Networking is crucial in business, even for tradies. Over the years, you build connections with other tradies who you can subcontract out to, and who can cover parts of a job you might not be equipped to handle.
What you might not have known is that online networking can be a huge boon for your tradie digital marketing, and can improve the performance of your website!
Specifically, we’re talking about backlinks.
Building online connections and backlinks with your website can be a huge help in:
- Building your credibility
- Bringing in new business and more jobs
- Improving your tradie SEO
But how?
Backlinks and link building – what are they?
Establishing connections with others doesn’t only happen in a physical setting – it applies in the online world too.
Link building in the simplest form has been a way for users to navigate web pages on the internet. Everytime you click on a link to a different page or site, you’re using a backlink!
Pretty much, backlinks are any links to your website from elsewhere on the internet. It doesn’t matter whether it comes from your social media, a fellow website or an online recommendation on a review website – any link that goes to your site is a backlink.
Say a fellow tradie gives you a shoutout on their website and links to you – that’s a backlink.
Link building is a common term in the digital marketing world that focuses on creating a network of backlinks to draw new visitors into your website.
On top of curating a network of links coming into your website, link building also focuses on internal linking structure. Do all the pages in your tradie website link to each other in a logical way that makes sense?
While it may not sound as important as backlinks, internal link building plays an important role in SEO (more on that later).
How backlinks benefit tradie websites
Backlinks increases web traffic
If we’re going to talk about the benefits of backlinks, then we may as well start with the most obvious one!
Backlinks create new ways for potential callers to connect with your website.
Whether it’s on social media or a fellow website, more links means potentially more visitors, simple as that. Anything that gets more people to visit your tradie website can be a huge help in getting you more jobs and calls.
When choosing websites to get backlinks from however, you’ll need to make sure that they’re coming from the right websites.
First off, it’s all about association. If you’re linked to from a dodgy website, how does that look for you?
Not only that, but there’s also the question of whether or not you’re getting the right attention from the site. Say you get your backlinks from a completely irrelevant website – is anyone who clicks one of those links really going to give you a call?
Now imagine you get backlinks from another tradie who covers a similar service. Anyone who clicks on is much more likely to be interested in your services.
Serves as endorsement for your website
Are you getting backlinks from trustworthy, reputable sites? If so, that could be a powerful endorsement for your tradie business!
For example, say there’s one tradie that’s extremely trustworthy, and who’s basically the standard-bearer for your entire trade. Say they give you a shoutout, complete with a link to your website – that can be a powerful endorsement!
In a way, backlinks can serve as an effective endorsement for your tradie business, assuming that the links feel natural and organic.
Whatever you do, don’t take this as a sign that you should join home improvement and DIY forums and start spamming links to your website everywhere – most people will be able to see through that pretty quickly!
This is what we try to do with as many of our tradie clients as possible. We’ll get each of our tradie clients to link to one another whenever possible.
In addition to serving as a great endorsement, this can also help with your tradie SEO…
How backlinks improve your search engine optimisation by building authority and trust for your business
While they aren’t the make-or-break factor they used to be, backlinks still play an important role in your tradie SEO!
Back in the old days, search engines like Google liked to use the number of backlinks to your site as a metric for gauging the reliability of your site. More reliability then meant a better placement in search results.
The problem is that this system was incredibly easy to game, with so-called “link farms” popping up everywhere with the express purpose of creating backlinks.
While Google has mostly moved on from these old methods, that doesn’t mean that backlinks aren’t still important – just that it’s gotten a lot better at sussing out whether those backlinks are worth considering in its rankings.
At the end of the day, if the backlink is coming from a reputable source, it’s still worth it.
A good backlink from a reputable website can bump your position in Google search results a couple of positions almost automatically – it might be hard to believe, but we’ve seen it happen!
Get more leads from other tradies
There’s no such thing as a do-it-all tradie. While you might have a pretty diverse skill set, there are still jobs that you can’t do with your experience and training. For example, you can’t really ask a plumber to do electrical work for you.
That’s where backlinks come into the equation.
Let’s say that there are certain jobs that one of your fellow tradies can’t do, or which they subcontract out to you.
If that’s the case, ask them to include a backlink on their site if they talk about it. People looking for that particular job might see it, and decide to follow that link.
Who knows, that might even turn into a job or two!
Digital marketing for tradies that works
Backlinks aren’t the only thing that matters when it comes to building your website
Having a website isn’t enough on its own anymore – websites need a whole digital marketing strategy as well to maximise visibility and bring in those all-important leads.
Backlinks are just one part of this strategy – you’ll also need to think about all sorts of other things too, like:
- Content marketing
- SEO strategy
- Keyword targeting
- PPC advertising
- Email campaigns
- … and more!
What sort of tradie has the time to look after all of that on top of all the jobs you have scheduled?
Fortunately, your website doesn’t have to be left behind. Our digital marketing team in Melbourne specialises in marketing for tradies.
We don’t just take the work off your hands and let you focus on the tools – we understand the differences that tradie digital marketing takes, and apply tailored packages that are designed to meet tradies’ unique needs.
Our promise to you is simple:
- More calls
- More leads
- More jobs
Contact us today on 1300 88 64 50 or fill out a form for us to get connected.
You can also visit us for website for tradies in Melbourne: pop into our office at 105D Carpenter Street, Brighton 3186 VIC.