The Ultimate Guide to Roofing SEO

We’re sharing the tricks that SEO companies everywhere use to help their clients rank #1 in Google search results with effective search engine optimization (SEO).

One of the best strategies when planning your digital marketing campaigns to bring in more leads is to incorporate effective search engine optimization (SEO) in your roofing website. This is also where you can get an edge over your competitors who aren’t using professional roofing SEO services.

Building a solid local SEO strategy can help your roofing company:

Outrank your competitors on Google Maps and in the Google Search Results
Rank your site highly for your targeted keywords
Attract more leads and convert them to paying clients

Learn Everything There Is to Know About Roofing SEO

In our Ultimate Guide to Roofing SEO, we’ll cover everything you need to know to get started managing your roofing SEO strategy, including:

What is SEO and how does it work?
Keyword research tools and how to target relevant keywords.
Building custom websites for roofing contractors.
On-page SEO vs. off-page SEO
Creating high-quality written content for your roofing business.
What is technical SEO?
How Google ranks roofing websites according to domain authority.
Tracking your roofing website traffic to develop effective internet marketing strategies.
How to find a roofing SEO company that aligns with your local roofing SEO goals.

Check out the rest of our guide below to begin your journey to ranking at the top of the Google Search Results page for your roofing services in your local service area and compete with other roofing companies’ SEO.

Want us to handle all the SEO for your Roofing Company?

What Is SEO for Roofing Companies?

Let’s start with the basics. SEO stands for “search engine optimization.” It is a strategy of special content marketing on your roofing website to help your site rank over other websites from your competitors on Google and other search engines.

While paid Google Ads may rank your site first under the paid results, a solid roofing SEO campaign can boost your site’s visibility in the organic search results. Effective digital marketing with SEO includes:

Professional website design
Quality content that positions your roofing company as the local expert
Inbound linking from reputable sources that boosts your domain authority

Will Roofing SEO Get Me More Leads?

Google will inspect your site occasionally using “crawlers,” or little bits of code that analyze your site structure and content to assign it a ranking score. The higher your site ranks for your targeted keywords compared to your competitors, the closer to the top of Google’s search results your roofing website will appear.

Using SEO for roofing companies will help you get more leads by focusing on content creation and keyword research.

But what should you consider when picking your keywords? Remember that your keywords are the words and phrases prospective customers will use to find your roofing company in the search engine results.

When your roofing website ranks highly for certain keywords, prospective leads may turn into paying customers when they call your number from your site. Search engines like Google track how often certain searches result in an action from a site visitor and rank your site higher in the search engine results the next time a user types in the same search terms.

How to Target Roofing SEO Keywords

Your keywords are the terms you want to target to develop your roofing website content for ranking on Google’s search results. Start by making a list of the terms you think prospective customers are looking for when they need a roofer in your service area.

Your keywords should target a mix of your roofing services as well as local SEO phrases, such as:

Local search terms including the city, region, and specific neighborhoods
Roofing services your roofing company offers
Related services your roofing business offers (gutters, siding, attic insulation, etc.)

Some examples of keywords you may want to use in your local roofing SEO efforts include:

Roofing contractors in Brooklyn
Shingle roof replacement in Brooklyn, NY
Emergency roof replacement for insurance claim in New York City

Be sure to include a good mix of short-tail and long-tail keywords.

Short-tail keywords are less specific, and most users perform these shorter searches when gathering information. Your competitors are also trying to rank for these keywords.

Long-tail keywords are more specific. A user searching for “asphalt shingle storm damage repair” probably needs help right away and is motivated to pay for your services. If you’re the only roofing company trying to rank for those long-tail keywords, you’ll get most of the business from users searching for those terms.

If you already have a Google My Business listing with a well-defined service area, you don’t always need to include the location in your search optimization strategy. In fact, you shouldn’t use a location keyword every time you mention a keyword in your content. Google will recognize that the content doesn’t sound natural if you use the location too often. Instead, mix the location into your content occasionally.

