We are certainly living in strange times this year, there’s no doubt about that, but with tree surgeons all over the country seemingly inundated with work it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking its business as usual! Just seeing the number of jobs for tree surgeons being posted online on a daily basis alone tells us how much work is out there right now. The big question is, will it continue?

How to Prepare for A Recession

It seems difficult to see any way that this country, or indeed the world, won’t enter into a deep recession sometime next year. In addition to Covid-19, we also have the unknown quantity that is Brexit hanging over our heads.

I was lucky enough back in the 2007 recession not to feel the pinch too much. At that time I was freelancing as a climber to several companies whose client base was wealthy enough to be largely unaffected. As a result, my workflow carried on much as usual, but that’s not to say I am not thinking very carefully about my own strategies for the coming year(s). A friend once told me me that in a recession you’ll be glad to get out and earn £50 a day, and that has always stuck in my mind.

Now i’m no financial expert by any means so can’t really offer any business advice for recession proofing your business. What I can tell you though is that your online presence is going to be of paramount importance if you want to keep ahead of your competitors. Advertising is obviously the key here, be it paper ads, online ads, or good old word of mouth, it all counts.

Whist times are good it’s easy to overlook business advertising, or just see it as an unnecessary expense. I’ve lost count of the times people have said ‘I’m busy enough as it is, I don’t need any more work’, or ‘When things slow down I’ll advertise a bit more’. In the case of traditional advertising that can often yield instant results, but what about SEO?

SEO for Tree Surgeons

SEO for tree surgeons is just another form of advertising, but done properly it will pay dividends in the long run. I see SEO as more of a long term advertising investment. Yes you can sign up for google adwords and start seeing clicks to your site immediately, but what happens when you stop running the ads? Your traffic stops of course, and unless you have been implementing a solid SEO strategy alongside your ads, you will find your visitor flow somewhat lacking. SEO on the other hand will see long term organic(free) traffic coming to your site long after the initial work has been completed. However, the problem with SEO is you can’t just turn it on when you are running short of work, hence the title of this blog post.

When & How Do I SEO My Tree Surgery Business Website?

When Do I Start?

The time is right now! Assuming you have an existing site and it is already well established it can still take 3-6 months to really see the benefits of SEO in the search engine rankings. Let’s say 6 months to be on the safe side, which takes us into April 2021 which is probably one of the quieter times in a tree surgeons calendar even in normal years. Taking your first steps now to improve your website’s SEO will hopefully put your business in a better position to weather the coming storm.

How?

First things first, read this post as a starting point. SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is an in-depth subject in which there are 1001 ways to make errors, and few ways of making gains. Most people with a bit of common sense and a little bit of techincal know-how can get the basics right however. One of the easiest things you can do is get into the habit of writing regular blogs on your website. The more effort you put in the more you will see a return, and all you have to do is follow a few simple guidlines as listed in the aforementioned blog post.

• Use relevant meta titles and meta descriptions that reflect the content of what you have written and use the keywords you are targeting.
• Format your pages correctly using heading tags in their correct order, making sure to include your targetted keywords. Theres a good and easy to follow article on headings here.
• Write enough content! Try to hit 300 words as a minimum, ensuring you get your keywords into the text in the correct density for google. Be careful not to overdo it with the keywords though or you’ll quickly find your site marked down. If your website is running on wordpress there are several free tools available that will analyse what you have written to ensure you don’t fall into this trap.

But I Don’t Have Time to Manage My Blog

Its all about priorities really! Lots of people seem quite happy to constantly update their Facebook pages which arguably brings in little work, yet neglect the content on their actual business website. If you are going to post in just one place, then your website really should be the priority without question. You can always share your website post to your Facebook page after you have written it, killing 2 birds with one stone. This is actually a far better way of harnessing the power of Facebook anyway as the posts you share will not only provide content to your page, but most importantly will bring visitors to your website to read more…in other words away from Facebook and all it’s many distractions!

Once you have written a couple of articles/blogs and get in the swing of things its really not much of a chore to write, particularly if its a subject you are knowledgable about. I really cannot emphasize the importance of this enough, and taking 30 minutes once a week to update your website could just make the difference to your business in the times ahead.

REMEMBER – The time to start is NOW!

As always, if you need help feel free to write to me at steve@arbtalkmedia.co.uk.

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This is a massive topic, and far too big to go into on a single blog post, but let’s try and delve briefly into some of the basics of SEO for tree surgery websites.

How to get to No.1 in Google?

