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Online Presence Pt 3 - Websites, Links, Content & Keywords

WEBSITES



You will find conflicting opinions on the value of websites from small business owners. But one undisputable fact of today's world is that when a customer wants a local service the first place they look is online. Yellow Pages is dead and has also gone online as Yell and mobile phone and voice search make the internet faster and easier to use. Internet usage will grow and it's free to rank in results.
A business that is able to rank highly within the search results will inevitably receive its fair share of enquiries.
There are no absolute guarantees, but a website that ranks well is a source of steady, ongoing new enquiries all year round. Although subject to the seasonal fluctuations that come with the work.
Unlike expensive advertising the only mandatory ongoing cost is hosting which is a matter of only pounds per month (although you do get what you pay for where hosting is concerned).
Websites don't need to be flash or cost many £100s or £1000s to create and you can even go for the DIY option without needing coding or tech skills (up to a point anyway until configuring it becomes an issue).

Websites need to be
  1. responsive and easily viewed on all devices
  2. secured (SSL)
  3. easy to use, view and navigate / user friendly
  4. preferably built on WordPress (my personal opinion)
  5. properly maintained with security protection in place to prevent hacking / malware
  6. updated with fresh content from time to time (some companies like ThriveWP include free updates as part of a monthly maintenance plan)
  7. Fast loading and hosted on UK based servers.

Ideally you want a website that is easy and straightforward to update. I've worked on sites built on various platforms and can safely say WordPress is surprisingly user friendly and far better for optimisation. It also offers many free and paid plugins that add functionality to your site, compress images and the excellent free Yoast SEO plugin to analyse content and suggest improvements. I realise the temptation is to just dismiss this stuff as being too difficult thinking 'I don't know anything about computers'. But you don't need to.
I'm sure a few years back many of you knew nothing about downloads, uploads, screenshots, editing photos, adding links, copy and paste etc and would have balked at the prospect of learning it. But you have and now take these things for granted without giving them a second thought. I don't mean to patronise because I include myself in that group.
Necessity can be a great motivator
If you can post and edit messages on this forum, or facebook etc then you can edit / update a webpage.
It's perfectly feasible to rank your site highly but it will take some effort.
If you're not prepared to work on it you may as well stop reading this now and don't bother getting a site. Ultimately it's the content on your site that will determine where it ranks. Optimised content will rank it higher.
Customers just want to go to a site that describes the services you offer, is easy to read and navigate and has your contact information clearly displayed. They may want to know about your methods but don't care about how pretty your site is. Websites should look professional but don't need to cost a fortune. Google doesn't care either about how it looks and pretty sites don't rank higher, but responsive, fast loading, secured and informative sites do.
To rank highly in search results the content of your pages should also be informative, relevant and useful to the user. In the words of Bill Gates " CONTENT IS KING"......(although as we all know, actually Elvis is The King).

Several years ago a senior Google executive was asked what were the most important ranking factors and he replied "Links and content."

Links

Backlinks are links from another website pointing to a page on your site.
Generally speaking more links = more ranking power and there's no doubt that links can massively improve ranking. But not all links are created equal and the most valuable should come from a relevant site or relevant page within a site and from more authoriative sites. External and internal links pass something sometimes referred to as 'link juice' and higher authority sites pass more juice.

Domain Authority is basically a measure of a website's online reputation and was created by SEO giants Moz. It is considered to be the closest thing to what Google uses (Page rank). It is scored out of 100 and all sites start with 1. What is good D.A. is very much related to your competitors but none will be spectacular and many may still be in single figures. There are various SEO extensions available on Firefox and Chrome that display D.A. in SERPS and a Moz download is also availablle if you want to check yours or any site's DA.
DA can be used as a measure of the competition you're up against but always bear in mind it is NOT a ranking factor and not even a part of Google's algorithm. It is not going to determine where you rank and you can easily outrank sites with a higher DA.