Keyword Research Tools for Roofer SEO

Once you determine which keywords you want your roofing website to rank for, you need to research which of those keywords are already popular and try to target similar keywords with less demand.

One tool you can use if you already have a Google Ads account is the Google Keyword Planner. With Google’s proprietary keyword research tools, you can see which roofing industry keywords rank highest in your service area.

Choosing the Right Targeted Keywords for a Roofing Contractor

You want to target effective keywords for your roofing business that are relevant and have a high search volume. But what does that mean?

Keyword relevance is how accurately a keyword describes your business services. You wouldn’t want to target “grocery stores in Los Angeles” as a roofing contractor.

Search volume describes the number of prospective leads searching for your keywords. This is where short-tail and long-tail keywords come into play with actual site traffic from Google’s search results. Remember that more people search for simple terms to find what they want, so more roofing contractors are competing for rank on those short-tail keywords.

While you want to compete for those short-tail keywords, don’t forget the long-tail keywords. You could only get a click from 60% of shorter keyword search results. Even if longer keyword searches aren’t very common, you could get 90-100% of the clicks from those search results if you’re the only roofing company targeting those phrases.

All the roofing companies in your service area want to rank for common keywords and phrases, like “roofing company in Jacksonville, FL.” If there are 20 roofing companies serving Jacksonville, that’s a highly competitive market for that keyword.

Your roofing business might benefit from placing more emphasis on specific services. “Hurricane roof repair in Jacksonville” would be a better keyword for a roofing company that offers insurance claim assistance in Northeast Florida.

Writing Content to Rank for Roofing Keywords

Once you decide which keywords to target, you need to write your roofing website content. Your content should not sound contrived, robotic, or improper. A human English-speaker should write all of your content to incorporate a cluster of appropriate keywords in each page using proper spelling and grammar.

Other websites may include content outsourced to other countries or AI engines. Because most roofing contractors don’t have time to develop their own website content, many hire digital marketing services from an SEO company to write their content.

If you are thinking of hiring a digital marketing firm to write content for your site, be sure that any SEO company you consider understands the intricacies of local roofing SEO and warm lead generation for roofing contractors.

Google’s primary ranking tool is “domain authority.” Domain authority is a score search engines assign a page to describe how much of an authority that page is on a certain topic. So if someone looks for “tile roofing contractor in Phoenix” and you’re the largest tile roofer in Phoenix, you will probably rank first with a good internet marketing strategy.

Build Your Roofing Website for Search Engine Optimization

Your website should be professional and should direct visitors first to the answer to their question and then to your call-to-action buttons.

Your on-page SEO content should also incorporate the keywords you want to target naturally. Google’s website crawlers can interpret whether a page is written well and if the keywords you’re targeting fit in the context of the content.

How to Craft Titles and Meta Descriptions for Roofing Websites

When you create a page for your roofing website, you can tell Google about the page by editing the page title or meta title to affect how Google displays the page name in the search results. This also affects the page name that prospective customers see when scrolling through the search results page.

The meta description is the blurb beneath the page title that gives users a preview of the relevant information on the page. People searching for roofing contractors in their area may click on your page if they think it has the answer to their question based on the meta description, so use keyword-rich titles and descriptive, enticing descriptions.

Optimized Quality Content for Roofing SEO Domain Authority

If you want to position your roofing company as the local expert with Google and other search engines, you need strong roofer SEO content for a high domain authority score. Consider your strengths over your competitors and build your reputation on the services you provide better than any other roofing contractor in the area.

Once you know what that is, plan an SEO campaign to focus on that service. Build appropriate service pages and write informative blog posts that target that one strength. Do you have the most certifications for metal roofing in Chicago? You could plan several pages of content in a major internet marketing campaign between your website and social media to show your expertise and position your business as the authority on metal roofs.

Link Building Between Your Roofing Website and Social Media

If you want to build an SEO campaign, you need to write high-quality content on the topic for your website, then focus on link building back to your new pages from your social media sites. Don’t forget to share links from your Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter profiles.

