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Search engine optimization or SEO is a process used to optimize your website to rank first on search engine results pages. This also increases the visibility of your website, and users can easily view your information when they are browsing. SEO can help any type of business but today we’re focusing on service contractor businesses such as HVAC and plumbing. Having a strong digital marketing strategy and utilizing SEO practices will help companies generate leads that can be converted to sales. Here are the best SEO practices that every service contractor business should conduct.

Have a Strategic Keyword

You should know what your customer is looking for and add the keyword to your website. Keywords are essential when designing a website since they allow search engines to define the importance of the page to a specific search. For example, if your business is located in Boston, the desired keyword should include the location and read “Boston air heating, cooling and plumbing.”

Ensure that the keywords are integrated naturally into your website. They should also have HTML codes and be used as headers on your website. You should conduct proper research and understand which phrases and topics will generate more leads to your website.

SEO experts recommend that you always think like a customer looking for a service or product on the internet. It would be best to research the common problems or products that customers frequently ask for and come up with keywords. You can also type the phrases in the search engine and see the results.

Mobile-Friendly Design

Most people use their mobile phones to browse through the internet. Mobile-friendly sites allow the user to read the content easily, and they can also easily navigate through the site. Designing a mobile-friendly website increases your Google SEO ranking, which translates to more customers viewing your page.

Businesses should take their time and invest in mobile-friendly sites. You can make your site mobile-friendly by ensuring that your web pages are all in HTML format. Most websites use PDF brochures that are not user-friendly and which can also intimidate the reader.

Your mobile-friendly website should be fast to allow the users to browse and get information. Users quickly abandon your site if they notice that it is slow. Most HVAC or plumbing problems often require quick responses, and a fast website can come in handy.

Aspects such as poor web hosting and storage can reduce the accessibility of your website. You should ensure that your site has good data storage and your backlink coding is done by a professional. Most companies often overlook these issues, which end up harming their SEO performance.

A well-optimized website can increase the value of your business when you are selling the business. If you are wondering how to sell HVAC businesses, various companies can assist you. One of the aspects that they look for is the ability of your business to generate leads.

Local Priority

HVAC and Plumbing businesses can increase their lead generation by focusing their marketing strategy on local SEO. It would help if you always used a local keyword since most homeowners look for trade professionals online.

For starters, ensure that your business name and address are well displayed on your site.

You should ensure that your website receives positive reviews from reputable websites and companies that review service companies. This helps in building your image as a brand as well as generating more leads.

SEO experts also recommend that you get your business mentioned on reputable local or regional business websites. This shows that your business is successful and can be trusted.

Valuable Content

Ensure that you post new and unique content when designing your website using educational information and blogs. Your blogs should have a compelling title that can help generate organic traffic. SEO experts recommend including a keyword in your title.

Incorporating YouTube videos and images in your page also improves the user experience and optimization. Images enhance customer experience and can also improve visitor engagement on your website.

Ensure that you share your blogs and videos on your social media platforms to keep your target audience engaged. It would be best if you also encouraged your audiences to share your blogs. The signals generated from your social media platforms are also included in website ranking,

Service businesses should learn how to optimize their websites. This helps to generate more leads that help to grow their business.

Saving money and boosting safety and efficiency at construction sites is easier than ever with the industry’s new secret weapon: drones. Also called unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, drones are airborne robots that can be flown autonomously or via remote control. They come in a variety of sizes and designs, but all function in essentially the same way.

The UAV is equipped with a data link that allows it to communicate with its ground control station, or GCS, which is usually either a remote control or a computer. The drone may also be able to carry a payload, depending on its weight capabilities. This could be anything from a package to a sensor or data collection device. Many drones come with built-in cameras, as well.

These high-flying robots can help save your team incredible amounts of time and money at construction sites. In fact, in 2018, construction experienced higher growth in drone usage than any other industry. With a little flight training, you can have a drone up and running at your site in no time, creating opportunities to speed up your project timeline, increase site safety, and reduce costs in numerous ways.

Site Planning

Drones can increase value for your client and save money for your team before you even break ground on a new project. One of the greatest advantages drones bring to the table is an aerial perspective. In the past, the only way to get footage of your site from a bird’s-eye-view was by hiring a helicopter. Drones cost a fraction of the price and are more efficient, precise, and effective.

You can get detailed, crisp, high-resolution images of your site using drones. This footage is invaluable for site planning, since it is low-cost and can be easily exported to AutoCAD or similar modeling software. Drone images also make great visuals to show to clients. In a project presentation, they will impress stakeholders right away, and help you secure more new projects for your team.