It is possible to establish yourself as an authoritative site with Google if you produce in depth, detailed and factual content. Authority and being considered authoritative are slightly nuanced and there are subtle differences, e.g. You can be an authoritative site without having high DA.

So links from higher DA sites are preferrable and also important is relevance. Is the link coming from a page that is relevant to the services you offer? Buying links from random websites with no relevance to you won't help and penalties are severe. Sometimes near impossible to recover from.
Links from locally relevant sites are also useful, e.g. local sponsorship.
Links from government or council sites and schools/colleges carry alot of authority.
Other things to consider are links within the content of a page are better than footer links and even placement on the page is a factor, i.e. links high up on a page carry more juice than those at the bottom.
How many other links are on the page? The fewer the links the more authority it passes.
Anchor text is the clickable part of a link and anchor text containing keywords are useful. This also applies to internal links within your site. Use descriptive anchor text that gives some context to the page you're linking to.
Avoid placing outgoing links on your homepage. This is likely to be your most authoritative page and so keep juice from that page within your site. Do link to your key services from the homepage. In addtion to DA individual pages have Page Authority which works in the same way and so more authoritative pages carry more juice.

Internal links - internal links on your site link to another 1 of your pages. Internal links also pass authority and so point more links at your most important pages/services. THIS does work and this is a true example: I was working on a site and all his services were now on page 1 except conservatory/con roof cleaning. It had moved up to the top of page 2 but I just couldn't get it onto page 1 no matter what I tried or what tweaks I made, so in the end I added internal links pointing to it from every page with optimised anchor text using various relevant phrases ,and resubmitted the site to Search Console for a full crawl of all links (this was when that was still an option before they got rid of that feature). When I checked SERPS the next day he'd gone up to 7th on page 1. That is what optimised links and more of them can do. Don't get me wrong, internal links are nothing like as valuable as external backlinks pointing to you, but they are still very important.
Every page on your site needs at least one internal link pointing to it otherwise Google won't find it. Pages with no links are referred to as orphan pages.
My personal preference as a MINIMUM is to always have at least 1 internal link to each page and another link from that page to another page on the site. So that means 1 route in and another route out for search engine crawlers. This makes indexing easier and avoids dead ends.


Outgoing links - it is a good idea to include relevant outgoing links to highly authoritative sites when appropriate to do so. There is no direct, measurable benefit as there is with incoming links to your site, but you are judged by the company you keep where links are concerned. I've become convinced that it has a positive effect on SEO.
Links can be added where it provides the user with further information on a subject that is not appropriate to include within your content, e.g. linking to the Wikipedia page on industrial uses of purified water.
There used to be a school of thought in SEO that you should not link out because it's giving away link juice. I disagree, and the opinions are changing on this, but I go by what Google says and they encourage the use of links if it enhances the user experience and are relevant to the topic of the page. There are still some SEO's who would disagree with this.....they're wrong.
Links are what connects the web and so it wouldn't make sense to penalise their use.


If you are referencing other sources you should always cite these sources and link to the original source. This is an excellent way of giving your own pages more authority by showing they are researched and factual.
Citations can be added at the end of the page and should include page title, website,URL, date it was published and author if known. There are other formats that can be used but that would suffice. (These are not to be confused with NAP citations as discussed in Part 1)


Reciprocal links - Don't get involved in reciprocal linking with similar businesses at the other end of the country, i.e. you link to me and I link to you. A link from a low authority website hundreds of miles away is no use to anyone and why would you link to them? What's the relevance? None whatsoever.
The question to ask yourself with adding outgoing links is 'does this make sense? Does it have an obvious purpose and use?' Or am I just crowbaring it in?'
Occasional reciprocal link exchanges won't do you any harm but used excessively could result in SEO difficulty(i.e. spammy) . The main issue here is not that a low authority site is linking to you because many sites linking to you will be, but you linking to them can be problematic. Why link to a low authority site that has no direct relevance to you? Simply being in a similar business is not good enough. Is the link of any use to the user? If not, why's it there?