Some topics you can write on include:

Product reviews from different manufacturers
Comparisons between different brand warranties
Roofing industry tricks the pros don’t want you to know
How to deal with an insurance claim on a damaged roof after a storm
Why choose a metal roof
How Chicago’s weather affects a metal roof over time

On-Page SEO for Your Roofing Website

Search engine optimization isn’t just about the content and linking. Other parts of your website and page headings can inform Google and other search engines about relevant keywords and how important each keyword is to your roofing business.

Factors like alt tags, linking structure, sitemapping, and schema all contribute to how you score each keyword’s importance on each page.

For example, if you tell Google “roofer in Memphis, TN” is the primary keyword for your home page, but Google also finds “roof repair,” “roof replacement,” and “insurance claims assistance” on your home page, it could reduce the ranking for “roofer in Memphis, TN.”

You can emphasize the importance of your main keyword in other places on a page that aren’t immediately visible to human visitors, but will make a big difference with digital search engine crawlers.

Image Attributes and Alt Tags on Your Roofing Company Site

Alt tags are hidden attributes in images meant to assist visually impaired visitors using screen reader devices to understand the context of images on a page. Google search crawlers may also use this information to learn more about the purpose of a page’s content.

Understanding how search engines use background information on a website can help you utilize these tools to improve your authority for specific keywords. So if you want to incorporate images of a recent asphalt shingle roof job near Atlanta onto your shingle roofing service page, consider adding an alt tag like:

“Team leader Jim and the crew just wrapped up this job installing 22 squares of architectural asphalt shingles near Atlanta on this three-bedroom, two-bathroom home in Johns Creek. We used Atlas Pinnacle® Pristine asphalt shingles in a light gray ‘Oyster’ color, and we are AtlasPRO® Certified.”

This alt tag includes several popular keywords, including the city and suburb, shingle style, shingle brand, and the service provided. Search engines will see these image attributes and rank the page higher for searches that include these keywords.

URL Link Structure Within Your Roofing Website

You need to keep your URL addresses short and easy to share, especially for your main service pages. Keep your URL formatting simple, such as yoursite.com/roof-repair or yoursite.com/services/roof-repair.

Internal Site Navigation and Linking for Roofing SEO

Link building within your site can help boost your ranking in Google’s organic search results. By structuring your site navigation to direct users to certain pages in response to their search engine queries, you build domain authority for those services or blog posts.

Google and other search engines will look at things like the anchor text you use to link between pages, backlinks to your pages from authoritative sources, and your XML sitemap for keywords and pages.

Schema and Backdoor Markup to Rank for Local SEO

Schema markup tells Google more about a page’s content. This backend coding can add more information to your Google search result’s description, including reviews, ratings, or simple FAQ responses.

The primary concern with schema markup is that while it can give you the advantage if you’re the first roofing company in your area to add it, if your competitors are using it and you aren’t, you’re at a clear disadvantage.

Include Content Marketing in Your Roofing SEO Strategy

Your roofing SEO strategy may also include creating content to appear outside of your website in a comprehensive digital marketing campaign. Your digital marketing agency can help you develop a content marketing plan to build a web of inbound links to your roofing website and build a highly rated domain authority score.

If you are managing your own roofing SEO, you’ll have to do the leg work to not only choose appropriate keywords before creating your content but also review your keyword rankings between different site pages with your Google Analytics account.

Social Media Marketing and Inbound Links to Your Roofing Website

Besides your main service pages and primary site navigation, you need a blog page to post fresh, relevant content for Google’s crawlers to inspect. Regularly posting new content with authoritative information about your keywords helps position your roofing website as the expert resource in your service area.

Is there anyone who might read content about roofing other than Google’s ranking crawlers? There are some potential readers, including prospective customers who want to verify your expertise, DIYers looking for a solution to fix a problem on their roofs themselves, and even your competitors who want to monitor what you’re doing to improve their own strategies.

When you add a new blog post to your website, you want to backlink to the new post from your social media profiles, including Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram. This will give your existing customers and social media followers the opportunity to click through to your site to see your new content.

