Have you ever wondered how E&J Concrete compares to Calvin Opp Concrete, All American Concrete, and Brad Murray Inc when it comes to Google?

First thing you need to realize is that when people are searching for concrete work, they don’t always search simply for “concrete.” In fact, I’ve tracked down the most common search words and phrases for people looking for what you do. These are the keywords people are searching for thousands of times each month just in Wichita!

Wonder how many of these searches result in a link to E&J Concrete?  (keep reading)

When tracking the results for you and other competitors, the numbers break down like this:

Overall visibility is not great for any of these companies. The best here, Calvin Opp Concrete, is still merely showing up only 6.23% of the time in these searches, which isn’t great. Your company has the best when it comes to average position (showing up as usually the 12th link), but that still puts you on the 2nd page of results.

The challenge is, as I am sure you know, that when it comes to Google, the spoils largely go to the handful of sites at the very top of the first page. This guide will break down exactly HOW to get there!

#1 – Your Profile on Google

Of course, when it comes to having a clear, strong presence on the web, the first place to start is how your profile looks on Google. Is it complete? Claimed? Verified? Good photos added? Recent posts? Video? Are store hours listed?

These all make it easy for Google to “see” who you are, what you do, and why you deserve to be #1.

When somebody finds E&J Concrete on Google, the red box below is often the “face” of your business.

While the current photos on your Google profile aren’t “bad,” with your long history in Wichita, I am sure we could be doing a better job of capturing WHY people should be giving E&J Concrete their business!

Photos currently on your Google profile:

So what does a good Google profile look like? Here is an excellent example of the Google profile for a company right here in Wichita that we have worked with:

Their 105 photos really help to show off their history and their big team of people who all have a great deal of experience at killing pests!

#2 – Website feedback

I get it.

You have been in the concrete business for a long time. You started before the Internet was such a big “thing”, before the age of Google. When you wanted to market your business, you bought an ad in the yellow pages, and while it was expensive, it WORKED.

My guess is that caring about your customers and doing quality work has kept you busy enough. I am also willing to bet that you would like to have your phone ring a little more often with folks who wanted to bid on concrete – especially without having to spend a bunch of money on ads.

Today’s reality is that your website is the foundation of making your phone ring and putting your online presence to work. It’s home base. And while a lot of local companies get it wrong, we can see many who get it right, and for them it’s paying off.

http://www.reliableconcretedallas.com/ – this website is pretty basic and not costly, but has a lot going for it.

I love the image of branded Mack trucks all in a row! It lets you see that they have a lot of capacity to handle big jobs, that it’s likely they have a good-sized team, and that they are an established company – just from that ONE image!

The ‘let’s talk’ box on this website is SMART! In this age of texting and instant gratification, I guarantee this is a money maker for this company!

When they click ‘schedule now’ this box opens and allows them to schedule a time they would like a call back.

https://www.bigdreadymix.com/

Time lapse videos are BRILLIANT and a PERFECT fit for your industry! People can’t help but watch them. And the longer people stay on your site, the more ‘actions’ they take – which means better rankings and more traffic to your site! Google knows how long visitors to your site stay, so think about it. Let’s say somebody was looking for ‘commercial concrete’ and they stayed on your site 4 times as long as anybody else’s site. Google now knows they must have done a great job finding the best search result, which was your site!

I understand that not many customers likely come to your office (maybe they do), but there is still a major benefit from having a Google map embedded in your homepage. This makes it easier for Google to ‘see’ who you are and where you are.

I have seen similar navigation on most of the concrete websites I looked at. Not having a Google map is a big setback. Ranking well on Google is all about building TRUST. Your ‘job’ is to help Google see who you are, what you do and why you are the best at it. When the navigation of your website is 100% generic you are making Google go deeper and deeper to find this information.

Showing WHAT you do would be another great feature for your page.

https://dallasconcrete.com/ – this company has found a superb way to show off examples of the different kinds of work they do!

This is listed on one of their inner pages. It would be BRILLIANT for each of the items on this list to go to a separate PAGE where they showcase and talk about the different kinds of jobs they have done in these areas. That, right there, would do more for their website traffic and rankings than anything on this list!

http://www.acscontractors.com/projects.html

Impressive. Few things communicate that this company has a solid reputation and extensive capabilities more than seeing a huge project list full of schools, rec centers, hospitals and fire stations!

Of course, industry certifications go a long way towards building trust. Evaluating whether they can trust you is what visitors to your site are doing without even being aware of it, judging every little thing to get a sense that your company is trustworthy enough to reach out to.

Testimonials can be worth their weight in gold when they come from recognizable names in your market.

It’s not concrete, but I wanted to share this site. I really like it. It’s loud and ‘in your face’ and not blending into the crowd – http://www.coltconcrete.com/who-we-are/

#3 – About Page

Your “About” page is INCREDIBLY important, not only to Google but also to your potential customers. It’s arguably the most important page of your site. This is where you get to show off “the good stuff.” It’s the place to show what goes on behind the scenes. Your personality. Your commitment to excellence or your community involvement—the “heart” of what makes your business great.

