Why Google Wants to Hear from Others that your Electrical Business is Legitimate
If you are moving to a new town and ask three people where to find an electrician. The first person replies “I haven’t needed one“. The second person says “there’s a guy with a van – I think I’ve seen it around.” The third person says “I used this company last year, they were profiled in the chamber of commerce book, and my neighbour used them too after I recommended them”. The third electrician didn’t have to do much. Someone else talked about them. And that’s what Google does with backlinks and citations for your website – and it’s part of why most seo for electricians services that don’t consider off-page authority will eventually hit a wall when it comes to rankings. You can set your own website up to the nines, but at a certain point Google requires other people to back up your own self-reported claims.
SEO authority is not self-appointed authority. It’s something that others confer on you, based on who cites you, who links to you and how consistently your name, address and phone number appear on other trusted sites. This was the basis of Google’s original algorithm – that if someone else mentions and links to a page, it’s probably more credible than a page that only mentions good things about itself. The same principle holds for local businesses, at a micro-level. The electrician who has his or her company name, address and phone number mentioned, linked to and consistently described in the same way across multiple external sources is going to beat out the electrician who’s only authority signals are those on his or her website.
Citations are Key – Get them Right Before Focus on Backlinks
A citation in local search is the appearance of your business name, address and phone number on an external site. It doesn’t even have to link to your website. The mere presence of your NAP on trusted platforms, directories, and listings is enough to tell Google your business is real – it has a physical existence. When electricians are beginning to build off-page authority, citations are the first step, not because they are glamorous, but because they are necessary. Without a foundation, a house is a pretty set of walls.
The big general directories – Google Business Profile, Yelp, Bing Places, Apple Maps, Better Business Bureau, Angi, HomeAdvisor – must list the business with exactly the same information. Identical, not approximate. If your GBP listing says “Suite 100” and your Yelp listing says “Ste. 100” and your website doesn’t mention a suite number, Google sees these as three different ways to describe the address. This doesn’t necessarily drop your rankings, but it introduces confusion that Google resolves by downranking your listing. Getting your major citations to agree is a one-and-done task that delivers long-term rewards.
On top of the general citations, there are trade-specific and local citations to claim. Electrical contractor organisations will often have a list of members who are vetted with credentials. Local chamber of commerce listings, city business listings and area-specific sites in your region are all considered local citations. These all contribute to the profile of consistency that Google has of your business. The overall impact is gradually to start and then suddenly to have an effect once enough consistently matching citations are found.
How a Backlink Benefits an Electrician’s Site
A backlink is a link to your site from another website. When an established site links to your website, Google sees it as a “vote of confidence” – proof that your site is worth linking to. Some votes count more than others. A link from a respected local newspaper is worth far more than one from an obscure (and new) site that has yet to attract visitors. A link from an industry association is better a link from a business directory. It’s not about quantity, particularly if you’re a local company and not competing nationally.
The easiest and most relevant backlinks for electricians are those from a few obvious sources. These include local sponsorships. Local sponsorships, such as a youth sports team, a local festival, a local charity drive, or a local community group usually include a mention on the group’s website (often a link). These are local connections that are local authority signals. A link from a local neighborhood association’s website that mentions your business as a local sponsor is more valuable for local search authority than 10 links from contractor web directories.
Another source of backlinks that most electricians ignore is local media coverage because they think their company isn’t “newsworthy.” It’s lower than you think. Stories about local electricians doing a bit of work for a community group is the kind of “feel-good” story that local media sites, local blogs, and community news sites publish all the time. Approaching the journalist, pitching the story, or offering your services as a source to reporters covering home improvement or home safety makes you the go-to guy or gal. If you’re mentioned in the story and it contains a link to your website, that’s a very valuable local backlink for your site.
Time and Consistency is Key to Sustainable Rankings
You don’t get to authority overnight. Citations take time to proliferate and be indexed. It takes time to earn links, and for Google to give them their full weight. The electricians who have the most resilient local rankings are the ones who view off-page authority as a long-term project, rather than a short-term initiative: claiming a couple of new relevant directory listings every month, keeping up their trade association memberships, pitching the occasional story idea to a local media outlet, and continually asking partners and clients if they can publish a link to their website.
The reward for this slow, dirty work is a set of rankings that aren’t easy to knock down in a hurry. If a competitor decides to go all-out on SEO next year, they can create a nicer website than yours in a few weeks’ time. They can create better content in a few months. But they can’t build two years of steady citation building, a legitimate network of community backlinks, and a year’s worth of press mentions overnight. That’s what makes well-established local authority so powerful – it’s what takes the longest to earn and the longest to catch up.
