Remember when Google wasn’t the biggest wellspring for contractor leads?

Those were the days, huh?

Back then, lead sources like the Yellow Pages, direct mail, and print ads did a lot of the heavy lifting.

That meant you could launch a new website, and then kick back and call it good.

You didn’t need Google (or Bing or Yahoo, for that matter) to get the amount of business you needed to grow.

You didn’t have to worry about title tags, meta descriptions, backlinks, consistently churning out compelling content on your blog, and three dozen and one other things just for a fighting chance at making page one.

But those simpler times are long gone.

Fast-forward to October 31st, 2017.

Now, Google and her search-engine siblings are THE main source for remodeling and home improvement leads. The competition’s not even close.

Sure, other marketing methods—direct mail, print ads, etc.—still work. But for any contractor who cares to grow business, those methods need to SUPPLEMENT a strong SEO strategy… not substitute for it.

Don’t believe me?

The latest statistics show that well over 90% of homeowners use search engines to find local contractors. So if you’re not ranking well on search engines like Google, you’re toast.

“You.”

What’s even more frustrating is that Google’s algorithms get pickier and more complex with every update. And do you honestly have the knowledge and experience to handle these convoluted procedures yourself? If not, can you set aside the hundreds of hours it would take to become proficient at the many, many SEO tasks required to rank well?

Probably not… but MYM can.

I can unreservedly say that our SEO team is comprised of the baddest mammer jammers both sides of the Mississippi.

Seriously…

They eat, sleep, breathe, drink, and bathe in SEO.

It’s their sustenance.

It’s their lifeblood.

It’s also why MYM turns the average contractor from “Google Dud” to “Google Stud.”

Contractor Website Before MYM.

Contractor Website After MYM. (Results are typical.)

To achieve such transformations, our SEO team always has a ton of projects going to improve our client websites’ rankings, performance, and conversion success.

Let me share a few of those projects with you…

1.  Link Disavowing

Link disavowing is an ongoing project in which we identify and eliminate toxic backlinks that are directed at our clients’ websites.

Over the past two weeks, we identified and disavowed 470 toxic backlinks. The majority of these came from our newer clients, but we also had a few older clients that added to our total as well. All were scoped out and appropriately disavowed, and will not negatively affect search rankings going forward.

2.  Client Website Audits

We’re meticulously crawling—page by page, line by line—our clients’ websites to ensure there are no errors that could compromise SEO rankings. This past week, we found and fixed some errors, which were mostly in our clients’ blogs. To ensure these errors don’t happen going forward, we’ve completely revamped our blog-creation process. (More on that in a future email.)

3.  Correcting Google Analytics Errors

One of our new clients had their Google Analytics code incorrectly implemented on their website.

To the naked eye, it looked like the Google Analytics code was working correctly, as there was traffic showing in the Google Analytics dashboard. It turns out, however, that no page other than the homepage was tracking page views.

This is something that’s easy to miss, but we discovered and corrected it. The client’s Google Analytics is now showing the statistics for the WHOLE website. As a result, there was over 2,300% more traffic and over a 2,100% increase in unique visitors once we fixed the problem. While that’s not an actual increase in traffic, the true data is now being displayed (which is obviously a good thing!).

4.  Site Review Project

The Site Review Project encompasses both SEO and design. We track dozens of items for our clients’ websites, including meta descriptions, backlinks, social media links, desktop and mobile site speed, and more. This goes to show that you can’t just slap up a new website and call it good; it needs constant “TLC” to maintain and grow.

5.  A Bunch Of Other Stuff

In addition to the projects above, our SEO team is plugging away at a ton of other tasks to ensure our clients’ websites are kicking butt on Google. They’ve been so busy that we’ve had to bring on new people to help with development, blog posting, and client support. MYM SEO is running at full speed 24/7, and we need all hands on deck.

Looking For This Level Of Service From An SEO Company?

If you’re a contractor who wants to thrive in today’s market, SEO is no longer optional—it’s MANDATORY. And it can be a heck of an uphill battle if you’re not an expert.

We are currently looking for a few contractors who are serious about growing their businesses… and understand that SEO (and internet marketing as a whole) is the proverbial Yellow Brick Road to get there.

If that’s you, give us a call at (817) 416-4333. Or hook yourself up with one of our no-cost, no-strings Lead Generation Audits. We’ll take a deep dive into your internet marketing efforts and reveal what aspects are working… and what aspects need some serious work.

In terms of ranking well on search engines, sometimes less is more.

Google used to base a large part of their ranking signals on update frequency. But that’s not necessarily the case anymore.

Now more than ever, the Google Gods place more value on QUALITY of content over QUANTITY.

