SEO For Pest Control Companies

Are you a pest control company owner looking to increase the amount of organic traffic you get? This helpful article will walk you through everything you need to know to get your site ranking on Google using pest control SEO best practices.

Most people get bombarded with emails talking about SEO, crawlers, building backlinks, anchor tags, “no-follow” vs “do-follow”, white hat, grey hat and black hat tactics… the list is endless.

The industry is plagued with salesmen using terms that the majority of us don’t understand, with the aim of bamboozling you into handing over your money. Often, these companies won’t actually help and will leave your site worse off than when they found it.

Thankfully, there are companies out there with real-life experience carrying out pest control SEO, like Right Hook. We have worked with a wide range of pest control companies over the years and have built up a range of pest control marketing case studies.

So, if you’re a pest control professional looking to invest some time and money into SEO, you’re in the right place. These tips can be applied to almost every industry, so even if you’re not looking for pest control SEO, you’ll learn something new.

What Is SEO?

If you’re completely new here, SEO stands for ‘Search Engine Optimisation’. Essentially, it means making changes to your website and digital presence to increase your online visibility.

As such, you’ll be able to reach more clients who need your pest control services. When they search for a pest controller in your service area, they will see your site.

The lower your site ranks on your target SERP (Search Engine Results Page), the less likely your site is to be clicked on. Click through rates are significantly lower the further down the list you go.

By improving your site’s SEO, you can boost the number of conversions you receive online that aren’t generated through paid adverts.

Now that we’ve got that out the way…

What Exactly Is A Search Engine?

Think of search engines similar to the old-fashioned yellow page phone directories.

They are an online tool that helps you find exactly what you are looking for on the internet. The most popular search engines most people have heard of are:

• Google
• Bing
• DuckDuckGo
• Yahoo
• Ask
• YouTube

Search engines do the digging for you – all you have to do as a user is enter some keywords such as “Squirrel Control Wakefield” and the search engine’s algorithm will display pages that are relevant to the keyword.

Adverts make up the top of the page, and then the first result is always the largest- in this case, one of our clients, Vermicure. The aim is to be as close to the number 1 spot as possible, so users don’t have to scroll too far down to find your site.

For this article, we will stick to talking about Google. Google dominates the search engine market due to its sheer size, with over 80% of the total global market share. Its practices are replicated by most of the other search engines, so we focus on Google search optimisation for the pest control businesses we work with.

How Does Google Rank Your Pest Control Website?

As previously mentioned, Google is the biggest search engine on the internet. So, if you’re a pest control company looking to invest in SEO services, you better know how it works.

Google tends to follow three steps when deciding which web pages to display for a keyword: Crawling, Indexing, and Serving (ranking).

CRAWLING

Once a crawler has discovered a page, it is then Google’s job to try and understand the information that is displayed on the page. This is called indexing. 

Google collects data surrounding the content on a page, analyses images and videos that are embedded on the page and tries to gain a comprehensive understanding of the page.

Google views websites differently from how humans view them. Try it out yourself; enter a URL into this page to see how Google views it.

INDEXING

Once a crawler has discovered a page, it is then Googles job to try and understand the information that is displayed on the page. This is called indexing. 

Google collects data surrounding the content on a page, analyses images and videos that are embedded on the page and tries to gain a comprehensive understanding of the page.

Google views websites different from how humans view them. Try it out yourself, enter a URL into this page to see how Google views it.

SERVING (RANKING)

When you enter a query (keyword) into Google, it searches its database of indexed webpages that are most relevant to your keyword and displays them accordingly.

Unfortunately, no one knows the exact algorithm Google uses to display the relevant pages… apart from a few agreed-on factors.

So, How Can I Get Google To Rank My Pest Control Pages Higher?

Overall, the SEO goal for any pest control company is to rank higher on Google. As more traffic to a website brings more enquires, conversions and ultimately more business. While it is obvious that your pest control company needs to be ranking higher on Google for search terms, few know what to do in order to achieve this.

As pest control companies are local businesses with specific service areas, you need to focus on your local SEO. That means focusing on local keywords to get your site noticed in your area.

There are two main types of SEO: on-page and off-page SEO. On-page SEO is anything that you do on your website, such as improving content. Off-page SEO refers to work that’s done on external platforms, such as external link building and optimising your Google Business Profile.

If your pest control company wants to rank higher on Google, you must focus on the following:

• Your Company’s Google Business Profile
• Pest Control Related Keyword Research
• Content Creation for Search Intent
• Eyecatching Title and Meta Descriptions
• Optimising Your Images
• Build High-Quality Backlinks

By focusing on these core tactics as part of your pest control SEO strategy, you can make the most of your time and budget.

Google My Business For Pest Control Companies

The Yellow Pages are gone, and Google dominates…

The Google equivalent of a phone book is the Map Pack, and it’s essential for local pest control SEO. The Map Pack is the list of local businesses that comes up when you search for service providers in your area.

So, make sure to add your pest control business to Google My Business, as it displays all your information for local searches. You can add your location, phone number and address to display your business on Google Maps. 

An example of this in action is if we type in “Rat Control Durham”. As you can see, one of our clients, Invicta Environmental, is at the top of this Map Pack result and, therefore, the first business to be noticed by potential customers.