Reciprocal links with a local or relevant, quality website are useful.

So to summarise, things to consider with links are:
  1. authority of linking domain
  2. website relevance
  3. page subject relevance
  4. local relevance
  5. using internal links
  6. descriptive anchor text
  7. get links if you can but not all links are good links
  8. NEVER buy links
  9. Don't get involved in link schemes of any kind where you let a third party make arrangements. Stay away from any scheme that involves payment because whoever is pulling the strings and receiving those payments cares about nothing other than the money. They couldn't care less who's linking to who.
  10. The same applies to reciprocal link exchanges - steer clear and don't go adding irrelevant outgoing links to your site to low authority websites
  11. You need to have direct control of who you link to and decide for yourself. Delegating that to a third party is a foolish thing to do.
  12. Quality content and images will attract links naturally and social shares.

Content

Personally, I wouldn't worry too much about links and concentrate your efforts where you can really make a difference - content.
Backlinko Marketing Hub says:
If you want to rank in Google, you need to publish amazing content.
(And optimize that content for search engines.)
If you want to outrank the competition you need to make your pages better, more useful and more relevant. SEO in itself can only do so much.
So you need to start with in depth content, then optimise it.
Google guidelines now refer to E-A-T for rating content = expertise, authority, trust but basically, relevance and usefulness are what you should concentrate on.
Just churning out standard formula pages about how great you are, how experienced and professional you are and how committed to customer service you are has been done millions of times before and you're not going to rank higher with more of the same.

Pages need to be about more than self promotion, they need to have some value.

Your content should demonstrate your expertise and knowledge and be as informative as possible.
The more in depth your content is means it will provide more opportunities to naturally insert multiple related keywords and phrases.

You should approach content writing from the perspective of a layman who knows nothing about the subject. All they know is their windows are dirty and they want them cleaned ****AND WHAT GOOGLE IS LOOKING FOR**** is information about the subject.
Now, you can just dismiss this idea thinking 'well it's window cleaning init.' And yes it is....so what is window cleaning exactly? It's no good just writing about your expensive state-of-the-art reach and wash system blah blah blah. That doesn't tell me anything. Or that you provide the best w/c service in London. So what? Why is it the best? Why is your way better than George Formby style chamois leather.
The same principle applies to all your ad ons too whether soft wash, pressure washing or whatever. Just give some thought to it. It's not difficult.
When writing a page decide on your target keyword and at least 2 or 3 secondary keywords and compile a list of other related phrases. As you write look for opportunities to insert the other phrases naturally into the page, just once is fine. Then use a different one in the next paragraph.
Break up the page into topics and give each one an optimised sub heading.


Don't use too much industry jargon and when you do use it, explain what it means, e.g. terms like reach and wash and wfp mean nothing to most people, and to them pure water is Evian.
Look at the highest ranking sites in your area and think how you can improve your content by providing more relevant information on the service you're offering, e.g if it's for wfp window cleaning you need to explain what's involved and why it's better than traditional from the customers perspective. What's in it for them? What are the advantages of using pure? Who are you targeting? Residential and commercial? Give each one their own subheading (H2 tag or H3).
What might appeal to commercial customers? ..... public liability insurance, smart sign written vans, uniform, adherence to Health & Safety, no ladders, flexible hours of operation and a professional website and approach to the work etc etc.
Commercial customers will be interested in the safety aspect of no ladders but domestic customers probably couldn't care less. They just want to know it'll be done properly, any risk involved is your problem not theirs (as long as their property is safe).
All this and more can go on 1 page that covers the service in depth and is optimised for multiple keyword variations. I'd expect a page like that in an average town to rank on page 1 for various keywords including w/cleaner, w/cleaners, w/cleaning, w/c services, residential w/c services, domestic w/c/s, commercial w/c/s and more besides.
Wherever you are in the country it's fair to say there will be plenty of local competition and larger cities are usually the most competitive.

