Your online reputation moves fast. A negative review, a mention on a local Facebook group, a complaint on Yelp, if you're not monitoring it, you're always reacting late. Google Alerts fixes that. It's free, takes 5 minutes to set up, and runs automatically in the background. Here's how to set it up: Go to google.com/alerts. Sign in with your Google account. Create these four alerts: Alert 1: Your business nameType your exact business name in quotes. Example: "Rico Plumbing Services." This catches every mention of your business across the web, reviews, articles, directories, social media posts that Google indexes. Alert 2: Your business name without quotesSame name but without quotes. This catches variations and misspellings. Alert 3: Your name + cityExample: "plumber Austin" or "HVAC repair Denver." This monitors what's being said about your trade in your market, new competitors, local news, community mentions. Alert 4: Your owner nameIf you're the face of the business, set an alert for your own name. Referrals and mentions happen more than you think. Settings to use:Frequency: As it happens. You want to know immediately, not in a weekly digest.Sources: All.Region: Set to your country.Deliver to: Your email. What to do when an alert fires: If it's a positive mention, engage with it. Thank the person, share it, use it as social proof. If it's a negative mention, respond quickly and professionally. The faster you respond to a complaint the better chance you have of resolving it before it spreads. If it's a competitor mention, read it. Understanding what customers are saying about them gives you insight into gaps you can fill. This takes 5 minutes to set up and runs forever. Most contractors don't know it exists. Do you currently have any system for monitoring your online reputation? Drop it below.

Most contractors guess at their SEO strategy. They pick keywords that sound right, create some pages, and hope for the best. The smarter move is to look at what's already working for the businesses ranking above you and build from there. Semrush has a free plan that lets you do exactly that. Here's how. Step 1: Create a free account Go to semrush.com and sign up. The free plan gives you 10 searches per day which is more than enough to get started. Step 2: Run a competitor domain search Go to the Domain Overview tool. Type in the URL of one of the competitors ranking above you in Google Maps or organic search. Hit search. You'll see their estimated monthly traffic, how many keywords they rank for, and their top pages. This alone tells you a lot. Step 3: Find their top keywords Click on Organic Research then Keywords. This shows you every keyword they're ranking for, their position, and how much traffic each keyword sends them. Sort by position and look for keywords in positions 1 to 10. These are the terms driving their business right now. What to look for: Keywords that are relevant to your services but that you're not targeting yet. City-specific terms you haven't built pages for. Service variations you hadn't considered like "emergency AC repair" versus just "AC repair." Step 4: Check keyword difficulty For any keyword you want to target, run it through the Keyword Overview tool. You'll see the monthly search volume and keyword difficulty score. Look for keywords with decent volume and a difficulty under 50. Those are the ones you can realistically rank for without years of SEO work. Step 5: Build your list Take the best opportunities you find and turn them into a priority list for new service pages or GBP optimization. You now have a data-driven roadmap instead of guesswork. The businesses ranking above you aren't smarter. They just figured this out earlier. Now you have the same information they do. Have you ever looked at what your competitors are ranking for? Drop your trade and city below and let's see what's out there. 👇

🎁 Free Resource: Local SEO for Home Services If you're just getting started or want to make sure you have the fundamentals locked in, this guide is for you. It covers: - How Google decides who gets the call - The 5 SEO mistakes costing contractors jobs every week - How to optimize your Google Business Profile - How to show up in AI search (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI) - A simple 10-minute weekly routine to stay consistent Download it, read it, and pick one thing to implement this week.