Third-Party Content Marketing for Local Roofing SEO

Several websites offer digital marketing space to post articles demonstrating your expertise in one of your services or how your roofing company is the local expert for your service area. These third-party content sites often have a high domain authority score, lending a stronger score for your website when you link back to your site from your article.

This is one off-page SEO strategy that a professional roofing SEO company can manage for your roofing business.

Utilizing Your Keyword Research Effectively in Writing Authoritative Content

When performing your keyword research to choose the keywords you want to rank highly for, don’t forget to review your on-page SEO rankings for your keywords every three months or so. You can update lower-ranking pages on your site to rank higher or update your better pages to try to get the top spot in the Google search results.

6 Keys to Technical SEO for Roofing Companies

Technical SEO refers to the roofing SEO services that don’t include content marketing, such as improving website loading speeds, setting up internal redirects, removing duplicate content, and hiding non-ranking content from Google’s crawlers.

1. Build a Mobile Friendly Roofing Website

Your site needs a mobile-friendly website format that configures easily across multiple mobile devices.

Mobile users make up the most frequent Google searches for local services, including roofing. Google will rank mobile-optimized search results higher than roofing companies without mobile-friendly websites.

2. Create Fast-Loading Service Pages

Site visitors expect to find the answers to their searches quickly on your website when they click your page from Google’s search results.

If your site takes longer than three seconds to load, visitors will click away from your site before ever seeing your content. A “bounce” like this hurts your ranking, while sites that load quickly and retain visitors score higher.

3. Set up Header Response and Redirects

There are several codes you can use to inform Google about page content that has moved, no longer exists, or is correct for a specific search query. Part of your roofing SEO services should include testing 200, 400, and 301 codes and redirects to ensure that Google’s crawlers understand your site structure.

It is especially important to set up 301 redirects if you rebrand your company, establish a new website, or want to condense duplicated pages into a single content page. Other instances when a 301 redirect is important include:

Redirecting low-value pages to high-value pages with better keyword ranking.
Redirecting pages to the same prefix (HTTP:// vs. www.)
Redirecting existing high-value pages to their new counterparts on a new website

If this technical jargon sounds like Greek to you, invest in professional roofing SEO services, which have programmers on staff who can audit your site and set up the necessary redirects.

4. Clean Up Duplicate Content for the Google Search Crawlers

Google sees duplicate content as clutter and assigns each page with the same keywords a low value score, reducing your rank for those keywords. While you can redirect to a single page, finding the sources of duplicate content on your roofing website can be tricky.

Look for an HTML improvements tool under your webmaster tools on your site management portal. You may also find paid analytics services useful in identifying duplicate content on your site.

Many professional SEO for roofing companies agencies will include services to analyze your existing site for issues with duplicate content as part of their service packages.

5. Submit Your XML Sitemap

An XML sitemap is a simple list of your website’s pages in an XML file that helps Google find the important pages on your site.

If you have only just started working on your roofing SEO strategy and haven’t built a cohesive website structure yet, you may want to include an XML sitemap to help the search engine crawlers understand your site navigation.

These files are important because sometimes you forget to link a page to the main navigation bar or add an internal link to an important warranty manual for your company’s preferred metal roofing panel brand.

You want Google to be able to find important pages with strong keyword inclusion so your site can rank for those pages. Still, an XML sitemap is a temporary solution. Your best option is to build better website navigation.

6. Hide Website Pages You Don’t Want Google to Crawl

If you have certain pages you don’t want Google or other search engines to index, you can upload a robot.txt file to prevent crawlers from mapping those pages. You may also add the meta nofollow or meta noindex tags to prevent crawlers from indexing or following links on a page.

For more information about meta tags on Google, review this guide to Google’s crawler navigation and display tags in your HTML headers.

Let Roofing Marketing Pros supercharge your SEO

.Finishing Touches: Designing a Custom Roofing Website for Your Roofing Business

Your site’s appearance and structure make a sizeable impact on your roofing SEO ranking. Google can see color codes, image resolution, HTML and other script codes, embedded content, alt tags, and more.

