Search engine optimization (SEO) along with paid search ads on Google and Bing are two of the most important elements for Internet Marketing. They require finding and using relevant keywords to bring in damage restoration customers from the Internet.
Damage restoration is usually an emergency situation where the homeowner - or business owner - is looking for a solution on the Internet to quickly solve their problem.
That's where search advertising and SEO can help. Google Ads involves the creation of pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns that will get your message in front of your potential customer precisely at the time they're looking for your restoration services. They'll conduct a Google search on a keyword related to your services. Your Google Ad will then appear near the top of the search results page and they can click on the ad to learn more about your business.
Search engine optimization offers the same benefits, but with the clicks costing you nothing (as opposed to paid ads).
A successful restoration SEO campaign requires creating original content around keywords that relate to the services that your restoration company offers.
Local SEO is the process of getting your damage restoration company to appear near the top of the results and in the Google Map pack for a local search. Your Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) is associated with your map pack listing.
Both restoration marketing strategies can get people to visit your company website where you'll be able to convert potential clients into damage restoration customers.
Locate Your Own Keywords
In this blog, I first discuss the techniques and tools you can employ yourself to discover additional keywords to use in your restoration campaigns.
Use our Search Keyword List
In the final part of the post, I give you 128 keywords related to restoration services that you are able to review, modify and incorporate into your own paid search marketing campaigns. It is also possible to utilize these keywords as a jumping-off point for search engine optimization to bring more visitors to your website.
Note that in each example I'm using a single seed keyword phrase such as "water damage restoration". While this can be a great keyword to start with, you'll want to dig deeper into your restoration tools by making use of these tools for keyword research. Try different combinations of the services that you offer. Like “fire damage restoration”, “damage restoration companies”, “fix storm damage”, “flood restoration” and many, many more.
KWFinder is a paid program that starts at around $29/mo, but they do have an initial trial of 10 days.
With Mangools, you'll enter your search term, location, and language, and it will give you a variety of useful online marketing data both SEO and PPC for purposes. Although the actual figures won't be 100% exact (only Google has completely accurate search result data). However, the information will help you focus on the right keywords.
Mangools KWFinder results for "water damage restoration"
In this instance, we have selected "water damage restoration" as the keyword, and then set the location at "Fayetteville, Arkansas" (1). By default, it shows Related Keywords (2).
You can also change the settings to "Autocomplete" or "Questions". Creating website content around Google Autocomplete or Questions is a fantastic SEO strategy. These are typically lower-volume keyword phrases that aren't subject to intense competition making it possible to get natural web traffic (free) on your company site.
Keyword Table (Left Panel)
Below our search are the keywords that are listed in the keyword table.
Keywords (2) - These are the keywords that you could want to research for use in paid-search (or SEO) campaigns.
Search (3) - This is the monthly average search volume over the last 12 months based on the search parameters (searches of "water damage restoration" in Fayetteville, Arkansas). We can observe that approximately 10 individuals per month search on "water damage restoration" in Fayetteville.
CPC (4) - This is an estimate of the cost per click on the keyword for Google Ads paid search. This result set only provides PPC data for 911 restoration. You can click on the magnifying glass to reveal more data for each keyword.
PPC (5) - PPC shows how difficult the competition is for paid search ads. 100 is higher and indicates extremely competitive bidding. 0 indicates very little competition and likely much lower click costs.
KD (6) - this is keyword difficulty and it is for SEO purposes. For water damage restoration, it has a keyword difficulty of 18 - that is "Easy". Easy is a relative term. You still need to have quality content on your website in order to rank high up in the search engine results page.
Keyword SEO Data (Right Panel)
The right-hand panel contains SEO information for the keyword that is the focus of our search. Here we can see the difficulty of the keyword highlighted (7) in addition to an overview of the Search Engine Results Page (8) for the keyword in the location that we’re searching for. Note that the top result (position #1) is for expertise.com. This panel gives you great info about the companies that will be competing against should you choose to try to rank for the chosen search term.
Export and Create Lists
You can make lists and export data through this interface. You can take this data and analyze it offline then use it in your paid search campaigns and SEO Marketing.
