In this video, we conduct a basic competitor SEO audit with the the targeted search phrase "pressure washing Dallas TX." Through the audit we discover who the top 3 players are, what they have in common and where they can improve. This information will be helpful to anyone trying to rank their website for that specific term. More importantly, it teaches you how conduct your own competitor seo audit. If you have question, please do leave a comment over on YouTube. We'll respond ASAP.
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Transcript of Competitor SEO Audit - Pressure Washing Dallas, TX
Introduction of competitor SEO - Pressure Washing Dallas
Mike Z - Competitor SEO pressure washing (00:00):
Hi, I'm Mike with Serr.biz serious engagement, real results. In SEO today. We're going to do an SEO audit of competitors for a local search phrase. The phrase we're going to use specifically is "pressure washing Dallas, Texas". Now, of course you could use any phrase that you wanted based on what your business is and your regional area, et cetera. What's important about a competitor SEO audit is that it gives us the information we need to optimize a site to rank for those same terms. If you're already in the top 10. Awesome, good on you. Keep doing what you're doing if you've got a website, but you're not ranking very well. This is how you find out what you need to do to your website, to rank in the top 10. And if you don't have a website at all, a competitor, SEO audit is a great place to start because it's going to help you define what you need to just jump right into the game and start ranking as soon as possible. So let's just jump to the desktop and see what we find.
Search Results from Google
Mike Z - Competitor SEO pressure washing (01:01):
Okay. So our search term is pressure washing Dallas, Texas, and we can see right off the top, just in the search results. That's a competitive term. How do we know? Because there's ads right there in the top underneath the ads, we now have maps that is important part of SEO, but that's not what we're looking for today. Today in the competitor SEO audit, we're looking at the actual websites that show up in the top 10. So the first one here is two and four pressure washing. Then we've got Titan washing, and then we've got DFW pressure works. So those are the top three. So if you can beat those guys you're going to be in the top 10. How did that, and you don't have to worry too much, but if you want to do Realty doc, go ahead and look at all the rest of these.
Mike Z - Competitor SEO pressure washing (01:52):
And when you do your competitor SEO audit. Anyway, so those are the top three. Let's take a look now at what they have in common first. Let's just take a look at the source code and let's see if we can figure out what they're what they built their site with. And it's usually pretty easy to find out if you just kind of looked down here. So WP dash content, that's a common architecture for WordPress. So to move forward is Word Press. Now let's go back to Titan, see what Titan's doing right. Click view source same thing, WordPress. And what is DFW pressure works doing. There's their site, righ click the page source. And it's WordPress WP includes. There you go. So all three sites are using WordPress. I've switched over to Chrome because I want to check some other things that Chrome's inspection tools make easier.
What platform are they using for SEO?
Mike Z - Competitor SEO pressure washing (03:07):
So at 2, 1 4 we look at right click inspect with Google Chrome, and we toggle from desktop to be responsive simulator. You'll see that their site is responsive. It's a little tight right there, but that could also be the simulator, not how it actually looks on a phone or when you're checking your responsive web design. You'd want to check on an actual phone, not just rely purely on a Chrome or other desktop simulators. Let's take a look at Titan. I'm pretty sure they're all going to be responsive, but you know, you're doing an audit, so you've got to look at everything. Let's see. So, yup. They're responsive. And let's take a look at DFW inspect again, yeah, they're responsive. So that's what I suspected. Now let's take a look at another thing that's important to look at that they have in common see that, and that means they're using security certificates.
Mike Z - Competitor SEO pressure washing (04:03):
That's pretty much a requirement. Now, if you don't have SSL on your website, you need to get it. So that's just a criteria. Google laid that out, you know, a couple of years ago. So go ahead, get a SSL if you don't have it and be sure to set your redirects accordingly Titan I'm sure has it. Yep. There SSL, DFW again, a SSL. So that's a plus. Now, what else do they have? Let's go back to just home page word count. It's a pretty simple thing to do. I like this little plug-in over here on my Chrome toolbar, which is word count. So it's nice. All you have to do is click on the page somewhere, select all content right-click and count words. So they're pretty good for their homepage. 700 words, not bad. Let's see what Titan has switched back to just the page right.
How many words on on the home page and blog?