Drones’ efficiency is a game-changer when it comes to site planning. Surveying that might take days or weeks on the ground can be done in a matter of hours, saving you money and jump-starting your project timeline.

Progress Photos for Clients

Drones have many amazing features, but one of the most useful in construction is autonomous flight. Many drones can be programmed to fly along a certain path autonomously at regular intervals. You could set up a drone at your site that would complete scans as often as you like, completely independently.

This feature is especially useful when it comes to progress photos. Regular ground surveys are too time-consuming to perform often, but drones are fast, reliable, and inexpensive. With the help of a drone, you can create much more detailed progress reports to show to clients. Drones can be used to take all sorts of photos of your site. You could capture images from directly above as well as closer to the ground, showing details of each level of your project.

Site Inspections

Site inspections are a crucial part of any project and important for ensuring stability and safety. Depending on the size of your project, though, they can take hours or even days to complete. Using a drone, you can rapidly reduce inspection time and get safer, more accurate results. This is key to improving efficiency, which is one of the most effective ways to save money at your site — a necessity, since 85% of projects run over budget.

Thermal scanning, for example, will allow you to find cracks in roofs or air conditioning leaks in a fraction of the time it would take to inspect a roof on foot. Crane inspections are quick and affordable with a drone, allowing you to easily identify parts in need of repair. Since inspections all around your site are so much faster with a drone, you will be able to conduct them more often, leading to fewer accidents and damaged parts.

Remote Monitoring

With a drone on your team, you won’t have to worry about being at your site in-person to check in on things. If you are overseeing multiple projects at once, you can view photos from your drone’s autonomous flight online. If your drone isn’t programmed to fly on its own, a site worker could easily be trained to operate it for you and share the footage and data it collects.

This is another great feature for improving your clients’ experiences. You can bring up-to-the-minute drone data to meetings with stakeholders, even from hundreds of miles away from the site, saving everyone hundreds of dollars in travel costs.

Additionally, remote monitoring is helpful if you have a potentially hazardous site to survey. Sending a drone into a dangerous development site will reduce the risk of injury to your team members and produce faster and more reliable results. Some project managers even employ drones for surveillance and security at their site.

Overstock and Error Prevention

Drones are capable of more than aerial photography. They are fantastic for data collection as well. Drones can be used to measure earthwork and supply quantities with astonishing accuracy. This feature in particular will save you a tremendous amount of money. Many project managers overstock their supplies to ensure they have enough because measuring or counting those supplies on a regular basis is too time-consuming and often lacks precision.

With a drone, you can get accurate measurements as regularly as needed without interrupting the workflow of your project. This greatly reduces the need to buy extra supplies.

Another reason many project managers overstock supplies is to prepare for any errors or accidents at the site. A drone can help with this, too. Those frequent aerial scans of your site will allow you to make sure every step of your project lines up with your designs. You can catch errors before they become a costly problem and quickly spot areas in need of attention.

The Value of Drones

When it comes to construction, optimizing safety and finances is key to success. The initial investment you make in a drone will save your team thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours of time while also increasing safety for site workers. As an additional bonus, your clients will enjoy a more detailed, cutting-edge experience with much quicker results due to shorter survey times.

No matter the size or scale of your project, a drone is an invaluable asset, even for site surveys alone. The drone market has exploded in recent years, so it’s easy to find the perfect model for your team, no matter what budget or features you are shopping for. Whether you’re building a house or a new skyscraper, an investment in drone technology is an investment in your team’s success.

Author Bio: April Miller is a managing editor at ReHack.com who specializes in engineering and construction technology. You can find her work published on sites like Open Data Science and The Society of Women Engineers.

 

The United States is home to nearly 15,000 water treatment facilities. If you work in the water treatment sector, then staying on the cutting edge on the changes happening in this industry is crucial. The more you know about the coming changes and opportunities in the world of water treatment, the easier it will be to pivot and make money in the future.

Most people make the mistake of fighting change instead of embracing it. If you make this mistake, you will have an extremely hard time furthering your career in the water treatment industry. Read below to find out more about the opportunities and challenges ahead in the world of water treatment.

The Use of Intelligent Network Technology

Like many other industries, professionals in the water treatment industry realize the importance of modern technology. In the coming years, more treatment plants will use the Internet of Things (IoT) devices to collect data on both usage and the reliability of existing infrastructure. With this data, water treatment facilities will be able to optimize their infrastructure for maximum reliability and efficiency.

