Roofing SEO: how roofers get found when the phone needs to ring

Google says local results are mainly based on relevance, distance, and popularity. Relevance is how well your profile matches the search. Distance is how far you are from the person searching. The third factor, which Google's page details under the heading prominence, is how well known your business is, which Google says draws on things like how many websites link to you and how many reviews you have.

Google is also clear that there is no way to request or pay for a better local ranking. That rules out shortcuts and puts the focus on three things you control: accurate information, real reviews and a useful website.

Roofers do their work at the customer's house, which makes most roofing companies what Google calls a service-area business. Google's guidelines say a service-area business should have one profile for the central office with a designated service area, and should hide its address from customers. The overall service area shouldn't extend farther than about two hours of driving time from where you're based.

A few more rules are worth following from day one:

• Name. Use your real company name, the one on your trucks, estimates and website. Google says your name should reflect your real-world name. Adding a phrase like best roof repair to it breaks the guidelines.
• Categories. Choose the fewest, most specific categories that describe your core business.
• Phone. Use a local number under your direct control instead of a call center line whenever possible.
• More than one location. If you run separate offices with separate service areas and separate staff, Google allows one profile for each location. A rented mailing address you don't work from is a virtual office, and it isn't eligible.

Roofing is visual. A homeowner wants to see that you have done jobs like theirs. Google suggests adding photos and videos to your profile to show customers what you offer and tell the story of your business.

On your website, put project photos on the pages they belong to. Google's SEO Starter Guide recommends using high-quality images near relevant text, because the nearby text helps Google understand what an image shows. A photo of a finished metal roof belongs on your metal roofing page, next to a sentence about that job.

A single services page that lists everything you do gives Google and homeowners very little to go on. A roofing company website works better with one page per service: roof replacement, repair, storm damage, gutters, commercial roofing, or whatever you actually sell.

Each page should explain the service in your own words, show your own work and answer the questions homeowners ask you on site. Google's starter guide recommends writing unique content and warns against copying others' content in part or in its entirety. It also recommends descriptive URLs, so a path like /roof-replacement/ tells people and search engines what the page is about.

Resist the urge to list every town you serve in a block at the bottom of the page. Google's spam policies name blocks of text that list cities and regions a page is trying to rank for as an example of keyword stuffing.

Reviews feed prominence, and Google says more reviews and positive ratings may help your local ranking. The best moment to ask is at the end of a job, while the homeowner is looking at a new roof. Make it easy with a direct link, and reply to every review, good or bad, briefly and professionally.

Google says it finds most pages through links from pages it already crawled, and that other sites linking to you is something that happens naturally over time. For a roofer, natural links come from real relationships: suppliers you are certified with, local business associations, community sponsorships and neighborhood groups.

The starter guide also points to offline promotion, such as listing your website on business cards, letterhead and posters. Put your web address on yard signs and estimates too. It adds nothing to the cost and reminds people where to find you later.

• Keyword stuffing. Repeating the same phrase in every sentence reads badly, and Google's spam policies count unnatural repetition as keyword stuffing.
• Meta keywords. Google's starter guide says Google Search doesn't use the keywords meta tag.
• Fake freshness. Changing the date on a page without improving it doesn't help.

1. Claim and verify your Google profile as a service-area business.
2. Fix your name, categories, service area and phone number.
3. Add real job photos to the profile and to matching website pages.
4. Build one page per service you want more of.
5. Ask for a review at the end of every job and reply to each one.
6. Earn links from the people you already work with.

Roofing SEO isn't a storm-season trick. It is steady work that keeps the phone ringing in every season.