The keyword electricians forget - and how it can boost your business.

Over the last six months, I've visited thousands of electricians' websites. I've found out that most of them are missing a keyword. The missing keyword could be costing you valuable sales enquiries.

by Gordon Routledge
Wednesday 23rd October 2019

SHARE IT

Why are keywords important?

Keywords are the terms that people type into search engines such as Google or Bing to find your website. The most obvious being an existing customer typing your company name to find your contact details. So here's your first task type your company name into Google and see what happens. What page comes up first in the list? Hopefully, you'll see your website at the top of the page. An excellent result for customers who know you, but what about those who don't? How do they find you? That's where the missing keyword becomes essential.

What is the missing keyword?

The most googled term to find electricians is "electrician". Sounds obvious -right? But, "electrician" is the word that hundreds of electricians miss out from their websites. This simple mistake could mean potential customers never find your website. Google wants to provide users with useful information. Google is very efficient at finding correct information, but can only work with the information you provide.

Why is electrician the critical keyword?

Every month, in the UK, "electrician" is googled over 33,000* times. That's nearly half a million times a year. If you don't include the word 'electrician" prominently in your website, you've got no chance of appearing in the search results.

You may describe your business as "electrical contractor." While this may describe your business accurately and sound more corporate, it's not a term customers use to find an electrician. "Electrical contractor" only gets searched around 1000 times per month.

The two terms aren't incompatible. It's possible to project a professional image and still include essential keywords.

"We are XYZ Electrical Contractors. Our team of electricians are experts in all types of electrical work."

You see, very easy to drop the keyword into a home page introduction.

Keyword volume per month for terms related to electricians

Search term	Typical searches per month in the UK - mobile and desktop devices*
electrician	33000
electrician near me	22100
local electricians	5400
emergency electrician	4400
electrical contractor	1200
domestic electrician	1000
commercial electrician	590
industrial electrician	480

* Source SEMRUSH database

If you want to murder someone, hide the body on page two of Google search results, as no one will ever find the corpse.

Intent to purchase

Of course, doing a quick google of electrician doesn't mean half a million people are ready to place some business. You may notice that Google suggests words for users to complete the search. Start typing "electrician", and Google will recommend "electrician near me."

Over 22000 people per month search for "electrician near me". A basic search for electrician could mean you are looking for a job or a training course. "Electrician near me" is what's known as an intent to purchase phrase. In other words, I need an electrician now! It's easy to spot intent to purchase words, they bring up paid-for adverts before the real "organic" search results.

At this stage, you might be thinking of jumping to the top of the queue using paid-for search terms. Go ahead if you want to burn cash. To appear on the first-page search for "electrician near me," you'll be spending near £5 per click. A relative bargain compared to the £8.56 for "emergency electrician."

Being on the first page of Google is critical if your business survives on emergency call-out work. You may find that paying around £5 click produces a great result and wins you business. What if you don't want or need this type of work? Does being on page one of Google still matter?

Research suggests that companies appearing on page one of the search results get 70% of the website visits. The saying in the internet marketing world goes like this. If you want to murder someone, hide the body on page two of Google search results, as no one will ever find the corpse.

Google to the rescue

Getting to page one could be very difficult or expensive. Tens of thousands of contractors competing for the page one slot. Here is where the power of Google comes to the rescue. I've shared the popular terms related to an electrician. For everyone who searches for "electrician near me" someone will search for 'electrician in ... insert town/village here."

Examples:

Some common towns and how many times per month electrician and town combination is searched.

- electrician Glasgow approx 1300 times per month

- electrician Brighton 880 times per month

- electrician Grimsby 590 times per month

- electrician Banbury 290 times per month

- electrician Corby 170 times per month

- electrician Brigadoon .... 0 times per month

(Brigadoon, a miraculously blessed village that rises out of the mists every hundred years for only a day. Apparently the electrician day rate is £10,000 a day)

All the searches related to electricians and towns add up. Appearing on page one search results associated with a specific town or village is much easier than a non-geographic term. In our next Marketing Bootcamp, we'll look at how to leverage the power of geography in your website.

Gordon Routledge BEng, CEng MIET is the publisher of eFIXX and will be presenting on marketing at all our Live Feed events.

R egister for your FREE place.