Top 5 SEO Keywords for Home Inspection Websites

The home inspection business calls for people who are not only good at inspecting homes but also have business savvy and the wherewithal to gain new clients. By this time, you can probably crawl through an attic or inspect a leaky basement with your eyes closed—although I wouldn’t advise it. What might be more difficult for you is getting a handle on the ins and outs of search engine optimization and the keywords that will gain you new clients on your home inspection website. There are 5 keywords to know that will help your business thrive.

HOW TO GENERATE A LIST OF HOME INSPECTION KEYWORDS

Acquiring the list of top home inspection keywords is the kind of thing you simply need to sit down and do. It pays to do your homework. If you do this initial step well and create appropriate keywords, you will drive more traffic to your website and ultimately get more business.

Brainstorm Keyword Ideas
This step in the process is by far the easiest. Make a list of keywords you would use if you were looking for a home inspector. You can certainly type this list, but many people feel more comfortable with good old pen and paper. This initial list will be short and would look something like this:

• Home inspectors
• Home inspections
• Residential inspection

Broad List of Keywords
The next step is to add your keyword ideas to the Google Keyword Tool to create a broad list of keywords, and then narrow it down to find relevant keywords.

After adding the 3 keywords to Google Keyword Tool, you should end up with a list of over 500 broad keywords.

There are two key factors to picking out relevant keywords:

• Decide if the keywords are relevant to your specific situation. If the keyword has commercial inspection, it is not appropriate for your residential inspection business.
• Analyze the search volume, and only keep the words that come up in searches the most.

As you keep narrowing down the list, checking for relevance to your personal goals as a home inspector as well as using the keywords that have the most volume, you should be able to whittle the list down to 5-10 powerful keywords that will allow you to market your business effectively.

THE FANTASTIC 5: THE MOST POWERFUL KEYWORDS FOR HOME INSPECTORS

As you continue to process the keywords, you will probably come across these top five keywords. If you are in the business of commercial inspections, you can run through your own keyword search for that.

• Home Inspection
• Home Inspector
• House Inspector
• Property Inspection
• Property Inspector

But you can’t stop here. In order to optimize your website pages to rank for these keywords, you will not have positive results unless you add a geo modifier to your keyword. A geo modifier is simply the city and state in which you are looking for work.

• Original keyword with no modifier: home inspection
• Keyword with the addition of geo modifier: home inspection + city/state

In order to target people in Dallas, TX, for instance, your list should look like this:

• Home Inspector Dallas TX
• Home Inspector Dallas TX
• House Inspector Dallas TX
• Property Inspection Dallas TX
• Property Inspector Dallas TX

After compiling the list of appropriate keywords, the next step is on-page optimization. These tactics will tell you how to make the most of your keywords.

ON-PAGE OPTIMIZATION FOR HOME INSPECTORS

There are many elements that go into successful optimization for your website. These include items such as title, website URL, description, H tags, images, text, and internal links. Although it is not easy to have your website land on the first page of Google in order to attract traffic, and therefore more leads, with appropriate and thoughtful on-page optimization you can help it rank better.

Title Tag
For several reasons, the title tag is one of the most important elements in SEO, and this is how Google ranks your web page. Focus on the following keys:

• Use your keywords in the title to improve your SEO ranking. This will also have a positive impact on your click through rankings.
• Make sure your title tag concisely explains what your page is about.
• Each page of your website needs an individualized title tag. This helps Google differentiate between the pages.
• Using “Cleveland Home Inspector - ABC Inspections LLC” is a short and simple title that will work.

Meta Description
The meta description is a brief explanation of what is on your page, and usually consists of one or two sentences that are around 160 characters long. This meta description helps to organically drive traffic to your website and gives viewers a chance to see what will be on there before they arrive. Meta descriptions should be written for humans, not bots.

This plays an integral role in your rankings because if people click and then immediately hit the back button because your meta description doesn’t match visitors expectations, this could negatively affect you.

Although, make sure your meta description includes keywords and that it matches the page.

Website URL
The URL is important in completing the package and driving traffic to your website. This can help visitors understand what they will encounter when they visit your site. Keywords still can be placed in the URL, but they are no longer major ranking factors. For best results, keep the URL under 50 characters.

Body Content
Careful placement of keywords inside the content and body of your text will show its relevance and make the content more easily understood by search engines.

However, remember that more is not always better. Peppering your keyword throughout the body of your content can actually get you in trouble with SEO algorithms. A good rule of thumb is a keyword density around 1%.

H1-H6 Tag
Tags from H1-H6 also play a small role in your websites ranking. H1, the main heading on your page, should contain your keyword, but only if it doesn’t affect the natural readability of your text. Tags H2-H6 are not very crucial to SEO optimization. If you can naturally place your keywords in these tags, do so, but don’t sweat it.

Images
People are drawn to pictures. So do as much as you can to link the images to the content on your home inspection website. Using keywords in the ALT tags of the image is a great idea. Having a keyword in an image or two on each page is beneficial.

Internal Links
Your home inspection keywords can also be used to link internally to different pieces of content on your website. This is why having a wide variety of pages is a good strategy. Whether linking internally to your blog on a certain home inspection topic, or another dedicated page, internal links help your visitors understand what kind of content they are about to experience. When you link internally to other content on your website, search engines will rank your results higher.

GUARANTEED FIRST PAGE SEARCH RESULTS

You now have the Top 5 most important home inspection keywords as well as the basic on-page optimization techniques to get yourself ranked higher in search results.

Even armed with this knowledge, however, there is no guarantee that you will rank at the top of the Google page. The algorithms are constantly changing, and sometimes it is difficult to know what the rules actually are.

If SEO optimization sounds like too much trouble for you, and you don’t have 6-12 months to wait for your keywords to drive traffic to your site, but you still want to get to the top of the Google rankings, consider PPC Advertising. With pay per click, you can get faster results, a more targeted process, and leave the hassle behind.