The main goal of this technology is to reduce end-to-end water losses, which is a big problem for many treatment facilities. If you want to be able to use this technology, then getting the right training is crucial. Many modern wastewater certification courses are now offering training on how to use IoT devices and the data they collect. By getting out in front of this technology-fueled revolution in the water treatment industry, you can make yourself a highly valued employee.

Dealing With the Effects of Extreme Weather Events

In the past years, many people have been made aware of the problem of global climate change. This phenomenon is causing a number of weather-related problems around the world. Many of these problems are related to water in one way or another. Common problems like droughts, rising sea levels and wildfires are ever-present in the modern world. Dealing with weather events like flooding in coastal communities is something most water treatment facilities have to confront.

Structures like levees, seawalls and dikes are being built in many of these areas to keep water at bay and away from vital infrastructure. In the future, water treatment engineers will use simulations and modeling software to find vulnerabilities that can affect their facilities. These simulations will point out problems related to stormwater surges and how these risks can be mitigated. Modern technology is finding ways to help water treatment facilities to stay one step ahead of future weather events.

Customers Are Leading the Charge

Assessing how successful a water treatment facility is can be difficult. One of the main metrics that need to be considered when trying to figure out the success rate of a treatment facility is customer satisfaction rates. Modern water treatment facilities are starting to realize just how important empowering their customers is. Establishing long-term relationships with customers and keeping them informed is crucial.

This is why many water treatment facilities are currently creating apps and web-based software designed to help consumers inform themselves about water consumption. Lowering water consumption rates is a great way to help the planet. This is why developing programs that provide consumers with information about how to reduce water consumption rates is so important. An informed customer is usually a happy customer, which is why investing in this consumer-facing technology is a wise move for water treatment facilities.

Supporting the Circular Economy

Most eco-friendly methodologies hinge on embracing the circular economy. This is a term used to describe a production/consumption model that focuses on recycling and reusing various resources. Many water treatment facilities are starting to embrace this circular economy model by stripping wastewater of valuable resources like phosphorus and nitrogen. These chemicals can be reused in a number of different capacities. When performed correctly, this stripping of wastewater materials can reduce the strain on a local environment.

Get Ready For These Changes

The world of water treatment is rapidly changing. Instead of hanging on to outdated methodologies and treatment techniques, now is the time to prepare for the future. Keeping your eye on the future will help you make great decisions for your treatment facility that can help boost profitability and customer satisfaction rates. 

No doubt about it, COVID-19 quickly changed the way we work, and play. Travel and in person visits came to a screeching halt. Professional offices, suppliers, even many working shops closed their doors to visitors. Training in the not to distant past was done, for the most part, in person. Conveniently, most trainers adapted quickly to offer online training options. Many of the companies in our industry were already familiar with platforms like Go To meeting. This made the switch to virtual training fairly easy for those trainers.

Some trainers I met through the ESCO group devised hybrid virtual training events. With a few cameras, one that would follow you around a room they kept the hands on training available also.

An instructor in front of a piece of equipment would be led through the troubleshooting in real time, clever and almost like being there.

The question remains, what happens going forward in the training world. In some cases offices that made the change to virtual workspaces plan on staying that way. In some larger cities’ that has created  office space vacancies and those building owners are scrambling to repurpose those spaces to get the rent rolling back in.

In cities like San Francisco it was a tough slog to see more than two engineering firms in a day due to traffic and parking logistics. With online, virtual sessions you can present to their entire staff as well as any locations they have scattered around the world.

I’ve started limited travel myself for training events. I doubt cramming 30 or more folks into a hotel meeting room will ever be attractive anymore. In some cases moving the training into the shop area, parking lot or a large cafeteria  area is a good option to allow attendees to spread out more.

I doubt anyone knows for sure how this will shake out or what “bug” will hit us next that makes  people want to avoid crowded rooms and spaces, but plan on having options. Come up with new ways to engage the attendees. Not being able to see faces, expressions and not getting that in person feedback changes the game for a trainer.  Add polls to your training to get some interaction and a feel for the groups. Consider multiple speakers or trainers to get some back and forth conversation in your online trainings.

The need for having a trained workforce is critical. Equipment is becoming more sophisticated and specific, so factory training will march forward. We would love to hear from all the players in the industry, thoughts suggestions, what we can do to keep you’ all coming back.

Let’s rid the ‘VID and get back to the normal face to face that we all crave.