Ahrefs is rather expensive keyword research and backlink research tool. It is geared towards marketing agencies as their pricing can be high for restoration companies - especially smaller restoration companies with only one location. Pricing starts at $99/mo.
Once you've signed-up, you can navigate to the Keyword Explorer and enter a seed keyword. We've entered the keyword "restoration services" (9) and kept default settings of Google to be our primary search engine and The United States as the search location, as you'll see below.
Enter the seed keyword into Keywords Explorer - then click on “Related terms”
From the search results page, we can click on "Related Terms" (10) for a deeper overview of the available keywords.
From the below results it is clear that we have 2,638 potential keywords to choose from. You can save these keywords in list, or export for offline analysis on your favorite spreadsheet. Here's a brief overview of the columns in this result set.
ahrefs Returns a Lot of SEO and PPC Keyword Data for Your Restoration Company Marketing Campaigns
Keywords (11) - A list of keywords that you can apply to search engine optimization or Google Ads marketing campaigns
KD (12) - This is the keyword difficulty which is a measurement ahrefs has developed to determine how difficult it would be to rank for a given keyword. The higher numbers are more difficult to rank. The KD is a logarithmic scale, which means that ranking for a KD 20 keyword would be more than double the effort to rank for a KD 10 keyword.
Volume (13) - Average monthly search volume for the keyword based on the parameters of the search from our original search.
CPC (14) - Approximate cost per click for PPC ads for this keyword. ahrefs bases this on Google data, but as we've mentioned before, cost per click varies widely by ad position and your location.
SERP (15) - Clicking here provides you the search engine results page results for your seed keyword.
Export (16) - You can export AHREFs data to perform an offline analysis
You can try Keyword Sheeter for free, but to get full use, you’ll need to purchase “sheet coins”.
Keyword Sheeter provides you a list of Google autocomplete recommendations based upon the keyword that you input. This is from the "Keyword ideas tools" section (17) using the search settings (18). I input “restoration companies” as my kewyord (19) after which, I clicked "Sheet Keywords” (20). Below the save button there is the option of applying positive and negative filters to refine your search results.
Keyword Sheeter provides results that are based on Google Autocomplete
You can copy the results to a spreadsheet. The cost of subscriptions for sheet coins starts at $9/month.
Keywords are available right when you’re setting up your account on Google Ads. We’ll get more into this during our upcoming post on Google Ads for damage restoration companies.
If you've already signed up for Google Ads, you can access Google's Keyword Planner by going to "Tools and Settings" (21) and then selecting "Keyword Planner" (22)
Accessing the Google Keyword Planner
Once you're in the keyword planner, you'll select “Start with Keywords” (23). Enter as many keywords as you would like (24). In this case, we entered "water damage restoration". When you're ready you're ready, click the "Get Results" button (25).
Entering “water damage restoration” as a seed keyword on Google's Keyword Planner
As you can see below, Google returns 779 Keywords (26). In the table below, you'll find keyword suggestions (27), average monthly searches for each keyword (28), and the top of page bidding information (29) & (30).
You can broaden your search by clicking on the suggested keywords at the top of the page (31).
Keyword planner result for "water damage restoration"
Google provides these results and lets you incorporate them directly into your search ads. I prefer taking things offline by pressing the download icon (32) instead of adding them directly to any of my ad campaigns.
Based on our digital marketing experience and experience with the tools described above, here is a starting set of 128 keywords you can use for your restoration business in paid ans SEO campaigns.
This isn't a comprehensive list. Restoration contractors should perform their own keyword research to uncover additional relevant kewyords.
Note that for paid search campaigns, you'll want to include qualifiers for some of the terms below.
Location qualifiers
As an example, a lot of people search for "near me", "my area" or their place of residence (e.g. "water damage restoration Denver"). For certain keywords you may want to add city names that you offer such as "near me" qualifier.
Negative Keywords
The keywords below are based on popular user searches. If you don’t perform any of the services listed below, you should make them negative keywords to prevent your ads from showing.
For example, if you don’t do sewage cleanup, make “sewage” and related terms negative keywords in your paid search campaigns.