Mike Z - Competitor SEO pressure washing (05:00):
Click select all and word counts. 629 words on their entire home page and their number two, right? First one had more words on their homepage. Second. One less words. I second position that it's not entirely 100% going to guarantee anything but it is an indicator. And let's take a look at DFW. We're going to switch back to regular mode, get rid of the inspection pane, select all and count words, 365 words. Now that's interesting, right? Follow suit. First rank site had more words on their home page, a separate one less words, third, one less ones. And that would probably follow suit by and large for the other sites. I mean, you can't really compete with Yelp and so forth. Per se, you can't compare yourself to Yelp because they're a totally different site, but these are your competitors. That's who you want to compare yourself to and make changes accordingly.
Mike Z - Competitor SEO pressure washing (06:03):
What else do they have in common? Let's see. Do they have blogs? Yep. He's got a blog, 214 look at their blog quick. Pretty good, nice content per blog. Images. Let's just take a gander at what they have, how many blogs they've got. So they've got like a hundred. All right. So that's good. And you can see, they use proper formatting, H1 H2tags, et cetera, an image. I'm sure there's an alt tag on there. Yep. See that says remove graffiti by pressure washing. That's definitely key term, all pressure washers want to target. Cause that's pretty much one of the jobs that you're going to get asked to do. Now let's take a look at Titan. Do they have a blog? Let's see.
Mike Z - Competitor SEO pressure washing (06:59):
Let's take a look at Titan about us blog. Yep. They too have a blog. Yeah, it's a good title work here and so forth. I'm sure those are H2 or H1 tags. How many do they have overall? They've got four pages, 10 a page if that's what it is. So roughly 40. So again, a volume of content, right? They are ranked number two and they've got good content, but they have half as much content in their blog as 214. So blogging and content generation is important. Let's see if DFW is doing they have a blog channel and what's in their blog channel, nada so that's kind of a crappy user experience. If they're not going to maintain a blog, they should probably just get rid of that and redirect it to the homepage or one of their service pages. So the top two have blogs and are ranking accordingly. What else do they have in common?
Mike Z - Competitor SEO pressure washing (08:05):
Let's go back to these guys and take a look at an actual blog post from each. The advantages of removing organic growth, using pressure washing again, targeted key terms, et cetera. Let's see what their word count is on their blog. 543 words on this individual blog page. Now let's compare it to a Titan, a, an actual blog of theirs select everything. Now that's everything right. You're getting the repeat of the title text. You're getting this other navigational information, but it still all counts. And what is their word? Count? 590 words, very similar. So again, those are some targets that you're going to have to work with. You're gonna need to write some blogs with about, you know, 500 words on each blog properly optimized. Now, what else do they have in common? Let's start at the top again, 214.
Do they use social media?
Mike Z - Competitor SEO pressure washing (09:14):
They've got a Google page or excuse me, a Facebook page. See their Facebook page, nice public reviews. So I don't know if they don't have any reviews per se, which is interesting. But they at least have a public page and their most recent posts was September 1st. One prior to that was August 31st. So that weekend they were working got a couple up over the weekend prior to that was the 28th 27th, 26th. So they're kinda, you know, banging out their work, making posts every day to their social this photo was also on their blogs. So they're, cross-referencing at least let's see, are they actually, yeah. See how they posted it here, but then they also put in a lot of information on the actual blog post nice trick, right? So they're leveraging their social to increase a backlink popularity, but also driving some users to their site. And you know, how long people are on your site and visit your site all counts to your SEO as well. So now let's take a look at Titan Titan's Facebook page.
Mike Z - Competitor SEO pressure washing (10:40):
Titan's Facebook pages here. They've got no, it's a kind of weird Facebook's not showing that they have in reviews, but then over here there is a bunch so go figure Facebook. But point again is, is that they have an active Facebook page. Let's take a look at their posts. How frequently are they posting all at the time of this recording? They just posted something about an hour ago. And again, they're pushing people back to their websites. Prior to that four hours ago, they did two posts the weekend. I got time to work on their blog and their Facebook. August 3rd no, actually they had a big lack in time from June 17th to August 3rd, but they are relatively active in promoting new content on their Facebook pages. Let's see what DFW is doing their Facebook page, slow loading while they were on the 26th.
