So many companies today are looking to scale to the pre-pandemic numbers and beyond. This goes for most industries, especially Home Services companies looking to scale their business. Many of these companies are heavily reliant on Lead Generation and scaling for them means generating more Leads first. We sat down with Sasha Matviienko of growth360 to go over an approach that can help your business rank on Google.
Sasha, is there still an opportunity on SEO or is SEO dead?
Definitely, there is so much of an opportunity. And not only that, SEO effectively pays for itself so it makes a lot of sense to start with SEO. So we oftentimes recommend SEO as a starting tactic to some of our clients.
What are some of the most useful approaches for local businesses?
Well, there is a lot! One of the useful approaches that we see work really well is building Local pages. Imagine, you are a local services company, let’s say you are a Roofer. And you yourself are located in Mississauga, but you services businesses all around the Greater Toronto Area, anything within an hour drive from where you are.
A useful strategy for a business like this would be to rank for all of these towns Organically. These are the service areas of your business and you want to be front and center for your main keywords on Google in your area.
Here you would rank for keywords like “Roofers Mississauga” or “Roofers Richmond Hill” etc. So you pick a keyword and you start building the best answer for it, the best answer on a page.
For example, a primary keyword for our business is Toronto SEO, however, it is a tough keyword to rank for. That’s why we prefer going after easier opportunities, for example Small Business SEO or Construction SEO Services, examples can be found here.
What businesses does this approach apply to?
You can use this approach for salons, medical spas and even law firms. If you think about it, these businesses follow the same idea – they have a service and a number of Local Areas that they serve. So ranking following this strategy can work really well for them “Keyword + Location”. And there is a countless number of pages you can build targeting towns around the major city, in our case – Toronto, for example, we go for Barrie, or other areas nearby.
For some industries where competition is lower, we use home pages to rank for the primary keywords, for example – Citadel uses their Home page to rank for Security Camera installation service Toronto.
How soon does this approach work?
That’s a really good question. There are always ways to make it work within the first month or two. But generally it depends on your market. Imagine your competitors were investing in SEO for last five years, this means that more than likely there will be a pretty big gap between you and them Organically. However, we always start by looking at opportunities and understanding how soon we can get there and make an impact.
So we’ll never go for a keywords that we estimate to take years to rank for. Walk before you run. But this doesn’t mean that you can’t rank and start seeing results within a month or two for some other opportunities. For example, ranking for Toronto Roofers would likely be much harder than going for Roofers in a smaller town close by.
For example, for Vii Construction, we use home page to rank for competitive keywords like Custom Home Builder Toronto, however, the company has a variety of other pages related to other services and locations.
How soon do you recommend to start SEO?
Right away. If you have a business, you have to be online. To get the best Return on Investment, you need to be on Google. My recommendation is to start SEO right away once you are open for business.
About Sasha Matviienko
Sasha is a recognized Digital Marketing expert. For the past 10 years he’s been helping businesses generate revenue online. Working with a range of clients – from startups & small local businesses to the Fortune 100 brands. His background in SEO, Online Advertising & Web Development allows him to design comprehensive strategies that accomplish one objective – generate more Revenue for his clients online. Sasha launched growth360 with a simple idea – creating a different kind of agency experience – a transparent business that is accountable for results. In his free time Sasha speaks at local & international conferences and educates business owners about Online Lead Generation in his YouTube channel and articles.