This means one stellar piece of content has more search engine “oomph” than, say, three or four average-quality blog posts.

Case in point…

To accommodate Google’s former thirst for frequency, we’ve been creating 15 blog posts a month for our SEO clients. We’d post this content on their blogs two or three times per week.

The posts themselves were well-written, but not earth-shaking or anything.

And they weren’t meant to be. Like I said, we were going with what would make clients rank the highest. And that involved creating new blog fodder constantly.

Here’s an example of this type of content we posted to a client’s website on April 25th, 2017. As you’ll see, it’s written well but lacks substance.

Until very recently, this rapid-fire blog-posting strategy worked. The posts would rank well, and everything was peachy-keen.

Over the last few months, however, we noticed the blog posts were not ranking as well as they once were… not even close.

Why? Because Google launched another algorithm update, as they’re so fond of doing.

We’re always on our toes to keep up with Google’s constant mood swings (i.e., algorithm changes). So as soon as we saw what we WERE doing was no longer working as well, we created a plan to fix it.

As a result, we’re overhauling our SEO content strategy for our upgraded clients…

Instead of providing our upgraded SEO clients with 15 smaller blog posts per month, we’re going to start delivering four premium, high-quality blog posts per month.

The outcome is going to be better, cornerstone content that is powerful, informative, interesting, sharable, and laced with all the SEO elements Google eats up.

We’ve already begun testing this out on a few clients… to great results. Here’s an example of the kind of meaty blog content (Posted June 23rd, 2017) we’re NOW producing. You’ll see it’s MUCH more comprehensive and captivating to the target audience.

To create such strong content for ALL upgraded SEO clients, we’ll be setting up one-on-one time (in 90-minute blocks) with our content writers and clients.

We’ll reacquaint ourselves with our clients’ goals, what they want their blog to do, and what kind of content is relevant to their specific businesses. We’ll talk about every keyword, potential pieces of content, and how hard they want to sell that keyword.

Not only will we be having these “reintroduction content strategy” sessions with clients—but we’ll be doing check-ins every quarter to see what products or services they’re pushing that season, if they’ve noticed any big questions customers have asked that we want to answer in a blog post and re-strategize for the next three months.

Our new, improved SEO content strategy will roll out as beta on July 15th for five to seven clients who have agreed to be guinea pigs.

Then August and September, we will begin bringing our remaining upgraded clients into the fold.

Visit our SEO page for more info about our services. Then, get in touch with us if you want to take your search rankings to the next level.

P.S. Don’t get me wrong… quantity IS still important for search rankings. Your website needs a steady stream of content to remain relevant in Google’s eyes. But that content must engage your audience. If it doesn’t, no one will read it… and your rankings will go down like a sinking ship.

P.P.S. So, what happens with our Bundle SEO clients (clients who aren’t upgraded)? Clients on Bundle-level SEO will still get their two blog posts per month. But they won’t get the high level, hands-on experience that we reserve for upgraded SEO clients who truly want to Monopolize their Marketplace.

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A lot of SEO companies claim to be Google experts.

They say they know all of the secrets, tricks, and techniques to get you to number one in X amount of time. (Usually, it’s a ridiculously unrealistic time frame like two weeks or 30 days.)

But here’s the truth…

Those guys? Most of them are posers.

They don’t take the time and effort to learn hugely complex ins and outs of Google.

They make these big promises because it’s easy for them to get away with it.

Most contractors don’t know a title tag from a meta description from a hole in the ground. So SEO companies can usually lure in customers by merely SOUNDING like they know what they’re talking about.

Think about it…

I’m sure you’ve hired an SEO company (or two or three) before.

What did you think of the results?

Not so great, right?

Thousands of your dollars are down the drain (or more accurately, in that SEO company’s pocket)… and your website is still sitting at page 57.

All of the extraordinary claims and promises… they were just puffery to get you to fork over your hard-earned dollars.

That SEO company sold you on a dream, and delivered a Freddy Krueger-degree nightmare.

I don’t mean to bash other SEO companies; some of them are legit, work hard for their clients, and get good results.

I’m simply laying bare the cold, hard truth about the guys who don’t take the time to learn about SEO and what Google wants.

Why?

Because I want you to know that MYM is the complete, 100% opposite.

Our Digital Services team eats, sleeps, and breathes SEO.

While leisurely reading to you means picking up the new Field & Stream issue or latest John Grisham novel, our SEO people read articles with titles like 10 Realistic Ways To Boost Domain Authority On A Website and What Google’s New Algorithm Means For Link Building.

Frankly, their love (obsession?) for SEO scares me a little.