You might think to yourself 'there's nothing to say' but think about it and actually there is, i.e. the above points.

In the interests of fairness I should also add that if you're a traditional window cleaner then that is something you should optimise for and use as a selling point. Whichever method you use don't go down the road of criticising the other method, instead concentrate on the benefits of your service. Some customers will actively search for a trad w/cleaner and others will easily be persuaded that trad is more thorough. So your content should highlight what you think you offer.
And of course, some want their pound of flesh and expect you to work for your £15 and be there an hour. If you include frames and sills say so. Internal windows? Explain what you do and what trad involves.
There's always plenty of things to write about that describes the service and produces better, more useful and informative content.

Google says to write for people, not search engines, but in practice you're writing for both. Informative, explanatory content not only helps to sell your service, it's what Google wants to see and rewards it with higher rankings.

Keywords - these are the words people use to find a local service. Each page should have a target keyword based on the service and a specific location, e.g window cleaner AnyTown, but it should also have various secondary targets that are similar/ closely related phrases.
Repeating the same KW over and over again will not improve ranking and could constitute KW stuffing. It is also more beneficial to sprinkle your content with multiple closely related words/phrases/synonyms to add context and relevance.
Google has developed a process called latent semantic indexing (LSI) where it anticipates user intent and looks for content that uses variations of the KW entered because it understands the fact that they are all related to the same thing.
For example it knows that pressure washing, jet washing and power washing are all basically the same thing (although strictly speaking power washing is different). By using more similar phrases it makes a page more relevant and will rank higher for the target KW as well as many short and longtail variations.
There are many free and paid KW research tools, some of which give search volume data or approximate ranges. It is worth doing some basic KW research because you'll be surprised at the number of other words customers use to find your services and some of them will be easier to rank for. Off the top of my head I can think of a dozen or more phrases just for windows and there are plenty more KWs than that.

Keyword research using a free keyword tool will produce a long list of the exact phrases customers use to search on Google. Including some of the exact match phrases in your page will improve your chances of also ranking for these keywords without actually targeting or specifically optimising for them.

The most competitive keywords that everyone is trying to rank for R.E. window cleaning are :
  1. window cleaner + location
  2. w/cleaners + location
  3. w/cleaning + location
If you have a new website or are struggling to improve your ranking it may well be worth targeting some alternative keywords that may have a lower search volume, but there's less competition and they should be easier to rank for. Please note I said easier, not easy.
For example 'window cleaning company + location.'
 
WEBSITES



You will find conflicting opinions on the value of websites from small business owners. But one undisputable fact of today's world is that when a customer wants a local service the first place they look is online. Yellow Pages is dead and has also gone online as Yell and mobile phone and voice search make the internet faster and easier to use. Internet usage will grow and it's free to rank in results.
A business that is able to rank highly within the search results will inevitably receive its fair share of enquiries.
There are no absolute guarantees, but a website that ranks well is a source of steady, ongoing new enquiries all year round. Although subject to the seasonal fluctuations that come with the work.
Unlike expensive advertising the only mandatory ongoing cost is hosting which is a matter of only pounds per month (although you do get what you pay for where hosting is concerned).
Websites don't need to be flash or cost many £100s or £1000s to create and you can even go for the DIY option without needing coding or tech skills (up to a point anyway until configuring it becomes an issue).

Websites need to be
  1. responsive and easily viewed on all devices
  2. secured (SSL)
  3. easy to use, view and navigate / user friendly
  4. preferably built on WordPress (my personal opinion)
  5. properly maintained with security protection in place to prevent hacking / malware
  6. updated with fresh content from time to time (some companies like ThriveWP include free updates as part of a monthly maintenance plan)
  7. Fast loading and hosted on UK based servers.

