What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

SEO refers to the process of making improvements in your towing company’s website so that you rank high on the search engine results page (SERP). Only Google knows how its algorithm exactly works, however, they share updates that contain some of the ranking factors they consider in deciding who should be on top of the search results page.

Why SEO for Towing Companies?

Search Engine Optimization is one of the most essential strategies that should be included in your towing company’s marketing strategy.

First, it will improve your brand visibility. When you apply all of the on-page, off-page, and technical SEO techniques to your towing company’s website and business listings, this will help your brand show up whenever someone (in your target location) searches for “towing services near me.” Second, this will result in an increased volume of traffic and improved brand awareness (which is great for your towing company) which will result in getting qualified to tow leads!

Another reason why you should consider optimizing your towing company’s website is that it will result in long-term success. It may not be profitable for the first 6-12 months, but once you start ranking high, it becomes a very profitable and consistent strategy, a marketing funnel that will get you leads for years to come.

Want to know more about how SEO can help your towing business grow?

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How to do SEO for your Towing Company

Now that you have an idea of how SEO can help your towing business turn into a success, here are some tips that you should apply to your website.

1. Keyword Research

Keyword research is the process of finding out which keywords are valuable to your target audience. Knowing the search terms that your potential customers might be using is important because it helps you create an effective content marketing strategy. Not doing proper keyword research will result in little to no effective traffic to your towing company’s website.

Tips on how to do keyword research

• Google’s Auto-complete Suggestions
  • Google’s auto-complete suggestions are basically designed to make it faster to complete your search query. These predictions are based on real, common, and trending, searches that are relevant to your location and previous searches.

• Google’s Related Searches Section
  • Google’s Related Searches sections are shown at the bottom part of the search results section. It shows 8 common search terms that your potential customers are also using. These can be helpful especially if you’re starting to create content for your towing company.

• Google’s Keyword Planner
  • If you already have an ongoing Google Ad campaign, then, you can just go to your account’s Keyword Planner to help you discover new keywords, get keyword forecasts, bid estimates, and more!

• • Use of Browser Extensions
    • You can also use browser extensions like Keyword Surfer if you want to see instant results along with the estimated monthly search volume right from Google’s Search Engine Results Page (SERP).

• You can also use Semrush to keep track of your towing company’s keyword ranking, discover organic traffic insights, and get ideas on the specific match types that your target audience uses when searching for keywords that are relevant to your business.

How to do manual keyword research for your towing company:

Let’s say you want to write an educational blog on what your target audience should do when their car overheats. In this case, let’s use the keyword “do’s and don’ts when your car overheats.”

On Google or any search engine that you prefer to use, type in your target keyword. For example “do’s and don’ts when your car overheats”, then, press enter.

It’ll show you the most relevant articles that are ranking for that keyword. As you look at Google’s SERP, you’ll have an idea of the type of posts that are more likely to rank for that specific keyword (e.g. product/services page, long-form articles, category pages. or Top 10 best lists.

Then, after that, you’re going to check each article on the Search Results Page (SERP) to see the strategies used by your competitors.

To do that, press Ctrl + F followed by the keyword that you want to search for on your competitor’s blog. For example, you want to check how many times the keyword “car overheating” was used.

1. Press Ctrl + F
2. Type in the keyword “car overheating“
3. Then, press enter.

It’ll show you the specific areas where the keyword “car overheating” was used along with the keyword density.

Repeat the same steps on other posts from the Search Results Page. Once you’ve gathered enough data (e.g. where you should strategically place your focus keywords, keyword variations, and how often you should use them) you can use those strategies on your towing company’s blog posts.

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2. Get listed in business directories

One of the main reasons why you should get your towing company listed on business directories is that it will get you more leads. For example, whenever someone (near your area) searches for “towing services near me”, it increases the chances of your towing company showing up on search results (especially if your business listing is properly optimized).

Aside from that, it also makes it easier for your potential customers to read reviews, and get the basic info (company name, address, business hours, and contact number) without a hassle.

Here’s what a Google My Business listing looks like:

This is what a Yelp listing looks like:

Looking for ways how to optimize your business listing? Check out our blog post on Google My Business for Towing Companies to learn more!

3. Publish a share-worthy content

A share-worthy content is something that’s well-written and keeps your page visitors engaged because you’re providing them with fresh ideas or unique perspectives compared to what they usually see.

