Not All Traffic Is Created Equal – How to Get the Good (Paying) Kind
It makes a big difference if someone searches for “how does a circuit breaker work” or “emergency electrician near me tonight”. Both are searching. One is ready to give you cash. Knowing the difference – and tailoring your keywords to it – is how electricians go from traffic to customers. The power of seo for electricians is that it can target customers who have already made the decision to book an electrician, and are looking for another. Keyword research is how you get to those people first.
“Keyword research” might sound like it belongs in an online marketing textbook, but the concept is pretty straightforward: find out what words your ideal customer is typing into Google just before they’re ready to hire someone, and then make your website show up when they search for that word. All other things in SEO follow that. The problem electricians run into is going after keywords that drive a lot of traffic but no bookings. Traffic is vanity. Booked jobs are the point.
High-Intent Keywords Are Different
Intent is the iceberg under the search query. Google invests a lot of resources to understand it – you should too. High-intent keywords mean the searcher is ready to act. It’s often a search that contains words such as “costs,” “near me,” “hiring,” “emergency,” “same day” or the name of the service they are looking for. “Electrician for panel upgrade quote” is high intent. “What is an electrical panel” is not. Both could potentially end up with the same customer, but one will get you there six months sooner and a lot of your web pages will be wasted in the process.
General keywords are almost always lower intent than service-specific. “Electrician” is general and could be a student researching for a project, a homeowner shopping around or a contractor sourcing a subcontractor. “Electrician EV charger installation [city]” is highly specific, and basically says “book now please”. Those who search for that are looking to have an EV charger installed. They’re not on an exploring journey. They’re on an employment journey, and you want to be the first port of call.
Geo-modifiers radically change the conversion potential of a keyword. “Electrician” is a long shot. “Electrician in [neighborhood]” is warmer. “Electrician 24 hours [city]” is even warmer. The more specific the search term, the fewer people search for it – but they’re more likely to actually call. These longer keywords (long-tail keywords) are where electricians get the best converting traffic, and they’re not as competitive, so you can rank for them quickly.
How to Find These Keywords Without Expensive Tools
You don’t have to pay for fancy software to find keywords. You can actually get most of the information you need from Google. To get started, just type a service you provide in to the search box and see what autocomplete recommends. The suggestions are what people are really looking for. “Electrician for…” – Google will complete the sentence with the most popular. Write them down. Each one of these could be a page or piece of content to attract a visitor.
At the bottom of any Google search is a series of “related searches“. This is another free source of search terms for your category. The “People also ask” section in the middle of the page is a treasure trove of the questions people are asking. If someone in your audience is asking “how much does it cost to upgrade an electrical panel” you know that they are considering hiring someone for that job, and are looking for a price. A web page with a direct, specific answer to that question will draw that specific person to your website.
Google Search Console is free and links into your website, and tells you what words have brought people to your website so far. If you haven’t done so already, do it this week. It’s a tool many small business owners don’t use, and for electricians who have an existing website, and some content, it often shows you keyword opportunities that are just waiting to be plucked – searches you’re currently on page two for, but could be on page one with a little effort.
Finding Keywords for Services that Bring in the Profits
Ask yourself this: what type of jobs in your company are the most profitable? Panel replacements? Generator installations? Commercial work? Whatever they are, these are the services on which you should target your keywords. It’s a no-brainer, but many electricians have websites that devote time to all their services equally, regardless of profitability or popularity. That’s a waste of a chance to laser-focus your SEO efforts.
If you have a high-margin electrician service that you want to increase, like panel upgrades, you should have a page dedicated to those keywords like “cost to upgrade electrical panel,” “replacing an electrical panel [city],” “price to upgrade from 100 amp to 200 amp service,” and so on. A single page that optimises for all these terms and covers them well (and truthfully) will rank better than five pages that merely list the service. Google likes relevance. A page that fully addresses what someone would want to know about upgrading their panel (how much it costs, how long it takes, indications that it’s needed, how the process works), is what a high-intent searcher is looking for.
Service pages must be two things: Google friendly and click-to-call friendly. These objectives aren’t mutually exclusive, but they aren’t the same. To rank, you need to have the right keywords sprinkled throughout the page to show Google what the page is about, a structure they can understand, and sufficient content to demonstrate expertise.
What Your Competitors’ Keywords Tell You
A less talked about approach to keyword research is competitor analysis. Not to duplicate what they’re doing – but to identify what they’re not. If you know the two most established electricians in your city have well-optimized pages around residential electrical services, but they don’t have a page dedicated to installing electric vehicle charging points, that’s your opportunity. You don’t have to compete head-to-head with the market leader. You can expand into the land they’ve left alone.
When you’re doing keyword research it’s not about finding the highest volume. It’s to find the terms they are searching – the ones who are qualified, who can afford it, and are ready to buy. If you can get in front of those people often, the numbers will follow.