Ideally you want a website that is easy and straightforward to update. I've worked on sites built on various platforms and can safely say WordPress is surprisingly user friendly and far better for optimisation. It also offers many free and paid plugins that add functionality to your site, compress images and the excellent free Yoast SEO plugin to analyse content and suggest improvements. I realise the temptation is to just dismiss this stuff as being too difficult thinking 'I don't know anything about computers'. But you don't need to.
I'm sure a few years back many of you knew nothing about downloads, uploads, screenshots, editing photos, adding links, copy and paste etc and would have balked at the prospect of learning it. But you have and now take these things for granted without giving them a second thought. I don't mean to patronise because I include myself in that group.
Necessity can be a great motivator
If you can post and edit messages on this forum, or facebook etc then you can edit / update a webpage.
It's perfectly feasible to rank your site highly but it will take some effort.
If you're not prepared to work on it you may as well stop reading this now and don't bother getting a site. Ultimately it's the content on your site that will determine where it ranks. Optimised content will rank it higher.
Customers just want to go to a site that describes the services you offer, is easy to read and navigate and has your contact information clearly displayed. They may want to know about your methods but don't care about how pretty your site is. Websites should look professional but don't need to cost a fortune. Google doesn't care either about how it looks and pretty sites don't rank higher, but responsive, fast loading, secured and informative sites do.
To rank highly in search results the content of your pages should also be informative, relevant and useful to the user. In the words of Bill Gates " CONTENT IS KING"......(although as we all know, actually Elvis is The King).

Several years ago a senior Google executive was asked what were the most important ranking factors and he replied "Links and content."

Links

Backlinks are links from another website pointing to a page on your site.
Generally speaking more links = more ranking power and there's no doubt that links can massively improve ranking. But not all links are created equal and the most valuable should come from a relevant site or relevant page within a site and from more authoriative sites. External and internal links pass something sometimes referred to as 'link juice' and higher authority sites pass more juice.

Domain Authority is basically a measure of a website's online reputation and was created by SEO giants Moz. It is considered to be the closest thing to what Google uses (Page rank). It is scored out of 100 and all sites start with 1. What is good D.A. is very much related to your competitors but none will be spectacular and many may still be in single figures. There are various SEO extensions available on Firefox and Chrome that display D.A. in SERPS and a Moz download is also availablle if you want to check yours or any site's DA.
DA can be used as a measure of the competition you're up against but always bear in mind it is NOT a ranking factor and not even a part of Google's algorithm. It is not going to determine where you rank and you can easily outrank sites with a higher DA.

It is possible to establish yourself as an authoritative site with Google if you produce in depth, detailed and factual content. Authority and being considered authoritative are slightly nuanced and there are subtle differences, e.g. You can be an authoritative site without having high DA.

So links from higher DA sites are preferrable and also important is relevance. Is the link coming from a page that is relevant to the services you offer? Buying links from random websites with no relevance to you won't help and penalties are severe. Sometimes near impossible to recover from.
Links from locally relevant sites are also useful, e.g. local sponsorship.
Links from government or council sites and schools/colleges carry alot of authority.
Other things to consider are links within the content of a page are better than footer links and even placement on the page is a factor, i.e. links high up on a page carry more juice than those at the bottom.
How many other links are on the page? The fewer the links the more authority it passes.
Anchor text is the clickable part of a link and anchor text containing keywords are useful. This also applies to internal links within your site. Use descriptive anchor text that gives some context to the page you're linking to.
Avoid placing outgoing links on your homepage. This is likely to be your most authoritative page and so keep juice from that page within your site. Do link to your key services from the homepage. In addtion to DA individual pages have Page Authority which works in the same way and so more authoritative pages carry more juice.

