How important is building your online presence to grow your handyman business?
Is it required, and what does it mean to have an online presence?
The answer above depends on what kind of business you want. If you want a referral-based business that involves your direct relationship with your clients and other vendors in your town to get known, then an online presence may be optional. But if you want to have a business that builds beyond the basic word-of-mouth referrals, and opens your world up to all of the potential customers in your service area, then you will want to have an online presence.
In today’s market, we all grab our phones when we have questions. We open up Google and type in a keyword to see what may come up. From there, we start looking around and seeing who may be available and trustworthy enough to hire for the handyman job I need.
If you are not actively putting yourself in that pool of businesses to be found when people search on Google, your business will be hard to build past a certain level, and it will also be easier to charge a profitable rate with it.
So, what does it mean to maximize your online presence to scale your handyman business? I’ll share the top tips below.
In this post, we are going to go over the following:
- Building your online presence
- Claiming online listings
- How to get found in Google search
Building Your Online Presence
There are many avenues someone can find your business online—lead gen sites like Home Advisor, Task Rabbit, and others. Then you have mentions in Facebook groups. There are other social media platforms where you can post regularly and build a following. And there is the tried and true… your website.
All avenues are aspects of your online presence; your website is the most important one you want to send traffic to and get people on.
Your website does not have to have fancy bells and whistles; it just needs to convince the customer that you are a trustworthy person to hire. From this interaction, you want to think about your customer’s desires and let them know you are here for them.
Pro tip… your customer desires an outcome in their home, not the act of hiring a handyman. Focus on what they want (the desire), not what they are paying for (your service).
You are the vehicle that will get them from where they are… which is unhappy with a part of their home… to where they want to be. Which is excited and proud of their space.
That feeling of pride and satisfaction is their desire.
So keep in mind that you are helping them solve a problem in the copy on your website. The more you focus on the end result of that problem being solved, the more they will trust you (and the less price matters).
On your website, you want to showcase five specific things:
- Where you are and where your service area is.
- Who you are so they can build trust that you aren’t a questionable person (as many people fear when it comes to handyman)
- What your services are. So they can know for sure if you can help them
- What do you want them to do next? Do you want them to call? Email? Text? Guide them to your expectations on how they can book you.
- Why are you the best person for the job? Maybe that’s because of your experience and the number of testimonials that say the same thing as your website: you are the one to trust.
- Testimonials from past clients. (You can manually add them or use services like Reviews on my Website )
- How do they work with you? What is the process they can expect?
Did you notice that we are answering the simple questions of who, what, where, why, and how we learned in grade school as essential parts of a narrative?
This matters. It’s human nature to wonder about each of those steps in a narrative, and the more you can share this info, the more your business stands out.
Once you have a website, you will use this as your hub. It’s where you build trust and get people to click that desired “request a quote” or “call” button.
All other avenues online should lead people to your website. When you are strategic about how leads engage with your business, it makes it easier to manage the leads as they are funneled into one location.
Submit Your Website to Google + Start Tracking.
Once your website is built and looking good, the next step is to tell Google you exist.
You could skip this part and wait for Google to happen across your website with their bots. But seeing that there are 252,000 new websites built EVERY DAY in the world, you may be waiting a hot minute for Google to notice you.
You want Google to notice you, as how can they send you traffic if they don’t know you exist?
The two critical steps are submitting your website sitemap to Google Search Console. Then sign up for Google Analytics.
When you submit your sitemap to Google Search Console, you’ve essentially raised your hand and told Google to come to check you out. This allows your site to be noticed, and if you’ve done a good job adding keywords for SEO, you’ll start to get on the map for keywords your audience is using. SEO is a more significant topic for another day. As a locally based service business, it’s a massively important part of your success online.
Google Analytics is how you can see how people find your site, where they are coming from, how long they are staying, and where they are leaving the area. This is beneficial because you can see what marketing avenues work best for your business.
Search Console and Google Analytics will send you regular emails to let you know how your site is doing and if any changes need to be made. This way, you don’t end up with problems on your site affecting your business, and you have no idea they exist.
Building & Claiming Online Listings
Once your website is built, you’ve accomplished a lot! Congrats!
But, alas (as with most things in business), we are not done yet.
You don’t want to go through the trouble of setting up your website, and it then sits there untouched and unlooked at. This is a common frustration and happens because there is nothing driving people to your website.
If you build it, they won’t come. But if you build it and put breadcrumbs throughout the internet that lead back to your site… they will come! Add in the golden egg… Google will start to pay attention and then bring people to your site.
So, what are the action items? As a handyman business (or any trades business), you want to create online listings that link to your new website.
The more links you can build, the better you are at leaving breadcrumbs around the internet to bring traffic to your site. Not all links are created equal, and specific links work better than others as they have more traffic.
Here are the top online listings to claim:
- Google My Business
- Facebook (build a page for your business)
- Yelp
At a minimum, you need to create these three profiles. Ensure that the info between all of them matches, and they match what is being said on your site.
Include in all your listings:
- Business Name
- Website
- Address
- Hours
- Services /categories
If you don’t have a publicly listed address, you can include it in the setup and choose not to show it publicly. Having it in the setup helps these sites verify you are a real business.
Google My Business is the maps listing; Google highly regards Facebook and Yelp, and if you are showing up there as well, it’s a ranking factor Google pays attention to when showing your site in search results.
There are literally hundreds of sites you can list your business on for free. These free listings are breadcrumbs that lead back to your site and build your authority with Google.
But don’t get me wrong; creating these listing sites on your own can be a total pain. You’ll also have many promo emails in your inbox as you sign up for these listings. There are ways to minimize the annoyance, but having your site found in as many locations as possible is beneficial and outweighs the problems.
There are services like Yext, which you can pay monthly to have them review and update your online listings and ensure they share the same info. You spend approximately $70 a month for Yext, but the value in having it all done correctly is worth that type of investment.
Why do you want to build these listings?
- Well, it’s incredibly beneficial to your local SEO. This means that the more sites you have listings on, the more links back to your website, which helps your authority regarding Google.
- More places for people to find your business equals more potential clicks to your website and more clients for you.
If you want your clients to treat you as a legitimate business (and pay the rates of a legitimate business), you need to have a solid online presence.
You can do all the tips I’ve shared above through trial and error yourself or hire a team like us. At The Handyman System, we help set up your business online and present your business in a way that attracts your dream clients so you can focus on what you’re best at.
If you’d like to chat with us, reach out at www.thehandymansystem.com/contact to schedule a call and see if we can help you reach your goals!
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