Google also analyzes visitor opinion of your site to measure bounces and the length of time that a visitor spends on your site. If your site isn’t appealing, visitors likely won’t stay very long.

Use Good Graphic Design with a Cohesive Theme

Have you ever seen a website so hideous that it didn’t matter how good the content was, it hurt to keep looking at it? Do visitors to your website feel the same way?

If you hire a digital marketing firm to manage your SEO services and website design, the experienced graphic designers can build your website and make it look good for both human visitors and search engine crawlers.

If you want to manage your own roofing SEO, several websites offer attractive site templates that are easy to use to build comprehensive websites with a unified look between pages.

Set Up the Navigation Bar to Make Relevant Service Pages Easy to Find

If a potential customer finds your page for roof replacement when they need your emergency storm repair or replacement page instead, will they be able to find the right page easily from your main navigation bar? Is your emergency storm damage page on a tab of its own, or is it stacked under the main services tab?

Consider which of your services are most important in your area. Highlight the important ones on your main navigation bar, then stack the rest under your services tab.

Calls-to-Action and Contact Information on Your Roofing Website

Anchor your navigation bar and website header with your contact information to the top of the page when a visitor scrolls the page so it’s always visible. You want your name, address, and phone number (NAP) visible and ready to click any time.

Your calls-to-action should be direct and easy to follow. Say, “click here to schedule an inspection,” and put a button that says “schedule an inspection.” Don’t forget your alt tags to help vision-impaired users find the button.

Tracking Results from Your Roofing SEO Strategy

Simply implementing a roofing SEO strategy isn’t enough to guarantee more leads and new customers. You need to track which strategies are the most effective for your roofing SEO efforts.

Measuring Keyword Rankings

You can find several tools online to help you monitor your keyword rankings for each of the keywords you’re targeting. Be aware: because content on your website and your competitors’ websites is constantly changing, rankings could change from day to day.

Tracking Organic Search Traffic

Many website management portals allow managers to create reports to determine where specific traffic sources originated, including paid ads, organic search traffic, and social media clicks.

Organic Lead Generation and Sales Tracking

You can see traffic sources in your Google Analytics portal to determine if they came from an organic search, a pay-per-click (PPC) ad campaign, or Google Maps result. You can then focus more on the lead generation channels that are bringing you more leads.

Planning Effective Inbound Marketing Strategies

Inbound marketing strategies involve creating content and business listing pages on external directories and third-party content sites to direct traffic back to your site from authoritative pages.

Set Up Directory Profiles for Services That List Local Roofing Businesses

Directories for roofing contractors help prospective customers see trusted reviews and ratings from others who have used a roofing company before. These sites offer the opportunity to build links to your site, especially if you create profiles on multiple platforms.

Third-Party Article Content Marketing Sites and Inbound Links

Expert positioning is essential to growing your business. Your expertise sets you apart from your competitors. You bring that authority to your site when you set up inbound links to your site from third-party sites.

SEO Tips to Attract Visitors to Your Roofing Website and Keep Them Engaged

A visitor “bouncing” away from your site because they didn’t get the answer they needed hurts your ranking. However, a visitor staying on your site to explore several pages and interact with different pieces of media boosts your ranking. How else can you keep visitors on your pages?

Write Large Word Count “Expert Guide” Content

Can you write 3,000 words about a single roof type? Consider writing about the history of the roof material, pros, cons, steps to install this type of roof, and common issues you see with existing roofs of this material. Then wrap it up with information about your company’s expertise in installing and repairing that type of roof and ask readers to call your roofing company.

Keep Visitors on Your Service Pages Longer with Embedded Videos

Videos are engaging, and you don’t have to be a famous actor to use video content on your website. If you aren’t the most photogenic, you can use digital animation tricks or photo slideshows to create your visual elements.

Write at Least 500 Words for Best On-Page SEO

Although there isn’t a minimum number of words required for a page to rank, Google seems to rank pages with over 500 words higher and pages over 700 words even better. Make sure your important pages are over 500 words.