Internal links - internal links on your site link to another 1 of your pages. Internal links also pass authority and so point more links at your most important pages/services. THIS does work and this is a true example: I was working on a site and all his services were now on page 1 except conservatory/con roof cleaning. It had moved up to the top of page 2 but I just couldn't get it onto page 1 no matter what I tried or what tweaks I made, so in the end I added internal links pointing to it from every page with optimised anchor text using various relevant phrases ,and resubmitted the site to Search Console for a full crawl of all links (this was when that was still an option before they got rid of that feature). When I checked SERPS the next day he'd gone up to 7th on page 1. That is what optimised links and more of them can do. Don't get me wrong, internal links are nothing like as valuable as external backlinks pointing to you, but they are still very important.
Every page on your site needs at least one internal link pointing to it otherwise Google won't find it. Pages with no links are referred to as orphan pages.
My personal preference as a MINIMUM is to always have at least 1 internal link to each page and another link from that page to another page on the site. So that means 1 route in and another route out for search engine crawlers. This makes indexing easier and avoids dead ends.


Outgoing links - it is a good idea to include relevant outgoing links to highly authoritative sites when appropriate to do so. There is no direct, measurable benefit as there is with incoming links to your site, but you are judged by the company you keep where links are concerned. I've become convinced that it has a positive effect on SEO.
Links can be added where it provides the user with further information on a subject that is not appropriate to include within your content, e.g. linking to the Wikipedia page on industrial uses of purified water.
There used to be a school of thought in SEO that you should not link out because it's giving away link juice. I disagree, and the opinions are changing on this, but I go by what Google says and they encourage the use of links if it enhances the user experience and are relevant to the topic of the page. There are still some SEO's who would disagree with this.....they're wrong.
Links are what connects the web and so it wouldn't make sense to penalise their use.


If you are referencing other sources you should always cite these sources and link to the original source. This is an excellent way of giving your own pages more authority by showing they are researched and factual.
Citations can be added at the end of the page and should include page title, website,URL, date it was published and author if known. There are other formats that can be used but that would suffice. (These are not to be confused with NAP citations as discussed in Part 1)


Reciprocal links - Don't get involved in reciprocal linking with similar businesses at the other end of the country, i.e. you link to me and I link to you. A link from a low authority website hundreds of miles away is no use to anyone and why would you link to them? What's the relevance? None whatsoever.
The question to ask yourself with adding outgoing links is 'does this make sense? Does it have an obvious purpose and use?' Or am I just crowbaring it in?'
Occasional reciprocal link exchanges won't do you any harm but used excessively could result in SEO difficulty(i.e. spammy) . The main issue here is not that a low authority site is linking to you because many sites linking to you will be, but you linking to them can be problematic. Why link to a low authority site that has no direct relevance to you? Simply being in a similar business is not good enough. Is the link of any use to the user? If not, why's it there?


Reciprocal links with a local or relevant, quality website are useful.

So to summarise, things to consider with links are:
  1. authority of linking domain
  2. website relevance
  3. page subject relevance
  4. local relevance
  5. using internal links
  6. descriptive anchor text
  7. get links if you can but not all links are good links
  8. NEVER buy links
  9. Don't get involved in link schemes of any kind where you let a third party make arrangements. Stay away from any scheme that involves payment because whoever is pulling the strings and receiving those payments cares about nothing other than the money. They couldn't care less who's linking to who.
  10. The same applies to reciprocal link exchanges - steer clear and don't go adding irrelevant outgoing links to your site to low authority websites
  11. You need to have direct control of who you link to and decide for yourself. Delegating that to a third party is a foolish thing to do.
  12. Quality content and images will attract links naturally and social shares.

Content

Personally, I wouldn't worry too much about links and concentrate your efforts where you can really make a difference - content.
Backlinko Marketing Hub says:
If you want to rank in Google, you need to publish amazing content.
(And optimize that content for search engines.)
If you want to outrank the competition you need to make your pages better, more useful and more relevant. SEO in itself can only do so much.
So you need to start with in depth content, then optimise it.
Google guidelines now refer to E-A-T for rating content = expertise, authority, trust but basically, relevance and usefulness are what you should concentrate on.
Just churning out standard formula pages about how great you are, how experienced and professional you are and how committed to customer service you are has been done millions of times before and you're not going to rank higher with more of the same.

