DIY SEO Guide for Tree Services and Landscapers

ByAaron Charlton, PhD

Why would you do SEO yourself? So many reasons!!! Maybe you’ve been burned by under-performing SEO vendors or maybe you just need to save money. But there are other reasons that a DIY approach may be the best strategy for some local tree services and landscape businesses. Having more control and being able to tap into your own deep knowledge of trees and plants, as well as the local area, can give you an edge over the competition. If you find yourself in this category, read on for the best DIY SEO tips for arborists and landscapers, courtesy of SEO Agency, Charlton Digital.

1. SEO-Friendly Website Structure

Getting your website set up right from the start means a solid foundation for your overall SEO strategy. Here are the most important components:

  1. Locations. This only applies to multi-location businesses for the most part.
  2. Services. You want to rank these pages for queries like “tree removal near me.” This is the most important section of your website in terms of SEO.
  3. Blog. You will be using your blog to drive traffic and “link juice,” meaning Google ranking authority, to your service pages.
  4. About Us. Most people are surprised how often their “about us” page is viewed. People want to know who they’re hiring. While not important for SEO, a solid “about” page is critical for conversion.

2. Making Tree and Landscape Service Pages that Rank and Convert

Again, the primary pages you want locals to land on from Google are the service pages. These are the pages that will get you customers. You should have a service page for each thing you want to rank for. For example, “tree removal in Scottsdale az,” “tree trimming in Scottsdale az,” etc.

Choosing Keywords to Rank For

Here’s how you can figure out what you want to rank for:

  1. When potential customers call on the phone, what do they ask for? That’s probably the same thing they’re googling.
  2. Use a free keyword tool. As of the time of this writing, Wordstream still has a free keyword tool. It will let you know what people are searching for and how often.
  3. You’ll want to include location keywords and service keywords on every service page. For example, this is good: “El Paso, Texas Lawncare Services.” This is not good: “Lawncare Service.” This inevitably means there will be some redundancy because you’ll be creating basically the same thing for each geographic area you want to target. Try to vary them as much as practical though. Google doesn’t like duplicates.

Content Generation

You can use AI tools to help you generate the content for each page. But also add your personal touch, including first-person stories and philosophies where appropriate. Here are characteristics of pages that do well by both ranking high and converting:

  1. Your keyword (e.g. “lawncare service watertown ny”) should be in at least 4 places: the page title (in the code; not on the page), the h1 (title at the top of the page), at least one of the h2’s (subtitle), and in the general body of the text. You can use an on-page SEO tool like Page Optimizer Pro for best results.
  2. Include lots of relevant images, subtitles, tables and figures to break up the wall of text. Images should be appealing but it’s okay to use some stock photos–you don’t have to provide all custom photography! On the other hand, some photos of your actual crew & equipment with your logo will likely help convert more website visitors into customers. Pictures and structural elements will help you rank higher on Google and people like to read it more too.

3. Using Blog Posts to Supercharge Your Service Page Rankings

The whole point of the blog is to help your service pages rank higher. When you write a decent blog post that Google includes in its index and ranks well, you need to be sure it links back to at least one local service page that you want to rank. That way, any link juice, or Google ranking, that is captured by the blog post is passed on to the relevant service page. I wrote a blog post called “Why Most Corporate Blog Posts Are Useless” which explains this in more detail.

4. Off-Page SEO Checklist for Tree and Landscape Services

There is a lot to cover here so I encourage you to read more and study more deeply on any topic below that you need to learn more about. True authority is built off-page, not on your own website. Google wants to know what other sites are mentioning your site or linking to it.

  1. Set up and optimize your Google Business Profile. Fill it out as completely as possible. Get your keywords in there where you can. Regularly add images and video content. Use the posts and other features. Ask all of your customers for reviews. A few notes about your profile:
    • The most important thing to get right are the categories. Make sure your primary category is something you want to rank for.
    • Brick and mortar locations have higher visibility than service area businesses (where the address is hidden).
    • Businesses with keywords in the name (e.g. “Scottsdale Tree Service”) tend to rank higher than businesses without.
    • Your visibility plummets when you’re closed. For increased visibility, try extending your hours.
  2. Set up as many other local business directories and social media channels as you can. This can be outsourced to Whitespark, Brightlocal or Moz Local. They’re all good. Pick one you like.
  3. Get backlinks. If you get involved in the community, write guest blog posts for other websites, and/or do media outreach, you will have other sites linking back to your site. Backlinks are the most powerful tool I know of to build authority. The more sites link to you, the higher you will rank on Google. Backlinks are also the hardest, most neglected part of SEO. I heard a statistic (don’t know the source) that the average local business has 4 backlinks that are not spam or directory links. If you can be that person who has 40 think how well you’ll rank.

5. Know When to Ask for Help

If you need help making your SEO campaign successful, feel free to reach out. I recognize the importance of sticking to what you’re good at. I have been doing SEO for local businesses for nearly 20 years. The first couple of sites I ever worked on were tree company websites. And they’re still up and doing well.

About the Author

Aaron Charlton, PhD, MBA, has worked in digital marketing since 2007 (with a lengthy foray into marketing academia, during which time he did digital marketing on the side). He specializes in organic growth through content marketing, media outreach, and referral outreach. Aaron has a science background and you can see his marketing science website here: OpenMKT.org.

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