Tips on how to create a share–worthy piece:

• Write compelling headlines
  • Some people click on articles based on the way the headlines are written. Because of that, you want to write your headlines in a way that will capture their attention. Here are some tips on how you can do that:
    • Start your headline with your target keyword
    • Make sure that you use powerful words in your headlines (e.g. Effective Ways on How To Keep Your Car in Good Shape)
    • Add a positive or negative statement (e.g. Safe Driving Tips and Best Practices)
    • Use numbers (e.g. “10 Facts You Should Know About Tow-Trucks”)
• Make it relevant and easy to consume
  • Another factor that makes your content shareable is the content itself. To get more shares from other websites, you have to make sure that you’re providing valuable information to your target audience. It should be something that addresses all of the stages of a person’s buying journey.
• Make sure there are no grammar/ typographical errors
  • If you want to check your content right away, you can use Grammarly to see potential errors before publishing your content.
• Keep the readability level at 8th grade or below.  
  • You shouldn’t be using terminologies that are way too hard to understand unless you’re selling to someone who’s very knowledgeable about towing. To check whether you’re using sentences that are difficult to read, use the Hemingway editor. It will provide you with suggestions on what you can do to make it easier for your page visitors to understand your content.
• Don’t forget to add sharing buttons!
  • Make it easier for your page visitors to share your content with other platforms by adding a share button that allows them to directly share

Make sure it’s indexed on Google. If you want to get a better understanding of the performance of your towing company’s website, use Google Search Console.

4. Provide a good user experience (UX)

User experience (UX) refers to how a page visitor feels when scrolling through your website. Providing a good user experience is important because it’s something that can help you get loyal customers.

For example, when a page visitor has a positive experience while navigating your towing company’s website, (e.g. find your blogs interesting) this could be a factor that can turn them into your actual customers!

Here’s what you can do to provide a good user experience:

• Test your site’s functionalities
  • The first thing that you can do to provide a good user experience is by going through your website by yourself (as if you were a potential customer). From there, you’ll have an idea of potential errors, what could be lacking, and what needs to be improved so that you’ll have a seamless browsing journey.
• Conduct quick/short surveys on your site
  • You’ve probably encountered a small pop-up that appears on the lower right part of some of the previous sites you have visited where they asked you to rate your experience on their website based on a 5-point scale and sometimes displayed as a smiley face. You can also try that strategy to get insights into your page visitor’s experience.
• Make sure that you have a fast page loading speed
  • When you search for something online, you want to get results fast. If it takes forever before a page fully loads, most of them won’t wait for long but instead, go to other websites with a fast page loading speed. To prevent your page visitors from leaving your site without taking action, test your towing company’s page loading speed, through an eye test.
• Optimize your images
  • Images that have huge file sizes are usually one of the factors which cause your towing company’s website to load too slowly. With that, you should optimize your images before uploading them to your website. One thing to remember when optimizing your images is that they may ruin their quality as you decrease their file size.
    •  CompressNow gives you the option to adjust the compression level of your images.
• Keep your paragraphs short
  • Writing walls of text can be tiring to your page visitors. Because of that, you’ll want to use not more than 3 sentences per paragraph. This way, it’ll be easier to get the gist of your content.
• Make sure fonts are readable
  • Stick to standard fonts so that it’s easier for your page visitors to immediately grasp the message that you’re trying to tell them. For the font size, make sure that they are legible for desktop and mobile users.  The minimum font size is 16px and for headings and subheadings, sizes should be larger so that it stands out from the rest of the text.
• Avoid using too many pop-ups
  • Nobody wants their browsing experience to be interrupted by pop-ups especially if it blocks the content that they’re viewing. Instead of closing the pop-up, they will probably just leave your website and look at websites that don’t have intrusive pop-ups. If you can’t get rid of it completely, what you can do is disable them for mobile users, set your pop-ups to show up after they start scrolling, and make sure that the exit button is noticeable and working.

5. Optimize your title tags, URLs, and meta descriptions

Another tactic to improve your towing company’s rank on search engines is by optimizing your title tags, URLs, and meta descriptions.

Title tags – On search results, these are written in blue text which tells page visitors and search engines the context of what a specific page is all about.

How to make SEO-friendly title tags 

• avoid stuffing your title tags with the same keywords
• should be relevant to what your page is all about
• add modifiers to rank for long-tail

URLs  – These refer to what page you will be redirected to once you click on one of the results based on your search query. You can see this in the later part of your towing company’s URL.

How to make SEO-friendly URLs

• use hyphens to separate your words
• avoid using stop words like a, an, the, of
• don’t use dates on your URLs
• use lowercase letters
• keep it short
• make sure your towing company’s website is secured

Meta descriptions – these serve as a brief summary of what your page is all about. These are shown underneath your title tags (on search results), so for the best results, make sure that it matches the content of your page (so that page visitors know what to expect).

How to make SEO-friendly Meta-descriptions

• Keep it between 155-160 characters
  • If you go more than 160 characters, your meta descriptions might be cut in the middle. To prevent that from happening, write your meta descriptions in a short and concise manner.
• Make sure to use your target keywords
  • It’s also important that you include the main keywords of your content in your meta descriptions because it’s also one of the factors that search engines look at when deciding whether content should be shown on relevant search results or not.
• Add a call-to-action
  • Call to action can also be used in your meta descriptions. When done right, it could even drive more clicks to your towing company’s website! Some of the call-to-action you can use are “Learn more” or “Click here.”
• Use of active voice
  • Another technique that you should try for your towing company is the use of active voice. It’s because it prevents your sentences from being too wordy or complicated.