Pages need to be about more than self promotion, they need to have some value.

Your content should demonstrate your expertise and knowledge and be as informative as possible.
The more in depth your content is means it will provide more opportunities to naturally insert multiple related keywords and phrases.

You should approach content writing from the perspective of a layman who knows nothing about the subject. All they know is their windows are dirty and they want them cleaned ****AND WHAT GOOGLE IS LOOKING FOR**** is information about the subject.
Now, you can just dismiss this idea thinking 'well it's window cleaning init.' And yes it is....so what is window cleaning exactly? It's no good just writing about your expensive state-of-the-art reach and wash system blah blah blah. That doesn't tell me anything. Or that you provide the best w/c service in London. So what? Why is it the best? Why is your way better than George Formby style chamois leather.
The same principle applies to all your ad ons too whether soft wash, pressure washing or whatever. Just give some thought to it. It's not difficult.
When writing a page decide on your target keyword and at least 2 or 3 secondary keywords and compile a list of other related phrases. As you write look for opportunities to insert the other phrases naturally into the page, just once is fine. Then use a different one in the next paragraph.
Break up the page into topics and give each one an optimised sub heading.


Don't use too much industry jargon and when you do use it, explain what it means, e.g. terms like reach and wash and wfp mean nothing to most people, and to them pure water is Evian.
Look at the highest ranking sites in your area and think how you can improve your content by providing more relevant information on the service you're offering, e.g if it's for wfp window cleaning you need to explain what's involved and why it's better than traditional from the customers perspective. What's in it for them? What are the advantages of using pure? Who are you targeting? Residential and commercial? Give each one their own subheading (H2 tag or H3).
What might appeal to commercial customers? ..... public liability insurance, smart sign written vans, uniform, adherence to Health & Safety, no ladders, flexible hours of operation and a professional website and approach to the work etc etc.
Commercial customers will be interested in the safety aspect of no ladders but domestic customers probably couldn't care less. They just want to know it'll be done properly, any risk involved is your problem not theirs (as long as their property is safe).
All this and more can go on 1 page that covers the service in depth and is optimised for multiple keyword variations. I'd expect a page like that in an average town to rank on page 1 for various keywords including w/cleaner, w/cleaners, w/cleaning, w/c services, residential w/c services, domestic w/c/s, commercial w/c/s and more besides.
Wherever you are in the country it's fair to say there will be plenty of local competition and larger cities are usually the most competitive.

You might think to yourself 'there's nothing to say' but think about it and actually there is, i.e. the above points.

In the interests of fairness I should also add that if you're a traditional window cleaner then that is something you should optimise for and use as a selling point. Whichever method you use don't go down the road of criticising the other method, instead concentrate on the benefits of your service. Some customers will actively search for a trad w/cleaner and others will easily be persuaded that trad is more thorough. So your content should highlight what you think you offer.
And of course, some want their pound of flesh and expect you to work for your £15 and be there an hour. If you include frames and sills say so. Internal windows? Explain what you do and what trad involves.
There's always plenty of things to write about that describes the service and produces better, more useful and informative content.

Google says to write for people, not search engines, but in practice you're writing for both. Informative, explanatory content not only helps to sell your service, it's what Google wants to see and rewards it with higher rankings.

Keywords - these are the words people use to find a local service. Each page should have a target keyword based on the service and a specific location, e.g window cleaner AnyTown, but it should also have various secondary targets that are similar/ closely related phrases.
Repeating the same KW over and over again will not improve ranking and could constitute KW stuffing. It is also more beneficial to sprinkle your content with multiple closely related words/phrases/synonyms to add context and relevance.
Google has developed a process called latent semantic indexing (LSI) where it anticipates user intent and looks for content that uses variations of the KW entered because it understands the fact that they are all related to the same thing.
For example it knows that pressure washing, jet washing and power washing are all basically the same thing (although strictly speaking power washing is different). By using more similar phrases it makes a page more relevant and will rank higher for the target KW as well as many short and longtail variations.
There are many free and paid KW research tools, some of which give search volume data or approximate ranges. It is worth doing some basic KW research because you'll be surprised at the number of other words customers use to find your services and some of them will be easier to rank for. Off the top of my head I can think of a dozen or more phrases just for windows and there are plenty more KWs than that.