Local SEO Strategy: How to Get Roofing Jobs from Google Maps

Google Maps is the premier tool for getting local leads in your service area. By combining your organic ranking from Google with your managed Google Maps profile through your Google My Business account, you can improve your lead generation strategy.

Check Your Google Maps Ranking

Because Google personalizes your search results to your previous searches and clicks, you may not get an accurate look at your Google Maps ranking simply by searching. Instead, get an accurate look at your ranking by visiting Citation Builder Pro.

Create On-Page SEO Content to Rank on Google Maps

On-page SEO is the content you write. Google ranks relevant businesses on Google Maps based on their local domain authority. Target your content to rank for local keywords.

Apply Off-Page SEO to Rank on Google Maps

Your off-page SEO also affects your ranking, and you also need to target local keywords in your off-page content.

Write Targeted Location Service Pages

Have you made separate pages for your roof repair, emergency roofing, new home construction roofing, and roof replacement services? Have you also made these pages for individual cities in your service area?

That’s right, you need unique content for each service in each city where you provide them. Because search engines don’t like duplicate content, you also need to write each page from scratch: no copy-pasting.

How Long Does It Take for My Roofing SEO Efforts to Show Results?

Your roofing page SEO and blog content could help your site rank higher in as little as a few weeks if you develop a solid SEO strategy for your roofing business. For better results, consult a professional roofing SEO company to create and manage your SEO strategy.

How Does Google Rank Its Search Engine Results Pages?

Google uses search crawlers to index pages of websites to its database for scoring according to several factors and rank the sites with a domain authority score and other ratings to determine the site ranking for specific keywords.

The algorithm considers factors like website structure, keywords in headings, incorporation of the keywords naturally in Natural Language Processing (NLP), and site visitor statistics based on user searches.

Google's AI regularly updates to represent changes in human user behavior for certain search queries.

Do I Need to Hire a Roofing SEO Agency, or Can I Manage My Own Roofing SEO Campaigns?

You would likely benefit from hiring a professional SEO services agency to manage your digital marketing strategy so you can focus on running your business. SEO is an ever-changing field, and managing your digital presence and your day-to-day operations can quickly become overwhelming.

How Does Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Get My Roofing Website More Traffic?

By ranking higher in Google's search results, more users searching for relevant keywords and phrases will find your site before other websites from other roofing contractors in your service area. These prospective customers will look on your roofing website for the answer to their question first since your site was higher on the page.

Do Many Roofing Contractors Use Roofing SEO Pros to Build and Manage Their SEO Strategy?

Many younger roofing contractors understand the importance of a strong digital marketing strategy for their business, but the roofing industry tends to be slow to adopt new technologies. By hiring an internet marketing agency to manage your roofing SEO, you could be the first in your area to see massive growth from targeted SEO campaigns.

While many roofing companies still rely on yard signs and word of mouth, less established roofing contractors need a leg up to break into the local market and keep their production calendars full.

Will Search Engines Rank My Site in Their Search Engine Results Without Hiring Professional SEO Services?

Your site could appear at a decent ranking without using professional SEO services if you manage your content for relevant roofing keywords and update your site regularly for Google to award you a high ranking. However, you should consider the opportunity costs of managing your own SEO campaigns.

Local roofing SEO requires at least a few thousand words of new content each month. A roofing SEO company can help you produce and upload regular content updates to keep you at the top of Google's search results page.

6 Steps To Fast Rankings

1. Optimize Crawl and Index

Optimize or fix crawl errors, 301’s, canonicals, sitemaps, 404 errors, no-index low-quality pages

2. Fix Keyword Cannibalization

Identify and eliminate cannibalizing pages. Ensure correct signals and relevancy for targeted pages.

3. Low Hanging Fruit

Optimize and promote inner pages and posts for long tail search terms and phrases to drive more topical traffic

4. On-Page Optimization

Ensure each targeted page has been brought into parity and semantically optimized with top ranking pages.

5. Internal Linking

Creating a topically relevant silo to pass link equity through the silo to our targeted page.

6. Structured Data

Adding advanced business and organizational mark-up ensures bots can understand the pages and sites