6. Regularly update your content

Having outdated content on your towing company’s website will drive away potential customers. To prevent that from happening, it’s best to update your old content.

Why you should regularly update your content?

• it gives you more opportunities for other brands to link back to your towing website
• it drives more traffic to your towing company’s website
• search engines will re-evaluate your rank

7. Proper use of Alt Tags

Alt tags serve as image descriptions that help page visitors understand the content of your towing company’s content (if ever it fails to load), adding these to your photos is also beneficial for those who are visually impaired as well as for search engine crawlers (so they can rank those image properly on search results).

Tips on how to properly use Alt-tags

• Use keywords on your Alt-tags (but don’t overuse them)
• Make it short but descriptive
• Don’t start with “image of ” or “photo of”

8.  Strategically place your keywords

Having a strong keyword strategy helps your business to be found by individuals who are actually looking for your towing services. However, you have to keep in mind that you shouldn’t dump all of your keywords in one area (e.g. in your introductory paragraph). You should strategically place it on your content so that it won’t look spammy to your readers and even to search engines.

Here’s a list of where you should place your target keywords:

• Alt-tags
• Title tags
• Meta descriptions
• Headings
• Throughout your content

You can also use keyword variations of your target keyword to increase your chances of ranking on search terms that are similar but not exactly the same as your chosen keyword.

9. Add relevant links to your content

Links are one of the important factors in SEO. If you’re not that familiar with it, these are clickable elements (could be in the form of (links, buttons, or images) from your website which lead your page visitors either to one of your towing company’s landing pages or to other websites. There are three types of links which are internal links, external links, and backlinks.

Internal links consist of hyperlinks that come from other websites. It’s important that you have this on your content (e.g blog posts) because it helps search engines like Google, Safari, and Bing get a better understanding of your site’s structure.

Best practices for internal links

• Use keyword anchor texts instead of using “click here” or “this post”
• Link to important pages on your towing company’s website

External links consist of hyperlinks that come from your towing company’s website. You’re going to use external links if you want to provide your readers with additional resources which explain a concept that you’re trying to explain in your content.

Best practices for external links

• Make sure that external links will open a new window
  • The reason why external links should be opened to a new window is that it allows them to visit other websites without leaving your towing company’s website. This means that they get to stay longer on your site without pressing the back button.
• Link to websites where you get data from research, statistics, or if you mention software
  • Another thing is that, if you’re using data or mentioning software from other websites, make sure to cite them through the use of external links. This way, page visitors will have the impression that you did comprehensive research and that there’s a basis behind your claim.
• To increase your towing company’s authority, only link to trusted websites
  • Before linking to other websites, you also have to make sure that it’s from a reliable source, or else, it might ruin your towing company’s reputation and search performance.
• Don’t link to your competitor’s websites
  • If you and your competitors are using the same keyword (e.g. on your blog) and you link them on your site, they’ll have a little boost in their rankings but you won’t. So, make sure that if you’re going to link to other sites, it’s not from websites that are in the same industry and uses the same target keyword as yours.

Backlinks refer to the incoming links that come from other websites. The more high-quality backlinks you have the better because it means that more people see your content as a valuable source of information.

Tips on how to earn backlinks to your towing company

• Write comprehensive blog posts.
  • The more detailed your blog is, the more people will be linking your site to their blogs. So, make sure that when writing blogs, it’s something that contains all of the possible answers that they are probably looking for.
• Do guest blogging
  • Guest blogging is when you write about a blog on websites that are in the same industry as yours. If you’re an expert in the field of the towing industry, publishing content on websites that have high domain authority will give you and your towing company a high possibility of getting recognized as a reliable source of information. In return, you get additional traffic and more new page visitors!
• Create shareable infographics
  • Another way to get backlinks is by creating infographics. Most people like to go through an article that has visual content in it. This is because it’s easier to get the gist of your main topic. So, if you want to get more backlinks, creating infographics and uploading them on Pinterest will surely help!
• Repurpose your content
  • If you have lots of long-form content on your towing company’s website, why not repurpose it into an infographic or video? This will help you acquire backlinks especially if it’s well-presented.

10. Track the performance of your website

Last but definitely not the list, you have to keep track of your towing company’s website. This way, you’ll have an idea of whether your SEO efforts are making progress or not. Monitoring your website performance also helps you catch up on issues before it gets worst.

Google Analytics can provide you with charts and reports which make it easier for you to understand your potential customer’s buying behavior as well as how well your towing company’s website is performing.

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Want to know how Ad campaigns work? Check our step-by-step guide on Google Ads for Towing Companies to learn more.

Key Takeaway

SEO for towing companies when done right, can help improve your rank on search results. When you rank high on a potential customer’s search results page, it increases your chances to have an increased volume of traffic. Just follow the strategies we’ve mentioned earlier, and you’ll eventually get more new customers to your business!