There are several ways to market a trucking company online, but SEO for your logistics company is something that has incredible long-term value if you commit to doing it correctly from the beginning. Your website is often the very first impression a potential customer receives, so it’s important to be found at the top of Google’s search results to attract the highest quality prospects.
You could offer the most competitive pricing, have the newest fleet of trucks, and the best trucking staff in the industry, but if your website isn’t found on top very few potential customers will discover your business. Referrals and word-of-mouth marketing are great, but they can only take your business so far.
When you understand how to optimize your website for the best keywords and search terms it helps Google understand what it should be ranking you for, and as your build authority and trust, it will begin to reward your website with more impressions and organic exposure.
Why should your logistics and transportation company prioritize SEO? Trucking company SEO puts you in front of your target customer exactly where you need to be to generate leads and new customers – at the top of Google’s search results.
The majority of searches for a business or service start online, and search engine optimization will help these prospects find and interact with your company. Let’s go over some important things to consider that will help you understand SEO basics and get your trucking website ranking higher in the search results, resulting in more organic traffic.
Commit to Include SEO in Your Trucking Marketing Strategy
The first step is to be committed to SEO, knowing that it takes time. If you go into it with realistic expectations you will eventually experience the results you desire. Many businesses get discouraged after not seeing instant results and quit.
Search engine optimization isn’t about jamming keywords all over your website and building links. SEO is the process of making your website more trustworthy and authoritative in the eyes of Google. This is not something you can do one time – SEO is an ongoing process and it requires full-time attention.
Other components of your online marketing strategy indirectly contribute to your SEO as well. Your email marketing can drive brand awareness that results in company name Google searches, and high click-through rates for your company name signal to Google that people are actively looking for your company online. Social media marketing can create shares, likes, etc. – social signals that Google’s algorithm also takes into consideration.
Be fully committed to search engine optimization and its long-term nature. Don’t get discouraged if you don’t see immediate results.
Optimize Your Logistics & Transportation Website for SEO Best Practices
As mentioned, SEO goes far beyond just keyword optimization and link building. Your trucking website needs to offer a pleasant user experience and your content needs to be easily accessible on smaller mobile screens. Some things to take into consideration:
Website Speed: Google takes site performance and page load times into consideration. Websites that are slow and lag get visitors frustrated. In an attempt to provide its users with the best experience Google will suppress your website in the results if it’s slow to load. One of the most common reasons for poor performance is too many plugins. Delete unnecessary ones to avoid excess scripts weighing your load times down.
Mobile Contact Options: The majority of your leads from your trucking company SEO effort will come to your website on a mobile device. Be sure that you have multiple contact options, including a click-to-call front and center. This allows your prospects that are ready to take action to do so as soon as they desire.
Long-Form Content: Your blog content needs to be high quality and long-form, which is currently defined as more than 1,000 words. Thin content doesn’t perform as well in the search results. It’s always better to publish articles that are well-written, insightful, and offer value. This satisfies both your visitors and Google.
CTAs on Blog Posts: Many businesses publish great blog content but there are no calls-to-action at the end. You need to tell your visitors what you want them to do after engaging with your trucking blog content, whether it’s click-over to another article or contact your business for a quote. You spend a lot of time, effort, and money on publishing content, so be sure to leverage it and turn it into a conversion tool.
On-Page Optimization: Basic on-page trucking company search engine optimization tips can help you rank for low competition keywords without aggressive link building campaigns. Including your target keyword in the page’s title and at the beginning of the post, along with including the keyword in the URL, headings, and image alt-tag all contribute to healthy SEO. Don’t ignore the little details, as they can have the biggest impact results-wise.
These are just a few optimization tips to help prepare your trucking company’s website to perform its best in the search results. Search engine optimization often gets categorized as including keywords and building links, but without the basics covered the results will be minimal at best.
Understand How to Properly Research Keywords
The keywords you target in your logistics company SEO plan determine what search terms your website is shown for, and what kind of traffic (prospects) visit your website. The wrong keyword targeting can spell disaster, while the correct keywords can help you take your business to the next level and scale its growth exponentially.
There are many ways to find the best keywords and search terms to target:
- Common sense brainstorming session
- Competition research
- Using Google’s autocomplete along with seed keywords to identify long-tail variations with proven search history
- Using Google Search Console to find terms your website is already ranking
While there are many tools available that will show keywords and search volume, it’s important to create an SEO keyword strategy around intent – keywords that people use when they are looking to hire a logistics company.
It’s much better to rank for an intent-based keyword and attract 100 quality visitors than it is to rank for a term that attracts 2,000 visitors, none of which convert into customers.
Improve Your SEO with a Well Designed Content Marketing Strategy
Once you have your keyword research figured out it’s time to create a content strategy to rank for your target keywords. Publishing high-quality content regularly shows Google that your trucking website is a source of reliable information.
As your authority and trust on Google increase, you will begin to see higher rankings, and as you publish more content that targets additional keywords your organic traffic volume will snowball over time.
Each blog post should target one keyword, allowing you to properly optimize all on-page factors for that one term. It’s also important to take each keyword and come up with a blog topic that not only works well for your SEO but also provides value to the reader.
Blog posts that answer common questions about the trucking industry, the process, common costs, etc. are always good topics. Anytime you can answer these questions without the prospect having to ask themselves will help you convert more leads and secure more logistics clientele.
It’s important to be consistent and develop a posting schedule you can comfortably maintain. Whether this is weekly blogs or monthly, just remain on the same schedule. Use your CMS scheduling option to always have posts ready in the future. This is an easy way to ensure you never miss a publishing date.
Final Thoughts
Committing to SEO will help your trucking company attract more qualified leads to your website and over time it builds your pipeline with prospects that convert to logistics and transportation customers.
Knowing what keywords to optimize for is key, as website traffic alone doesn’t guarantee customers and trucking jobs. It’s all about targeting the correct keywords that potential customers are likely to type into Google when searching for the transportation your business provides.
Then, you need to create content targeting these keywords and optimize each page of your website in order to make them Google-friendly as well as conversion-focused. It can be quite overwhelming, especially if you don’t have the time or internal resources to dedicate to your trucking SEO campaign.
If you would like to learn more about the SEO service for trucking companies that our agency provides, please contact us when you have a moment to discuss your current online marketing effort and your long-term goals. Our team of trucking marketing experts will be more than happy to help you better understand the SEO process and how it can help contribute to your company’s growth and success.
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