Keyword research using a free keyword tool will produce a long list of the exact phrases customers use to search on Google. Including some of the exact match phrases in your page will improve your chances of also ranking for these keywords without actually targeting or specifically optimising for them.

The most competitive keywords that everyone is trying to rank for R.E. window cleaning are :
  1. window cleaner + location
  2. w/cleaners + location
  3. w/cleaning + location
If you have a new website or are struggling to improve your ranking it may well be worth targeting some alternative keywords that may have a lower search volume, but there's less competition and they should be easier to rank for. Please note I said easier, not easy.
For example 'window cleaning company + location.'
Hi, thanks for your post. I currently have a website we get a few enquiries a week. I'm just thinking about spending some money on SEO and having the whole thing revamped. I'd be interested to know views on if it's worth it and honest opinions on the current design. It's www.stayclean.co.uk or just search stayclean window cleaning on Google and you should find it. Be as harsh as you want I can take it!
 
Hi, thanks for your post. I currently have a website we get a few enquiries a week. I'm just thinking about spending some money on SEO and having the whole thing revamped. I'd be interested to know views on if it's worth it and honest opinions on the current design. It's www.stayclean.co.uk or just search stayclean window cleaning on Google and you should find it. Be as harsh as you want I can take it!
I have just had a look at your site and it looks nice but I can see a couple of issues on the front page. 1st is on a laptop with a screen res of 1536x816 (window size) the phone number wraps to a second line (the 240 bit).
2nd down the page the Our Services bit where you have the 4 services none of the more info links work!

A really silly one, why do you have 6 vans and only 5 people :) - I wouldn't worry about that one, just me being silly.
 
Get rid of the get a quote box as it hides part of the banner picture, on the residential page you mention you keep your prices low then on the commercial page you state that clients have gone with cheaper quotes only to be disappointed, some better photos are needed and there is more written content needed, also original Bristol window cleaners since 1997 :unsure:

@K in Kent will be able to analytically give better advice on SEO although if you have had your site up and running for 5 years or more you should have a good historical ranking, your website is dated and if you don't know someone I can recommend thrivewp.com I had my site rebuilt and tweaked earlier this year and have a maintenance plan to ensure my site stays updated and secure.
 
Well various things could be said but just looking at the basics the homepage title tag is 'Brustol window cleaners - Stayclean w/cleaners' and:

using same keyword twice (w/cleaners) not good idea and bordering on kw stuffing
Google prioritises KWs on left to right basis in title tag so should be w/cleaners at start i.e. W/cleaners Bristol

Google will take w/cleaners to be target KW so the same KW should then be in the H1 heading and the first KW to appear in main content but in H1 it's w/cleaning and content is w/cleaning company.
Although it's good to vary KWs and related phrases within content these are key areas that Google uses to index pages and the target KW needs to be consistent otherwise it gives comflicting signals.
Another point of note is the meta description only refers to 'specialist commercial w/cleaners' and offices, schools..... meta descriptions don't affect SEO but this isn't great from UX perspective and for homepage it should mention all key services - residential/commercial/internal etc

So don't want to be too critical but they're just a few observations on some of the fundamentals.

R.E. the blog - good idea but explaining what pure is and its benefits would be better included in main content and the step by step on removing bird mess and egg - on the 1 hand that's good cos is usedul for the user but on the other hand do you want to tell potential customers how to easily deal with something you want them to be paying you to do? But that's just my personal view and in all other respects it is a good subject for a blog post - relevant, useful and informative so ticks lot of boxes for the whole point of a blog. That's what Google likes....and besides, no one reads them anyway
 

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