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As an outdoor contractor, you probably already know how important it is for potential customers to visit your website and learn more about you and your service.

But did you know that organic search drives 53% of all website traffic, and 49% of marketers consider it the highest ROI from any marketing channel?

What is organic search?

Organic search is the search results that come up on Google that aren’t paid for. So if your site appears on the search results when somebody Googles ‘outdoor contractor’, then this is an organic result.

Obtaining a high rank on organic search results can easily be achieved by improving your organic SEO (search engine optimization). If you want to promote your outdoor contracting business online, then improving your organic SEO is the way to do it.

Enhancing your organic SEO will drive high-quality traffic to your website and help you improve the number of leads you secure without having to spend money on paid advertising.

So, how do you go about enhancing your organic SEO? We’re glad you asked!

Here are 7 helpful ways to enhance your website’s organic SEO, improve your rank on Google, and increase the traffic to your site.

1. Test & audit your website’s current performance

Before you start improving your website’s SEO, it’s important to find out what needs improvement. There’s no point in doing all the work when you don’t know what areas need the most attention!

This is why audits are important. Like a car, your website needs to be serviced, audited and tested regularly to ensure it’s healthy and performs properly.

Audits help you understand what’s currently working for your website, what’s falling short, and how you can make improvements.

Search engines are always changing the way they operate, which is why regular tests and audits are essential even if you feel you’ve optimized your site perfectly.

How to do a website audit:

  • Choose a website audit tool – we recommend Semrush or ahrefs
  • Run your website URL through your chosen audit tool
  • Find technical errors
  • Identify SEO problems
  • Analyze design and UX
  • Assess website content
  • Generate a checklist of any issues found
  • Complete the checklist and fix those errors!

An audit gets down to the root of your SEO problems, so you know exactly how to enhance your website’s search visibility.

2. Optimize your content — do keyword research

The first step towards optimizing your website copy is keyword research.

Keyword research provides you with the words you need to make your content more accessible to search engines. Keyword research highlights the important keywords and phrases your audience is searching for. By putting these words into your content, Google will know to push your website to the top for all related searches.

Your keywords will be what your target audience is typing into Google when searching for a local landscaping company. Without knowing what keywords you should be targeting, you won’t be able to optimize your website effectively.

Here are some tips on how to do keyword research for your landscaping business.

  • Brainstorm ‘seed’ keywords
  • See what keywords your competitors rank for
  • Use keyword research tools

Keyword research lays the foundation for the rest of your SEO strategy and should never be ignored! If you want your audience to find you in the sea of competitors, you have to highlight the keywords they’re searching for and create content that matches their search intent.

3. Improve your user experience & reduce bounce rates

Do you want to reduce bounce rates on your website? Of course you do! Nobody wants to see their potential clients leave their website when they’re so close to converting! So start focusing on creating a fantastic user experience for every one of your visitors.

According to Amazon Web Services, 88% of online shoppers claim they won’t revisit a website after a bad user experience. That’s a lot of people!

When it comes to user experience, having a visually pleasing site that’s well laid out isn’t enough. No matter how nice your website looks, your visitors aren’t going to stick around if it’s taking too long to load, is confusing to navigate, or is just difficult to use.

According to Google, when a page load time goes from one second to five seconds, the probability of bounce increases by 90%. So you have to make sure your website is loading quickly, or you’ll end up losing a lot of potential clients.

Improve your website’s user experience by:

  • Using an appealing call to action
  • Making use of white space
  • Creating targeted headlines
  • Using original images
  • Not overwhelming users with too many options
  • Using easy-to-understand language
  • Writing for scannability (headings, lists, bullet points)
  • Keeping the content of your site pages consistent

4. Optimize your website for mobile

Now in this day and age, this point should be obvious because so many web users now opt for their mobiles over their desktops. Nearly 84% of the global population owns a smartphone, and more than half of all traffic on the web comes from mobile devices alone!

If you want to convert more website visitors into customers, make sure your site is mobile-responsive.

Some features of a great mobile experience include:

  • Larger buttons
  • Smaller images
  • Short, easy-to-read text
  • Few steps to conversion
  • Few, if any, pop-ups
  • Auto-fill form fields
  • Auto-detect location settings
  • Option to checkout as a guest
  • Multiple screens as an alternative to scrolling through

Adopting a mobile-first mindset is one of the best ways to improve your website. Even if your SEO is strong and driving traffic to your site, if your website is not mobile-optimized, you’ll fail to turn that traffic into conversions.

5. Get your hands on high-quality backlinks

Backlinks are links on external web pages that lead back to a page on your website. They’re one of the leading ways to improve your SEO ranking with Google because they prove that you’re a reliable and legitimate website.

Not all backlinks are created equally; some are way more valuable than others. Getting high-quality backlinks can massively improve your website’s rankings and authority. At the same time, low-quality links can damage your reputation permanently.

You should always avoid linking to shady websites or sites that aren’t in the same niche as you. Never buy links, either. Even if they promise you hundreds of backlinks, these will be extremely low quality and won’t do any good for your business.

How to get high-quality backlinks:

  • Create deep and detailed content
  • Make sure your content is well-written and researched
  • Prove your site is legitimate (link to socials)
  • Apply the skyscraper method
  • Create an infographic or original image
  • Build the same quality links as your competitors
  • Get listed on expert round-ups
  • Produce original research
  • Publish more evergreen content
  • Get experts to guest blog on your site

6. Improve your technical SEO

Technical SEO refers to the technical aspects of optimizing your website so Google can crawl, index, and render it with ease.

No matter how informative, well-written or enlightening your content is, your efforts will be wasted if a search engine can’t crawl it.

To avoid low search engine rankings and a poor user experience, follow these simple steps to improve your SEO technically:

  • Make sure your website is mobile-friendly
  • Speed up your website
  • Perform weekly technical SEO audits and fix errors
  • Include keywords in the image alt text
  • Use internal links
  • Fix broken links on the site
  • Use Canonical URLs

7. Keep track of your performance

The only way to know if your SEO strategy is successful is to monitor and track its performance.

If you don’t, you’ll only be spending money, time and effort on SEO strategies that aren’t giving you the results you deserve.

Track the performance of your SEO strategy using Key Point Indicators (KPIs).

Some key indicators to pay attention to when tracking your SEO results include:

  • Organic traffic
  • Search rankings
  • Search engine visibility
  • Competitor analysis

We’d also recommend setting some goals for your SEO strategy. By setting goals, you’ll be able to recognize when your strategy is doing well because you’ll be succeeding at all the goals you’ve set.

Remember always to set SMART goals. These are goals that are:

  • Specific
  • Measurable
  • Achievable
  • Realistic
  • Time-sensitive

If you’d like some help implementing an organic SEO strategy that improves your visibility and drives new traffic to your website, we’d love to help.

At Chili Pepper Design, we’re specialists in helping outdoor contractors, landscape designers, pool, and outdoor living businesses reach new heights in the online world.

Get in touch with our team today if you want to begin crafting an SEO strategy that delivers the results you deserve.