How to Make Your Landscaping Website STAND OUT from Everyone Else in Your Market...

Getting your landscaping website to stand out to customers, get ranked in Google, and work as hard for your business as you do is, well, hard.

Fortunately for you, we’ve already spent a lot of time thinking about the best practices and best approaches from competitive local landscapers, landscape architects, and landscape designers like yourself.

If you’re looking to build or update your landscaping website to take it from dud to stud, look no further…

What pages does your landscaping website need?

Most landscaping website include only 4 of the 7 core layouts every local business website needs. The 4 pages nearly every landscaping website includes are:

• Home Page
• Services Page
• About Page
• Contact Page

In addition, most landscaping website also have a “Gallery” or “Projects” page that shows off their work.

For new websites – or very small businesses operating at the lower end of the market – these 5 pages are probably sufficient and easily accounted for in one of our Super Sites (which include all 7 core layouts…AND the gallery page!).

However, the ‘best in class’ landscaping websites include several pages that those more basic websites don’t.

Pages included in ‘best in class’ landscaping websites

While most landscaping company websites have just 4 of the 7 core layouts (and a gallery page!), better landscaping websites go further.

They often include slightly more service pages such as:

• Landscaping Design
• Snow Removal
• Hardscaping
• Residential Services
• Commercial Services
• Patio Building

and goal-oriented pages such as:

• Quote Page
• Careers Page

The ‘best in class’ landscaping websites dive even deeper and include more specific service pages. For example, these website might have specific pages for:

• Landscaping
• Harscaping Installation
• Outdoor Kitchens
• Outdoor Living
• Tree/Bush Trimming
• Retaining Walls
• Walkways
• Pergolas & Pavilions
• Lighting
• Planting
• Fire Features
• …and more!

They also include helpful resources such as an active blog, an index of landscaping tips, and FAQs.

It’s important to note that while going deeper into your services is not, strictly speaking, necessary, it does help a lot with both search engine optimization and helping customers pre-qualify you as the landscaping business of choice.

That said, it’s important to have decent content for those pages should you choose to build them, so that a prospective customer who is on that page has something valuable to skim. Otherwise, the page will look and feel like ‘fluff’ and likely send the customer off to the ‘back’ button on their browser.

Landscaping websites should show off their work

Maybe you don’t have enough content to create individual service pages for everything you do.

That’s ok.

You do, however, need a photo gallery.

Nearly every high-quality landscaping business shows off their work so that prospects can see that you have what it takes to get the job done. Because so many different elements of landscape design and construction are subjective, you want to have an adequate portfolio of photos that appeals to different design sensibilities – especially if you’re trying to attract more affluent customers.

Be sure to optimize the photos on your landscaping website

Because photos are extremely important, it’s essential that your website includes photo optimization.

Photos – especially high-resolution photos – are one of the chief culprits of slow websites. Photo file sizes tend to be really large, which means a lot of data has to move over the network in order for the photo to load.

If you have a page, like a gallery, that is largely ‘just’ photos and those photos aren’t optimized, your prospects won’t ever see your work because they’ll leave out of frustration for how long it takes for the page to load.

Organize your photos

In addition to optimizing the size of your photo, you can – and should – organize the photos by type of service and/or skill (e.g., patio, masonry, fire feature).

Have a lot of beautiful walkways? Impressive retaining walls? Sweet outdoor kitchens? Give each photo a label and allow prospects the opportunity to click on the things they want to see.

How to make your landscaping website stand out

The sad truth is that most landscaping websites look and feel very similar. With only 5 pages (home, about, services, gallery, contact), it can be difficult to stand out…especially if you offer the same services as everyone else in your industry or geography.

To make your website stand out (and attract more customers), we suggest including:

Before & after sliders. While most landscaping websites have a gallery of work, before/after sliders are interesting, interactive elements that make the work stand out even more.

Slideshows. We’re generally not a fan of sliders or carousels in the top section of a website. However, on a service page, these can be effective ways to cycle through your work and show people what it’s all about.

Click to Call. It’s surprising how many local businesses – as well as landscapers – make visitors click around to find a phone number to call. Given that nearly 70% of all website traffic takes place on a mobile phone, one-click click-to-call buttons can be the difference between a visitor making an effort to call and bouncing.

Video. If you have a smartphone in your pocket, you have an incredible video camera on you at all times. Short videos featuring your work can give it depth and interactivity. Intro videos to your service pages can help an increasingly younger generation of web-literate homeowners hear your pitch and imagine what it’s like to work with you.

Have a blog or resource page. Your customers have questions, right? They’re trying to make decisions about how to approach their most valuable asset and spend (in many cases) a significant amount of money to turn their house into a home. Having a blog, resource page, or tip guide can help turn your prospects into well-informed buyers…and better customers.

Live chat. While some people still fill out contact forms, the truth is that they are significantly less potent than they used to be. With the onset of live chat, customers have gotten used to being able to ask questions over chat. When you consider how many website visits are on mobile device and how similar live chat is to texting, it makes sense. The good news is that most live chat apps allow you to get the messages directly to your phone, so it feels like texting to you too.

Reviews. Many landscaping websites feature testimonials. As far as things go, this is good. Even better is featuring reviews from Google, Facebook, Yelp, etc. For local businesses, Google Reviews are the most important and can be easily integrated with modern websites.

Offer financing. Many successful landscaping websites offer their customers financing. Don’t have the cash to float it yourself? Consider creating a financing program with a firm like Enerbank, which allows you to build financing programs that work for your customers with limited risk to yourself.

Where to promote your website

In large competitive markets like Chicago or Denver, the best landscaping websites are featured on many platforms like:

• Houzz
• Yelp
• Thumbtack
• Angi
• Google

In smaller mid-marketing communities there are far fewer companies on this platform. But those platforms still drive a lot of traffic and visibility. Even if you don’t advertise on them, you should list your website on those platforms so that people can find you.

In addition, you should actively post the photos you feature on your gallery on Pinterest & Instagram so that local customers can find you.

In reality, many landscapers don’t actively list or promote their websites (and more importantly, their work!) on these platforms, which reduces the number of places a prospect can find you. There’s opportunity in them thar hills!

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How to get more search traffic to your landscaping website

Many small business owners have severely outdated ideas of how search engine optimization (SEO) works. In reality, search has many facets that not even Google’s engineers fully manage anymore (it’s an AI, afterall).

However, there are several things you can do to get more search traffic to your website, such as:

1. Optimize your Google Business Profile & get Google Reviews. This is by far the most important thing a local business can do to get started with search.
2. List your website. List your website on the sites mentioned above, as well as the dozens of other directories that have quality traffic and authority (e.g., yp.com, bing, etc).
3. Create & promote meaningful content. Because so few landscaping companies invest in blogs, resources, and tips, there is a lot of room for thoughtful, well-structured, search-friendly blog content to dominate local markets. Optimizing the blogs for conversions will simultaneously fill your pipeline with good leads.
4. Earn backlinks from the content you write & promote. Off-page SEO is the most time-consuming part of SEO, but also pays massive dividends. Promote your content with local news outlets, bloggers, and on relevant websites where prospects search for information about landscaping.
5. Optimize your website for speed and conversions and make sure its connected to Google. Many small business websites don’t have Google Analytics installed and aren’t connected to Google’s Search Console tool. Both of these tools provide valuable insight into your search health and should be reviewed periodically for opportunities to improve.