Almost without fail, the ABOUT page is the HIGHEST viewed page on our clients’ sites.

https://www.bigdreadymix.com/about-big-d-ready-mix/

This example is actually not a great story. It’s worse than watching paint dry. A great story TELLS a story! Who started the company, when, why. Who have been instrumental in the company’s growth? What challenges has it overcome? When did it expand into new areas? What are its values? What is an example of those values being tested? How does it treat its employees and customers?

http://www.concretehelp.com/collins/Welcome.html – not bad!

https://www.kentcompanies.com/our-story/60th-anniversary/– in 7 years of building websites, doing digital marketing and building dozens of massive case studies, this is definitely one of the BEST videos on an About page I have ever seen 😊

The functionality of the poster on that same page is worth checking out!

We have gotten fantastic results by personalizing our clients’ About page with a “real” person in the actual business so potential customers can see and feel the connection necessary to do business with you.

To us, your website is a tool, just like a screwdriver or hammer. It should be doing two things:

• Help Google to understand who you are, where you are, and why you deserve to be at the top.
• Draw potential customers to your site, provide them VALUE and lead them to take action (pick up the phone and schedule a free estimate, ask a question, etc.).

There is no reason for that to cost a small fortune!

#4 – Site speed

Why is it important?

This one is a no brainer. We have all visited a website and had it load sooooo slowly. You know how quickly you move on when you run into a website like this.

This is definitely one of the EASIEST wins for our clients. It’s amazing what a snappy website can do for rankings, the amount of traffic, how long visitors stay, and what pages they view.

Does Google provide a free tool that you can use to check the speed of your website?

They sure do! You can visit – https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/

Here’s another free tool that you can use to check your website speed – https://gtmetrix.com/

Currently, your site speed is a SERIOUS issue that could be having a significant impact on the traffic you are currently receiving.

#5 – Reviews

Reviews are invaluable to today’s service-oriented businesses, so it’s hard to overstate just how important this section is!

Customers are becoming increasingly reliant on reviews before making a buying decision. Facebook and Google are constantly encouraging its users to review businesses they visit and even to become “local guides.”

Reviews are a ranking factor to Google, which means it can impact the amount of traffic a website receives and, ultimately, how many phone calls you receive.

Currently, you have 11 reviews on Google:

You also have a total of 34 reviews on Facebook, Google Local, and Ezlocal.

We have had tremendous success helping clients collect reviews and would love to share some success stories in this area!

#6 – N.A.P.

N.A.P. stands for “name, address, phone number.”

The more consistent the NAP is for your business, the better you will rank, the more traffic you will get, and the more your phone will ring.

It is an extremely important (fundamental) key to ranking well on Google. Remember, it’s a game of TRUST. Google needs to trust that E&J Concrete is VERY good at stamped concrete, outdoor escapes, patios & porches, sidewalks & driveways, commercial concrete, concrete steps and concrete resealing.

This STARTS with making sure that your name, address and phone number are on EVERY page of your website – especially the contact page.

Currently your address is not on your homepage.

#7 – Content

If you were to search Google for the phrase, “content is king,” this is what you would find:

Good content is the answer to people finding you among all the different ways they are searching for the things you provide.  If your mission is to be #1 on Google, then it’s vital that the content on your website (text, images, videos) references who you serve, what you do, and why you are great.

In your case, I would imagine content related to “what will concrete cost?” would be important because that’s a BIG thing your customers care about.

#8 – Backlinks

BACKLINKS are a VERY important factor in showing up at the top of the first page of Google. A backlink is anything you click on another website that takes you to YOUR website. In other words, that site is “linking” to you.

I will explain it this way:

Let’s say E&J Concrete sponsored an event for Riverfest this coming year. You also donated some money to Thunder Hockey in exchange for a banner and your name being announced between innings, and you also said something great about Matthew (the guy who created this case study).

In exchange for you doing those three actions, this is what happened:

The folks at Riverfest added you to the bottom of their website as a sponsor.

Thunder Hockey did the same thing.

I love adding new testimonials to my site and always link back to the person who said something nice. This provides “proof” the testimonial is real and helps whoever gave it to me.

To Google, links are basically votes of confidence. The more relevant, authoritative and local links you have, the “stronger” your website will be. Links are all about QUALITY – NOT QUANTITY.

Using a powerful tool called Ahrefs, we can see you how “strong” your domain is, how many links you have, and a number of other important stats about your online presence.

• DR is your “domain rating,” or how strong and authoritative the eandjconcrete.com domain is. Your score of 0.3 lets us know that something’s preventing your website from having any trust. This could be toxic links from other websites pointing to your site, or technical issues preventing Google from crawling your site.
• Backlinks refers to how many times other websites point to the eandjconcrete.com domain.
• Referring domain refers to how many individual domains or websites are linking to you. For example, you could have dozens of links pointing to your website all from the same domain, such as an industry association.
• Organic keywords refer to how many keywords you are currently ranking for. Keywords are simply what word or words people are typing into Google that lead them to your website.