Mike Z - Competitor SEO pressure washing (11:54):
And then they hadn't posted, wow. They hadn't posted to their Facebook page in a long time October. So that's like almost a year in between. Not the best SEO, obviously they're doing well, they're in the top 10. So obviously it's not a must do, but this is the first time we're taking look at this and have they been there if they've done something new et cetera. Generally, best practices you want to post to your Facebook page and your blog as well as Google maps, at least you know, once a week, if you can more if you can but try to set a schedule at least once a week. So the top two players have active blogs and active Facebook pages. The third one doesn't have much in the way of Facebook activity, but how are their reviews?
Mike Z - Competitor SEO pressure washing (12:45):
Same weirdness with Facebook saying that there are zero stars but they do have plenty of comments over here and quite, not that recent, but you know well, hell that's over a year and a half old. It was their most recent one. But if they did work on it, maybe they could maybe if DFW did some more work on their blog and their social posts and got some more reviews they could get ahead of 214 So that is their social other social. These guys all have an active with a Twitter account was suspended. Oops. Let's see what these guys don't have Twitter, but they've got an Instagram. Let's see if DFW has a Twitter account, they have a link to it, but they haven't posted to that. And since 2018. Myself look small businesses, you have, you don't have the resources in general to optimize all social profiles and so on and so forth.
Small business has to prioritize their social and SEO efforts
Mike Z - Competitor SEO pressure washing (13:57):
Could they get a back link and so forth? Sure. could they use like HootSuite to just auto post to it, or I F T T to do some auto posts? Sure. since they're not really active I don't know if I would give it a prominent position in my navigational toolbar, but the point is that you have social and they are linking to it. And those old posts, even though they're old should still have some SEO link juice more frequent posts that have bigger engagements of course have better SEO juice. And let's see what else they have as far as social. Pinterest well, let's start at the top again Google plus, but that's really just an old icon. They're actually linking to their Google map page which is good. And you see that they've got, you know, 5.0 to six reviews, not a ton of reviews, but solid reviews, 5.0 let's see what Titan is doing.
Mike Z - Competitor SEO pressure washing (14:56):
Are they linking to an old Google plus page, or nope they're looking to their map? They've got 5.0 ratings as well out of 16 reviews. So that's interesting. They have actually more reviews than the guy that's ranking ahead of them. And let's take a look at DFW. They've got a G icon, are they, oh, they're still linking to their old dead page. So obviously they could help themselves just by changing that link and pointing to their Google map. If they have one, so let's see works are they are, yeah, they have a Google map. So those guys could help themselves out just by that one quick little icon change takes about three minutes in WordPress to do that. I would recommend it and that might help push them up since we're on Google maps let's go back to our search results in Firefox and see who is there.
Do they all have Google Maps (yes!)
Mike Z - Competitor SEO pressure washing (16:04):
Okay. So we're back over on our search result in Firefox and look at that 214 pressure washing is also in the maps which is good. They're here. And then they're also here in the maps. So part of that is of course, because they are cross-link to one another and they've probably optimized their Google map as well. So it's important folks to link to your Google map from your website. Let's take a look at their YouTube channel since they're linking to it, letting me know what's there. All right. There's got okay. They could do some optimization. You can get links here and so forth. What do they have in there about they might want to fill their bio information and so forth. They've had some solid views for local pressure washing company since 2014. And that's plus let's see all videos and we're to sort by newest and their most recent video was six months ago that had 45 views no great shakes, but it's still there.
Mike Z - Competitor SEO pressure washing (17:13):
Right? They took the time, it took the effort. They put some content out there and who knows, maybe it's producing some, some results for them when somebody is looking for Dallas. What they've done a good job with on the few videos that they have is that they've got key terms in the video. So here's Dallas and Fort worth exterior cleaning synonyms of phrases. People might search beyond just pressure washing pick up pressure washing here pressure washing trailer and yeah, and the full title includes Dallas, Texas, Dallas, Texas. You get the idea. So they've optimized at least their videos. Now let's just take a look at one real quick don't really want to watch it. But to in their description, they also included a link to themselves. So good job there and shows in part why they are number one.
Mike Z - Competitor SEO pressure washing (18:10):
Let's see what Titan has. Titan doesn't have a link in the top. Let's see if they have it in the footer all the way down the bottom. Oh, there we go. Yep. They have a link to their YouTube channel and their footer. Not many videos. Last one was seven months ago. Let's see if there's more Nope, seven months ago. Let's a little bit of SEO. They you know, have Fort worth Texas, at least in the title. This COVID stuff relative content, but not really for getting customers per se. It looks more like a techie thing. Wisper Wash bearing, swap. Yeah. That's just pure tech, which is cool, you know, help build the community, teach people something that's popular. They didn't put in a cover and they have not included any links. They don't have any about us information.