But I’m not complaining… this means MYM has some of the most knowledgeable SEO experts on the interwebs. I like to think of them as Google Black Belts.

Our Google Black Belts are ALWAYS looking for ways to hone their SEO chops and taking their skills to the next level.

For example…

Two people on our SEO team, Katie Colihan (Digital Services Director) and Kim McConnery (Digital Services Project Manager), recently enrolled in this thing called Google Analytics Academy (GAA).

GAA is a set of online resources and courses that Google says “helps you learn about Google’s measurement tools so that you can grow your business through intelligent data collection and analysis.”

Sounds… nerdy, right?

Sure. But you know the saying: “Nerds rule the world.”

Katie and Kim recently completed Google Analytics for Beginners and Advanced Google Analytics courses. Here’s some of what was included in them (pulled from the Google Analytics website):

• Creating measurement plans
• Understanding user behavior with Event Tracking
• Segmenting data for insight
• Tracking campaigns with the URL Builder
• Measuring AdWords campaigns
• Better targeting with Dynamic Remarketing
• Analyzing audience and behavior reports

And a ton of other stuff that reads like ancient hieroglyphics to the average person.

What does all this mean for our clients?

Well…

Not only do they get the smartest SEO minds helming their campaign… they also get peace of mind that our Digital Services team is constantly looking for ways to improve on their already deep SEO knowledge.

Because here’s the thing…

SEO is a continuously changing landscape. What works today may not work tomorrow. And what some of these poser SEO companies tell you to do may be flat-out wrong and a rankings disaster.

So you need people running your campaign who eat, sleep, and breathe SEO. People who LOVE knowing everything there is to know about canonical URLs, inbound links, referrer strings, and hundreds of other details about SEO.

Because when you have these Google Black Belts in your corner, your search-ranking potential (and, therefore, PROFIT potential) can reach lofty new limits.

In fact, I want you to put my SEO team to the test: Sign up for a Lead Generation Audit.

As part of the audit, our SEO team will gauge your SEO’s effectiveness and provide an overwhelmingly detailed Google Analytics report. They’ll expose cracks in your SEO that you didn’t even know existed. Then, they’ll show you how to fix your problems.

Like I said, go here for the audit.

P.S. Next up for Katie and Kim is the mother of all SEO gauntlets: the Google Analytics IQ Test. This is a 90-minute test filled with 70 questions like, “In what circumstances would you want to increase the default sessions timeout length in Google Analytics?” and “The date range set for a Dashboard doesn’t apply to Real-Time widgets since they only show data for current active users, not historical data… true or false?”

To pass the Google Analytics IQ Test, you need to have an 80% or above. I’ll let you know how Katie and Kim do once they take the test.

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If you want to know how many leads your SEO and other organic traffic sources are producing (not just the amount of visitors to your website they get), you’ll find this interesting…

We just rolled out a new feature that tracks organic leads our clients get from various traffic sources.

For example…

We can determine that Contractor X had 15 website leads for the month come from SEO, 10 from people calling the phone number listed on their website, and seven from online chat.

Then we include this information in the already detail-rich monthly website traffic reports we send to our clients. They know where their lead “game” is strong, and where they need to improve.

Organic lead tracking is an invaluable new feature for our clients because they can now see the true ROI their website produces.

Don’t get me wrong…

Tracking organic website traffic is super important. We do it for our clients exhaustively.

But tracking the LEADS from this traffic shows you how well your website is converting once prospects are actually ON your website.

Another cool feature of our lead-tracking tool is that we can track ANY lead goal you want. We can see how many people signed up for your newsletter, downloaded your brochure, and so on.

Simply put, if there is an aspect of your website that can be measured and quantified, we can track the results.

Here is more info about our comprehensive SEO solutions for contractors.

You’ll see we don’t do a few lame Facebook posts and an anemic, keyword-stuffed blog post every month and call it good.

No, sir. (Or ma’am.)

The amount of SEO bang our clients get for their buck is on a whole other level.

In addition to our new lead-tracking feature, we provide…

• Complete backend coding for every page of your website.
• Premium, high-level SEO blog posts and social media content.
• Optimization for the keywords that YOUR specific prospects search for.
• Meticulous monthly reporting that our Digital Services Director reviews with you every month.
• Monthly videos for your website and YouTube channel—one hundred-percent scripted, filmed, and produced.
• Monthly case studies that showcase your work while moving you up in the search rankings.
• And much, much, MUCH more.

Like I said, go here for more details about our SEO.

P.S. We’ve got some gorgeous contractor websites coming down the pipeline. You’ll want to keep an eye out over the next few weeks—I’ll be sharing these websites with you as they launch. Who knows… maybe they’ll inspire you with ideas for your own website update.