’s a marathon, not a sprint,” adding that building a web presence takes time and effort. “Find creative ways to drive traffic to your site; whether that is a helpful blog or other means to steer a client to your site, the direct traffic will improve your SEO.” He recommends hiring a professional to build your site, as there are so many subtle tricks that can be used within your site to have an immediate boost to SEO.

“Find a good web developer and pay them to create a site for you. I’m proof that you can find ways to build a site yourself, but the time and energy is not worth it in the long run,” Swiatek said.

“I was happy with the site I built, but investing the money to hire a professional upfront would have been a much better business move and would have freed up many hours I could have focused on building other areas of my business.”

3. Don’t Overload Your Site.

Neil Patel, cofounder of NP Digital, warns of the pitfall of slow pages that ultimately leads people to leave your site. He quotes from eConsultancy, saying “40% of people abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load.” Yes, we are impatient people these days.

Patel advises that you get rid of any non-essential elements that slow down your site. If you’re a WordPress user, you can also consider deactivating plug-ins you don’t need. You can check your site speed using Google Analytics Site Speed or one of the many other online services.

4. Choose Links Wisely.

Patel also preaches about links, as you can build your organic traffic by linking to other sites with relevant content. On his blog at neilpatel.com he writes, “You should only link out to content pages that offer tremendous value. It’s a good SEO practice. Link building is also all about quality, not quantity. You’ll build more trust in your niche if you have a few authoritative links rather than a dozen poor quality links.”

5. Study Web Analytics.

Find out what works, where traffic is coming from, and what people are searching for in search engines like Google with a smart web analytics tool. Patel says Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and other private web analytics software solutions can help you track your success. Small businesses can use Google Analytics for free, while you’ll encounter a recurring fee for more advanced features.

6. Descriptions Matter.

What are meta descriptions? These are essentially the first glimpse people will get of your company. If someone Googles “Pittsburgh home inspectors,” for example, and you have good SEO, your company hopefully comes up on the first page of results. But as that person scrolls down the page, they might choose which site to click on first based on that little snippet of text they see below the website link in the list of results.

What you write in that meta description matters. The day that I searched “Pittsburgh home inspectors,” for example, the second return (after Expertise.com, whose SEO game is apparently on-point) is ASHI member Guardian Home Inspection. Before I click, though, I can read their meta description to decide if this is the best choice for me: “Pittsburgh Home Inspection company serving homebuyers, sellers, and owners in southwestern Pennsylvania. We offer home inspections, radon testing, termite…” Helpful, right?

Patel says well-crafted meta descriptions are among the most important but neglected SEO tips. Moz.com says a page’s meta description should intelligently (in a natural, active, non-robotic way) include the keywords that a page is targeting. For instance, a keyword might be “Pittsburgh home inspectors.” But the meta description should also be compelling enough that a searcher will want to click on the link. The meta description should be directly relevant to the page it describes and differ from the descriptions for other pages on your site.

For more helpful tips and a beginner’s guide to SEO, visit neilpatel.com.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author only and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or views of ASHI. The information contained in the article is general and readers should always independently verify for accuracy, completeness, and reliability.