Mike Z - Competitor SEO pressure washing (19:07):
They should do that. Doesn't take long. Let's go back to a video and see if they optimize that.. nice Drone work... But we're not really interested in the actual content of the video at this point. Just want to see what they do with their texts. Again, a little bit of text and then link to themselves. So, you know, a good job you could use some hashtags and so forth, but they didn't, but that's part of SEO, right? Zillion things to do, getting to all of them and deciding what to prioritize and not prioritize is part of the game. But those are some things they could do to improve their own YouTube SEO. Now let's take a look at DFW, see if they have, we're not linking not in the footer either. But oh, here we go.
Who uses YouTube and is it helping their SEO?
Mike Z - Competitor SEO pressure washing (19:57):
They do have a YouTube channel. They've embedded it at least one video, hopefully it's on their own channel. No, I don't want to watch it. Yeah, they have their own channel. So that's a plus. They only have one video. I think it's, you know, they actually have two videos, so and they haven't posted anything in three years. So if they want to, you know, move themselves up they're out there to, in jobs, you know, shoot before and after every time might seem redundant, but you can use video plus your blog and your social to give yourself more backlinks, more traffic, more relevancy in the eyes of Google. Also they have not optimized their cover. They could again get links here that are missing. What about their, about page? At least they have an about page.
Mike Z - Competitor SEO pressure washing (20:51):
So that's a plus. They did include a couple of links back to themselves. I'm not sure why they didn't add it up here probably because they don't have a cover. Anyway those are again, three sites. The one with the best content and the most optimization is ranking at the top. So what does that tell you folks? It tells you content, content, content, and optimization of that content. Now, what else do they have in common? Okay. So the last thing we're going to do is check the back links of these guys, just a quickie. Just give us an idea. We're not going to go hardcore or anything. The site I like for this is aHrefs. I'm just going to use the public freebie cause for this purpose, it's good enough. Not everybody wants to buy the service. So but it's a good tool. So I already have it on a clipboard two and four. We're going to include sub domains. Now we're going to check back links. No, I'm not a robot.
Mike Z - Competitor SEO pressure washing (22:00):
How many backlinks? They've got 565 backlinks. And 50% are, do follow. If you don't know what do follow and no follow things are check out some of the blog posts. They've got these 565 from 98 different domains of those 98, 70% are, do follow is here are some of the actual domains that are linking to them. So you got to kind of do a deep dive and determine if they're a good site. Do you want to link, do you not want to link? But that's what this tool is for. And that's what the paid service would be for. If you bought your own account for aHrefs that give you a whole bunch of information that you could use again, it's kind of a game of follow the leader. Next up let's see with Titan has.. Close that out. Let's do Titan and check their backlinks. No, not a robot. Fewer. They have fewer backlinks and only 18% to follow from 42 domains with 69% do follow from those 42 domains. Again, here's some places that are linking, they got links from you might try to get some links from those sites as well. Now let's see what DFW has
Mike Z - Competitor SEO pressure washing (23:45):
Check back. No, I'm not a robot. They have 103, 14% do follow 17% from So, sorry, 17 domains at 53% of those links are where the do follow come from. Interesting. they have a couple of different back links from different places. This is curious that they have in Orlando pressure, washed a website, that's linking to them. Might've been a link exchange, even though they were in Orlando, that domain clearly has pressure wash relevancy, so that does help push them up. Maybe they do work in both places or who knows without doing a big, big, big, deep dive, but here's what we know. In summary that the site with the most content and the most optimization is the one that is ranking the best. They've also got the most backlinks. So content optimization and backlinks are key ingredients to your search engine optimization and there you have it.
Summary of Competitor SEO for local pressure washing companies
Mike Z - Competitor SEO pressure washing (24:58):
So those are the top three ranking websites for the phrase, "pressure washing Dallas tx". Now, of course, all you have to do is conduct the same type of SEO audit of your competitors, apply what you learn. And over time, if you follow the rules and best practices, You too can rank your website in the top10. If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment. I'll answer as soon as I can. Thanks for watching. This is Mike with Serr.biz, serious engagement, real results.