Let’s get one thing straight. There’s no easy way to get your tree surgery website to the top of Google. For some, you could try your whole life to get that coveted no.1 position and still not come close, regardless of how much money you throw at it. Often it seems there’s no rhyme or reason as to who gets the top spot, and its true in my opinion that a certain amount of it comes down to luck.

The way Google crawls and ranks websites is such a closely guarded secret, the best anyone can do is experiment with new techniques and hope it improves their ranking. But even if those new techniques work, there’s no telling in the next Google algorithm change if you might be penalised and knocked back into the Google abyss. It’s often been said, the best place to hide a body is on page 2 of Google, so no one really wants to be there!

Can I pay an SEO Company to Improve my Ranking?

Yes you can, but tread very carefully. If you are anything like me you probably get at least 1 email a day from someone promising to get your site to the top of Google. You should steer clear of these companies and basically, no one can promise this, and if they could they wouldn’t be emailing you. People would be flocking to them in their thousands.

Let’s look at what happens when one of these companies takes over your SEO. Let’s say they are charging you £500 a month with the promise of getting top spot. They very well might succeed, and if they do it’s quite likely they are using what is known as Black Hat SEO. These are questionable techniques (cheating if you like), that Google will pick up on eventually. The end result may be that your site ends up ranking lower than when you started.

Take a look at the stats below. This tree surgery company enlisted the help of an SEO company. The company created a heap of low quality links to their site trying to fool Google into believing the site was popular. It worked, at least for a while. The picture below speaks volumes.

Thankfully the site above is now recovering, with a more pragmatic approach to SEO. What we are looking to achieve is a steady but stable increase over time.

On-Site and Off-Site SEO for Tree Surgery Websites

There are 2 different types of SEO which are referred to as on-site and off-site. Both are massive subjects which we will cover in more detail at a later date.

On-Site SEO

This is SEO that is carried out directly on your website. It encompasses many things including the text, site optimisation (speed/performance), images, and website formatting. SEO for tree surgery websites should always focus on good content first and foremost.

Off-Site SEO

The practise of creating links to your website from other sites. These sites should preferably be authoritative sites (or individual pages) relating to your niche field. The days of building a massive network of sites linking back to your site are long gone and will likely only end in a drop in ranking.

Arbtalk Media SEO Techniques

We believe SEO starts at home and therefore invest heavily in on-site SEO. Yes, links are valuable, but the most valuable links of all are created organically. That is to say, someone reads an article and decided it is so authoritative they choose to link to your site themselves. Thats not to say we don’t carry out any off-site SEO, we are just very careful how we go about it, and what sites we choose to gain links from.

SEO is an ever-changing subject with new practices being used on a daily basis. Some of it is largely experimental in nature so we always focus on the core guidelines first.

• How much text is on a page? Google needs something to read. You can’t expect to write a few lines and beat off your competitors to the top spot, regardless of how well it’s written.
• Is the text formatted correctly? Google wants to see a well-formatted page, with clear headings and structure enabling their search bots to determine what the page is about, which are the most important sections, and who it is aimed at. Are your sentences too long? Are the paragraphs between headings and sub-headings too long? These simple guidelines are often overlooked, particularly in self-built websites.
• What is the keyword density? Arguably one of the most important aspects. Once you have chosen your keywords (after doing keyword research), these need to be implemented correctly into the page. This means adding them to headings and text, and in the right ratio. Some experts also argue it matters where in the text you place these keywords. We agree, and adhere to these guidelines wherever possible. This is a tricky one to get right. Use too few keywords and your site likely won’t rank, use too many and you risk Google viewing your site as spam, and ranked accordingly…or worse, blacklisted.
• Are images formatted correctly? Images should always be sized and formatted appropriately. Not only that, but they should also carry the appropriate alt tags. Whilst Google is getting cleverer all the time, it still needs some text to explain what the image is. This is an ideal opportunity to squeeze more keywords into your page. Another area often overlooked.
• Are your meta descriptions and SEO titles following best practice guidelines? These are the page titles and descriptions that show up in a google search. What you put here is incredibly important. Not only can it influence your position in google, but it can also be the deciding factor as to whether or not someone clicks on your link. Do your research and think very carefully what you put here.

To Summarize

As already mentioned, SEO for tree surgery websites is a massive topic and can’t possibly be covered in one blog post, unless you have a few weeks to spare? We plan to get into more detail over time on specific areas to help you get the most out of your sites. In the mean time, if you want to hire an SEO for your tree surgery website with an honest and realistic approach to improving your website ranking, then don’t hesitate to get in touch with us at info@arbtalkmedia.co.uk.

Thanks for reading!

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