These aren’t the closest locations- these are all the businesses that have a solid local SEO strategy that includes optimising their Google Business Profile.

As such, it’s important to keep your Google Business Profile, formerly your Google My Business account, up to date with your company information as it goes through any changes. Incorrect information can cause you to lose pest control leads and lead Google to suspend your profile for inaccuracy.

Research What Pest Control Related Keywords People Are Search For

People search for information on Google in lots of different ways.

For example, let’s say you’re a business owner in London. People could search for “pest control in London,” “pest control London” or even “pest control near me.”

Even though each keyword phrase is different, they are all asking the same question.

You have two options when researching pest control related keywords: keyword research tools or guesswork.

Guesswork only gets you so far, so for a successful pest control SEO campaign, we recommend researching keywords that your target audience is using.

Google Trends is a free-of-charge option that allows you to see the popularity of any keywords you enter. Other free options include Google Keywords Planner, Analytics and Search Console.

Unfortunately, while it’s great for tracking keyword trends, the data you receive for search volume is not the most accurate.

This is where paid tools come in…

Tools such as Ahrefs, SEMRush and AlsoAsked allow you to use their keyword explorer. For example, “Bird Control London” in this case.

Once you know what keywords people are searching for, you can start to create content for your website around “Bird Control London” or modify existing content to meet the needs of your target audience. Your pest control SEO content will then be more likely to rank higher and earn you more leads.

It is important to remember that pest control keywords should be chosen on a page-by-page basis. What this means is that you’ll want to create a page for each keyword you want to target as Google ranks pages, not whole websites!

So, a blog post about different types of moths will have a different intention, and therefore different target keywords, than a moth control service page.

Create Content Related To Your Chosen Keywords

Now that you have found keywords you want your pest control company to rank for, it is time to optimise content for “search intent.” This refers to the intention of the user who’s making the search.

Take the keyword “pest control.”

It is hard to know what people are searching for. Do they want a pest control company? Are they searching for a job? Do they just want to know what pest control is?

From the results, you can see that the search intent is confused. A government website appears, even the BPCA shows in the results. Search intent is varied here and we have no clue about what the user wants to find.

Just remember to create content for keywords that target the user with the correct search intent. Google wants to help its users solve a problem and help visitors find exactly what they are looking for.

Now that we have discussed how to rank your webpage for chosen keywords. How do you actually get people to click on the link?

You need to make your titles and descriptions stand out as much as possible. Add a real call to action in the title, which shouts “CLICK ME” on the results page.

Create Eye-Catching Titles and Meta Descriptions

Now that we have discussed how to rank your webpage for chosen keywords. How do you actually get people to click on the link?

To do this, you need to create an enticing meta title and description that explains what your web page is about and why they should click on it.

Crafting a title and description worthy of a click is about understanding your target audience and knowing what matters to them.

Further reading: SEO Title Tag Optimization: 4 Best Practices and Examples

Optimise Your Images

It’s a pain in the bum, but make sure you take the time to name all your images correctly.

Google states, “The filename can give Google clues about the subject matter of the image. For example, my-new-black-kitten.jpg is better than IMG00023.JPG.”

Also, try your hardest to keep image sizes as low as possible. Website loading speed is now a major factor in ranking, and images are known to slow down websites. Plenty of free compression tools are available on the web to help with this. 

Build High-Quality Backlinks

Backlinks are very important to how high your website ranks.

Let’s start by breaking down what a backlink actually is…

Simply put, it’s an incoming hyperlink from one web page to another. There are two types: internal and external backlinks.

Internal backlinks are links you place throughout your site to other pages on it. They can be important for earning organic traffic and showing Google the purpose of certain pages. For example, this is an internal backlink to our SEO audits page.

Slightly harder to manage are external backlinks, which are links from another website or domain to your target page. For example, this is an external backlink to Right Hook’s LinkedIn account.

It is important to build high-quality external backlinks from well-trusted websites, as it increases your chances of ranking a page.

Still, that’s a harder task than you might think since you don’t own these websites. You have limited control over what they post, so organically earning backlinks can be tough.

So, how do you build backlinks in the pest control industry?

There are lots of tactics for building backlinks, but here are a few we like to use:

• Guest blog posting
• Broken link building
• Researching your competitor’s backlinks and replicating them
• Get links from people you have a good relationship with (BPCA, Pest Control Technology, Suppliers, Partners, etc.)
• Creating unique content with statistics and research that others will want to reference

Building external backlinks takes time and patience, but it’s a key part of SEO for pest control companies.

Over To You

Well, there you have it: pest control SEO in a nutshell. We’ve just about covered the basics.

There was a lot of information, and I’m glad you’re still here.

Where to go from here? I highly recommend following and researching even more about the steps I mentioned above.

But let’s be honest. SEO is a marathon, not a sprint – it’s a long process, but the rewards are very high.

Doing it all on your own might seem impossible, especially when you have pest control services to deliver.

Luckily, Right Hook has extensive knowledge of SEO for pest control and other industries. We’ve worked with lots of pest control companies across the UK, including Invicta Environmental, Integrum Services, Flytech Pest Control and more, helping them grow and succeed with digital marketing.

If you don’t want to spend hours perfecting your SEO strategy, please feel free to contact us today.