Figuring out WHY your DR (domain rating) is so low would be my top priority. That alone is costing you hundreds of visits every month.

To put it in perspective, here are the results for several other concrete companies:

Nobody in Wichita is doing well in this area!

This shows there is a MASSIVE opportunity for one concrete company, and I guarantee it would pay off BIG TIME. Backlinks are the single MOST powerful ranking factor there is!

#9 – Citations

A citation is simply any mention of your business name, address and phone number anywhere across the web (with or without a link back to your site). The most common sources of citations are the thousands of directories that all claim to have thousands of leads just dying to do business with you (complete BS).

Citations are important to your rankings, traffic and ultimately phone calls because Google is looking for CONSISTENCY among the hundreds (sometimes thousands) of references to your business.

If business A tells Google that they are located at 123 N. Main in Wichita, KS., and there are 80 references of them being on Washington, and 30 on Crestway, and 40 more on Main but with a different phone number – this doesn’t inspire much confidence that this is a reputable business doing what they say.

Currently, E&J Concrete has a citation score of 9/100. This is how many citations through the top directories are complete and accurate.

NONE of the top citations are correct and 6 have errors.

#10 – Call to Action

My final point is something that is missing from so many websites today: a clear and friendly invitation to REACH OUT! We need a strong “What’s next?”

A powerful Call to Action is important because it allows us to measure what percentage of your visitors are going to the contact page, how many are going past the first page, and how many are looking at your photos or recent jobs.

We can’t determine success if we don’t have a way to measure it!

Here are some good Call to Action examples from concrete companies:

So, who am I and how do I know we can help you?

Back in 2010, I owned a local service business right here in Wichita. I hired several companies to help us come up high on Google, but I might as well have been throwing my money out the window. I got fed up and spent months figuring out how to do it myself. I applied what I learned to my business website and managed to increase our sales by almost 40% a year for the next 3 years in a row – while spending less and less on “traditional” advertising. That led to helping a couple of friends with their business websites and eventually getting out of the party rental business and into helping local service businesses, like yours, make the phone ring.

Today, I run an exclusive agency right here in Wichita. I say exclusive because we only work with clients we are a great fit with and we only work with ten clients at a time. Our clients aren’t just a number to us.

The Wichita companies we’ve worked with include Autocraft, Fenix Heating & Air, Patton Termite & Pest, Cambridge Family Dentistry, Treescapes, Hanna Heating and Cooling, US Logo, Overhead Garage Door, Decker Electric, and Trinity Rental.

I have also presented to hundreds of business owners at Million Cups, WSU, Center for Entrepreneurship, Chamber of Commerce, and Kansas Family Business Forum.

Read more about us here.

LET’S CHAT

I get it. You could care less about links, citations, useful content and any of this (none of our clients do). You want the phone to RING. You know the web is important and you need somebody smart, someone you can trust, to help carry the ball and make things happen.

That’s what we do.

We only work with ten clients at a time and are very selective. We don’t do cookie cutter solutions or surface work. We dig deep and make things happen for our clients.

If you would like to have a chat and see if we are a good fit, you can reach me at 316-312-8181 or localseo@matthewrupp.com

Have a fantastic day!

Matthew

A few of the kind words said about us:

“I want to express how pleased I am with Matthew Rupp of Matthew Rupp Consulting. He and his company recently redid our old web site (Cambridge Family Dentistry located in Wichita, KS). Wow, were we ever pleased. Matthew is smart, easy to get along with, a hard worker, and knows his stuff. I would highly recommend him to any person who wants to see their Internet business take off and bring in more customers.” Dr. M Dean Wright President and Founder Cambridge Family Dentistry

“4Media is a media buying service. We are essentially the gatekeeper for our clients marketing budgets. I found Matthew after 4 years of searching for somebody smart, reliable, and ethical to help our clients with their digital needs. When it comes to web design and SEO I just don’t think you can beat the model Matthew brings to the table. He stands behind his work and has a way of delivering value every day. When you talk about online marketing and web design it can easily drag out for months and begs for leadership, Matthew brings that leadership to the table. He just makes the process easy and effective.” Mike Macomber 4 Media Advertising

“Matthew is creative, authentic, and truly cares abut his clients success. His passion for what he does comes across in everything he does. We have seen a noticeable increase in business since we began working with him. “ Gina Terry Director Mount Hope Nursing Center

“I really enjoy our monthly meetings with Matthew. He brings a fresh perspective and a great deal of value to the table. I was really surprised at how thorough Matthew has been in all his interactions with Auto Craft. He is truly a part of the team.” Jaden Randle Vice President Auto Craft Collision Repair

“With Matthew you don’t just get a website, you get a relationship. Matthew and his team have done a great job driving traffic to our website.” Dave Martine Owner Treescapes

“Matthew’s extensive knowledge of web and S.E.O., along with the fresh perspective he brought to the discussion, proved to be just what our team of creatives needed. Our new website reflects many of his insights and the performance continues to grow. My hats off to Matthew Rupp Consulting!” TJ Smith President US Logo, Inc.