Don’t Chase Big, Popular Keywords
Your local electrician is attempting to rank for “electrician”. And every other electrician in your state, along with three national directories, two aggregators and a review site that launched in 2003. It’s a very full room with no air, seo for electricians only gets profitable when you ditch the big expensive fishnets and start near the surface where the fish are easier to catch. Long-tail keywords are those smaller ponds. They’re those longer, less competitive, highly-intentional phrases that match up with the desperate searches of a homeowner at 9 PM because half their kitchen outlets stopped working. Less traffic, sure. But that traffic? They are 80% of the way to calling.
Let’s say two people open up Google. One types “electrician.” The other types “licensed electrician for panel upgrade in older home”. The first is perhaps a high school student exploring careers, or a reporter writing an article, or perhaps just a little curious if his or her house might need rewiring. The second person has an idea, a challenge, and may have gotten a quote from a contractor they didn’t like yesterday. The second search is 10 times more valuable to you. Long-tail keywords are how you get in front of person number two, particularly repeatedly.
The Math Behind the Strategy
Volume numbers can be deceiving. A keyword that returns 50 searches per month in your local market may seem insignificant, but these are 50 potential customers who want to do business with you. After all, what’s the point of going after a term with 5,000 searches per month, 4,800 of which are not commercial? The other thing that most keyword tools hide in the fine print is intent. It’s the most significant variable.
Long-tail keywords also have lower keyword difficulty scores. The game gets easier the further you get from three words. A home services directory will have had years to build up domain authority and backlinks for “electrician [city].” That same website mightn’t have a page for “cost to install 240v outlet for hot tub in [neighborhood].” That’s where you can get in. If you can squeeze in there with some useful content, you can claim that market share without spending a fortune on SEO or waiting for months or years for your site to build up authority.
There’s an interesting snowball effect here. A single long-tail page generates a little traffic. Twenty long-tail pages, each with a different variation of a service or question, add up. They reinforce each other. They tell Google that you cover the topic – not just the superficial things, but the detail stuff that an expert would cover. And that topical authority will begin to affect your other pages.
The Right Keywords for Your Audience
Electricians don’t need fancy tools to conduct keyword research. Google’s autocomplete feature is a great resource. Enter “electrician” and a space and see what it suggests. How about “how much does it cost to” and what comes up about electrical work?. “How long does it take to” is another rich seam. These are actual suggestions from real searchers – Google is telling you what people search for, not what a marketer would guess they search for. That’s a meaningful distinction.
You’re probably not using your own business for research. Consider the last twenty calls you received and someone booked work. What questions did they ask? What confused them? What did they want to be quoted at before giving you their postal? Now those are all keywords to pages. “Do I need a permit to put an outlet in my garage?” That’s a page. “Why does my circuit breaker trip in this room?” That’s a page. “Can I extend my subpanel to my workshop?” That’s a page – and it’s probably one in which you explain that they’d be better off hiring you.
Review mining is a little known and strangely compelling. Read the reviews of local electricians, including your competition. Their terms are their own search language, the same terms they used in search. “Had them replace my old fuse box” shows you people are looking for “fuse box replacement” not “electrical panel upgrade”. Both terms deserve pages. Customers use different words than professionals, and search engines track customers’ words.
Planning Content for Long-Tail
Long-tail keywords evoke different content types. “What size panel for a room addition” is a question that deserves an informative blog post. “Electrician for EV charger installation [city]” is a transactional keyword that wants a service page with trust-building and value statements, pricing information and a call to action. These two types of pages can be confused – when you include a transactional keyword in an informational blog post the page ends up not being either. Serve the page format to the phrase.
Geographical modifiers turn generic keywords into ones that can bring in the coin. “Panel upgrade” turns into “panel upgrade cost in [city]”. “Whole home rewiring” becomes “whole home rewiring contractor [neighborhood] [city].” Including the location in the title doesn’t just weed out non-relevant traffic, it tells Google that this page is relevant to local searches, which is who you want to reach. For electricians who work in multiple locations, this suggests multiple landing pages rather than one page with a paragraph at the bottom listing all the different locations. Just throwing out location pages won’t work. But a genuine page discussing local matters – old homes in a certain district, local permit office, electrical problems with homes from that era – ranks.
Tracking What’s Actually Working
It’s fun to watch the check marks move up and down for ranking position, but ultimately leads and conversions matter most. Use call tracking from the beginning so you can track calls to specific pages. Google Search Console shows what queries people click through to your site, often including long-tail terms you didn’t set out to target, but rank for anyway because your content was specific enough to catch them. These are serendipitous opportunities to pursue.
Local search is dynamic. Searches vary with the seasons. Interest in electric vehicle (EV) charger installations rises when more people purchase electric vehicles. People search for generator installation after extreme weather. Christmas means queries about light strings and circuit overloads. An electrician who sees his content calendar as a dynamic document – building pages before the market needs them, replacing out-of-date pages when the market changes – is a step ahead rather than behind. Long-tail keyword strategy isn’t a one-and-done deal. It’s an ever-evolving dialogue with customers, search term by search term.
