The Problem with Local SEO for Electricians Is That It Doesn’t Always Lead to Calls
It’s a particular kind of disappointment when you’ve put in time and money to get your business online, you can see your business on Google, but the phone isn’t ringing like it should. Rankings feel like progress. They look like progress. But your search result ranking doesn’t pay the rent – phone calls do. The electricians who make the most of local seo by turning it into a never-ending stream of phone calls are not the ones who necessarily rank the highest. They’ve realised that seo for electricians is not just about exposure. It’s about every step along the way from first search to click to call. This is where most of the work is, and most businesses don’t even consider it.
To get more local calls from search, you have to work backwards in the customer journey. Begin with the action of calling, and then work backwards to all of the choices that took them to that point. Why did they believe you enough to choose you over the other two businesses listed in the map pack? What was it about your website that didn’t scare them away? What did you say in the eight seconds it took them to read your Google Business Profile? Each of these is a lever. Pull them in the right direction and your phone will ring more. If you don’t, you can be on page one for as long as you like while others with lower rankings steal your calls.
Google Business Profile Is the First Handshake
When people search for an electrician, 95% of the time the consumer will call from the map pack, bypassing the website. So your Google Business Profile isn’t an add-on tool, but the first contact for many of your potential customers. If the profile is thin, out of date, or doesn’t look convincing in the blink of an eye, the potential customer is already beginning to swipe away.
All of the profile’s fields must be filled in. Basic info like business title, address, phone – no doubt. But what really matters is everything else: the services list that breaks down the specific services you offer, the business description that reads like it was written by a happy professional rather than a long-suffering business owner, the photos that depict real work rather than a stock photo of a light switch, and the frequent posts that demonstrate an active business. All that leaves an impression in just a few seconds – and, in a high-intent search, that’s all you have.
The click-to-call button, when a map pack listing is viewed on mobile, is prime real estate for an electrician. It’s automatically tapped by someone in a desperate situation. But they only click it if the rest of your profile was good enough. Part of that is reviews. A profile with 80 reviews, 4.7 stars, and a recent review, creates social proof, before they’ve even seen what you have to say about yourself. The number, rating, and the age of the reviews all communicate in that first impression, and any large deficiency in one of these parts of the signal makes it less powerful.
Where You Put Your Phone Number on Your Website Matters
If a potential customer does happen to click through to your website before they dial, where your phone number is on the page is critical – something most electricians and web designers don’t appreciate. On a mobile device – where most local service queries occur – the phone number should be accessible, without having to scroll, on every page. Not in the footer. Not in a contact form at the bottom of the page. At the very top, as a clickable phone number that will open the dialer.
This may sound too easy, but if you visit the websites of a selection of electrical contractors in most cities you’ll find a startling number that either bury their contact details or present phone numbers as non-dialable text. The more steps to take between visiting your website and calling you, the more potential drop-outs. When looking for an electrician in a crisis, your user has a low tolerance for effort. The fewer barriers between them and clicking, the more will connect.
It’s the same with page load time. If it takes more than three seconds for your website to load on mobile, you’re losing a lot of potential customers before they reach your phone number, your photos or your reviews. They return to Google and try another business. Load time isn’t a technical detail – it’s a driver of the number of calls you will receive from your website.
Actioning Calls-to-Action with Urgent, Relevant Copy
How you phrase your calls to action affects how many people respond. “Contact us” is vague. “Call today for same-day service” is direct, makes the reader feel like they might miss out, and explains what they’ll get. “Open 24 hours, call anytime” speaks to the customer with the broken breaker at 10pm. These aren’t sleazy tricks. It’s simply a factual statement of when you’re available, in the voice of someone who needs your services (and needs them now).
Seeing What Searches Lead to Calls
Google Business Profile Insights will tell you how many people clicked your call button on the listing. Google Search Console shows which search terms drove traffic to your website. Call tracking, in which different phone numbers are used to track traffic from different channels, shows which channels are generating calls and which channels are generating low-converting traffic. These two tools provide a picture of where your calls are, in fact, coming from and where the discrepancy between traffic and calls is largest.
An electrician who knows that 70 percent of their inbound calls are coming from map pack listings, rather than their website, knows to focus on optimizing their listings, not creating blog posts. One who finds that a particular location page has lots of visits but few calls knows to check that page’s call to action, and the placement and prominence of its phone number. Judgement runs the business – not data – but judgement with data insights gets better results sooner than judgement without. Do the maths every month or so, identify the holes, and start filling them.
