I found this excellent article on marketing your roof cleaning business.
Many local roof cleaning businesses struggle to find ways to promote themselves, get links, rank in search engines, and ultimately drive traffic to their roof cleaning websites. Most small roof cleaning businesses also have limited budgets making the task more difficult. For those businesses here are 13 ways you can promote your roof cleaning business online for free.
Google Local: If you dont already have one Create an account on Google Local. Enter your company name, address, phone number and roof cleaning website. Verify the information with a postacard or telephone call. In a few weeks you will help you get a map listing for your roof cleaning company name or industry and town.
Google Coupons: Coupons are a great way to bring new roof cleaning customers into your business or remind old customers that youre still around. Google has a free coupon tool that puts your roof cleaning coupon on relevant local searches.
Google Base: Google base is part of Googles one box service. Google uses it to try giving the most appropriate answer from different data sources. If you are selling products you can upload feeds automatically into Google Base and often get preferential placement. You can also upload your business, or special event.
Yahoo Local: Yahoo local is a directory organized by category and geographic location. You can get a basic listing in Yahoo Local for free. People searching for your roof cleaning business or industry can find your listing
Get Reviews: An integral part of the Yahoo Local listings are reviews. Ask your good roof cleaning customers to write reviews for you on Yahoo local. Businesses with higher ratings will get preferential listings.
YellowPages.com: Yellow Pages have a strong brand name and recognition, and are still used by many people today. They offer a few levels of listings the most basic is free.
Free Blog Promotion Tools: Does your roof cleaning company have a website or are you thinking of adding one? Websites like Technorati and mybloglog can help you gain exposure, visitors, readers, and subscribers to your roof cleaning blog.
Free Directory Advertising: It doesnt get any easier than trying free advertising. Go to BOTW.org and sign up for a free 60 day advertising listing.
Create a Lens at Squidoo:Squidoo has a nice easy to use interface that allows you to give information to your visitors. You can talk about your roof cleaning business specifically or the services or products you provide.
LinkedIn: Join LinkedIn and get connected with people you know and make connections with people you dont through introductions. Look at the new Questions and Answers section and try and be genuinely helpful. Follow the axiom of Givers Gain and you may generate a few roof cleaning leads for yourself from your goodwill.
Email Signatures: Be sure to add your URL to all of your outgoing email. Try adding your mission statement, or a catchy phrase about roof cleaning to help people understand what you do. Change it a several times a year so people notice it again.
Syndicate Your Content and Ideas: Take advantage of article distribution Services like EZineArticles, ISnare, and IdeaMarketers to spread your message and approach. Use them to bring roof cleaning leads to your site by offering things like free ebooks or PDFs that they can download after entering their contact information.
I noticed on google there is an up arrow and an X on the right side of each link.
You can click on your up arrow and make your website go to the top of the page on your computer. I'm not sure how it affects other computers and what ranking they see.
You can also click on the X on your competitors and make them disappear.
I wonder if you get all your friends to click the up arrows on our websites to the front page, if it would help our overall rankings.
I have tried a few of these and a few are news to me. Good stuff. Free advertising is always good. I know this is ONLINE marketing but the best "free" advertising I have done is to clean a portion of a roof at a busy intersection where cars are often stopped and put a nice roof cleaning yard sign up for a few weeks before finishing the roof.
I noticed on google there is an up arrow and an X on the right side of each link.
You can click on your up arrow and make your website go to the top of the page on your computer. I'm not sure how it affects other computers and what ranking they see.
You can also click on the X on your competitors and make them disappear.
I wonder if you get all your friends to click the up arrows on our websites to the front page, if it would help our overall rankings.
-- Edited by Mike Sullivan at 11:32, 2009-01-28
Don't know Mike ? I would encourage ALL our roof cleaners to make Merchant Circle and Show Me Local Pages. It is totally free, and will provide good links for your main roof cleaning web site. A Merchant Circle page will actually out perform a web site, unless the web site has a lot of links, or is an old URL. This is because Merchant Circle pages have thousands of back links automatically. Merchant Circle is the fastest way to instant web visibility for hundreds of roof cleaners. I suggest it highly!
I actually got on here to add merchant circle to the list but I see Chris is a step ahead of me. Merchant circle is as good as it gets as far as free online service.
Superior Power Washing Chris Chappell 361-853-2513 Cleaning Shingle and Tile Roofs in Corpus Christi Texas No Pressure Roof Cleaning in Corpus Christi Texas       Texas Certified Roof Cleaner   Â